The first volume of the long awaited New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible just arrived today. It has been advertised and expected for a while now, and quite a few bibliobloggers have contributed to it. I was quite excited to get it and immediately ripped the shrink-wrap off one...
I was disappointed by a few things:
*The bibliographies are all in English. Was this intentional? If so, what a disappointment.
*The bibliographies are not sorted, or at least I couldn't figure it out. It certainly isn't alphabetically by author or title. Maybe by importance? I looked at the Baal article, and the first book was an Eisenbrauns book The Storm-God in the Ancient Near East, so it must be by importance, right :)
*The bottom margin is terribly close to the bottom of the book. I checked two from different boxes, just in case it was a printer mistake. Nope, both of them only have about 1/8 inch of white space at the bottom of the page.
This series is designed to replace the old Interpreter's Dictionary, and they are hoping to displace the Anchor Bible Dictionary. Well, based on this first volume, I wouldn't start trading in my Anchor Dictionary just yet.
Those of you who contributed, what are your thoughts on this?
Update: Abingdon told me that they intend to increase the bottom margin on the next volumes.
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I know that I put my bibliography in alphabetic order as per the guidelines. In addition, they noted that monographs and articles not written in English should be avoided, as the primary audience will not find them helpful.
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