This is the first volume in the Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible series. In his introduction, Tucker indicates that the series, or at least his own handbook on the Hebrew text of Jonah, is intended to serve students who have moved from introductory grammar to the biblical text. It should be noted at the outset, however, that this is not yet another analytical key, for Tucker is less concerned with morphology, seeking instead to provide help with larger syntactic issues. In practice, this means that, although lexical forms are provided for verbs, it is assumed that readers are able to identify other word classes such as nouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and so forth. Anyone interested in theological or detailed exegetical comments on the book of Jonah will also look in vain, because, as Tucker notes, “this handbook is singular in focus—to consider the Hebrew text and related issues, syntactic and otherwise” (2). It thus serves as what he calls a “prequel” to the commentaries, providing the kind of syntactic help that is presumed by technical commentaries and omitted by popular ones. In his introduction Tucker laments that, because introductory grammars have a tendency to focus on the analysis of word classes, when students move to the biblical text, they generally continue with that type of micro-syntactic analysis. What is required, however, is to introduce students to the analysis of clauses and their syntactic functions, to the kind of macro-syntactic analysis, in other words, that has been the focus of modern linguistics. [Full Review]

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