Though Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception is not a traditional Bible encyclopedia—far from it—it contains useful treatments of a surprising number of commonplace items referenced in the Bible: “Leech,” “Leeks,” “Lentil,” “Lie, Lying” (which strangely omits treatment of NT passages), “Lightning,” “Lizard.” But its forte is the recondite. With this volume in hand, one can distinguish, for example, between Leontius of Byzantium (cols. 129–31), Leontius of Constantinople (cols. 131–32), Leontius of Jerusalem (cols. 133–134), and Leontius of Neapolis (cols. 134–35). And many somewhat weightier matters come into view.Almost one-fifth of the volume is devoted to two domains of usage, one centered on the divine, the other on human response to the divine. The former consists of a cluster of articles (about 115 cols. total) beginning with “Lord” and extending to “Lord’s Day,” “Lord’s Prayer,” and “Lord’s Supper” (a complement to the article in vol. 15 on “Last Supper”). (“Lord’s Resistance Army” finds a place amidst these articles but pertains more to the demonic than the divine.) As for human response to the divine, in addition to “Lectionary” (cols. 1–11), there are some 110 columns devoted to the liturgical—“Liturgical Books,” “Liturgical Drama and Mystery Plays,” “Liturgical Vestments,” “Liturgical Year,” and “Liturgy.” The last-named article explores liturgy in Judaism from Second Temple times to the present, in the Christian heritage both Orthodox and Roman Catholic, Anglican liturgy, Protestant liturgies, liturgy in the contemporary global south, and liturgy in Islam. As is standard in this reference work where the subject warrants, the topic “liturgy” is also traced out in music (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic) and in film.The complexity of current hermeneutics is underscored not only by “Liberal Theology (Christian)” and “Liberation Theology” but in “Lesbian Interpretation of the Bible”—other volumes take up “Gay Men’s Interpretation of the Bible,” “Homosexuality,” and “Queer Reception of the Bible.” Liberal Judaism will be covered under “Reform Judaism” in a later volume. Covering influential thinkers affecting or modeling Bible interpretation are articles on Gerardus van der Leeuw, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Emmanuel Lévinas, C. S. Lewis, Saul Lieberman, John Locke, Peter Lombard, and many others. Doris Lessing is also noted, but her import for the Bible and its reception is more limited.Since this volume covers topics beginning with “Levi-,” one finds studies on “Levirate Marriage,” “Levite’s Concubine” (passionate and erudite analysis by Cynthia Edenburg on the biblical material and by Yael Shemesh and then Joseph David on Judaism through the centuries), “Levites,” “Levitical Cities,” and “Leviticus, Book of.” There are also treatments not just of Levi son of Jacob (col. 257–67) but of four other men named Levi in Scripture (col. 256) and then a range of men by that name in the history of Scripture interpretation: David Levi, Frédéric Lévi, Primo Levi, Claude Lévi-Strauss (a thorough essay by Eric Ziolkowski: cols. 271–81), Levi ben Abraham ben Ḥayyim, Levi ben Gershom, and Levi Issac of Berdichev. This list serves to illustrate the richness of the interpretive tradition which this encyclopedia brings out into the open and the thoroughness with which it does so.Exegetes may take particular interest in “Lexicography” (cols. 430–39). Milton Eng skillfully covers the history of OT lexical word study, concluding with a full bibliography. The NT portion of the article is sparse by comparison but offers the memorable dictum, “Thinking beyond the lexicon is just as important as going to it in exegesis” (col. 438)—perfectly true, as long as in “thinking beyond” one does not leave the lexicon behind, a tendency that teachers of the biblical languages sometimes observe in students and even in fellow scholars.In “Letter, Letters,” David Trobisch assures us that “historical-critical scholarship has established a longstanding consensus that most of the letters included in the NT are fictitious” (col. 221). Only works supporting this opinion, which is actually warmly contested on many fronts and is “consensus” for a self-appointed authoritative community, appear in his bibliography. In the lengthy article on “Liberty” (cols. 464–85), treatment of NT texts inexplicably drops out, even though there are 28 occurrences of the ἐλευθερία/ἐλεύθερος/ἐλευθερόω word group in the Greek NT. Nor is the NT mentioned under “Light unto the Nations,” though the thoughts here on Judaism and the OT are valuable. In the “Who Knew?” category is the fact that the daughter of classical Greek lexicographer Henry George Liddell (1811–98), whose name was Alice, “inspired Lewis Carroll’s creation of the main character” (col. 502) in a well-known fantasy novel about a wonderland.It is a loss that Mark Noll’s America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln is not referenced in the article on Abraham Lincoln. Barry Dov Walfish does, however, provide enthusiastic promotion of Lincoln as a friend of the Jews: “Lincoln did more than any previous president to promote the status of Jews in America,” which was “unlike Thomas Jefferson, who spoke ill of the Jews and their religion on a number of occasions” (col. 700). These political traditions grounded in theological (or anti-theological) assumptions are still with us.Biblical scholars will appreciate “Linguistic Dating (Hebrew Bible),” which makes sense of a complex and longstanding debate. The same goes for “Linguistics and Biblical Studies” (cols. 718–726), a field of study in which scholarship by evangelicals is highlighted, with mention of D. A. Black, Constantine Campbell, D. A. Carson, Buist Fanning, George Guthrie, Jonathan Pennington, Stanley Porter, Heinrich von Siebenthal, Cynthia Westfall, and others.Outstanding biographical treatments include those by Chiara Bertoglio on Franz Liszt, “possibly the greatest piano virtuoso of all times” (col. 760). His music, both composition and performance, are inseparable from “his deep knowledge of the Bible,” his Roman Catholic convictions, and “his intent to interpret and express” biblical truths and motifs in much of his work (col. 762). Equally thorough and knowledgeable is Jeffrey Morrow’s handling of a scholar having a more troubled relationship with Catholic faith: Alfred Loisy, an advocate of what Pope Pius X labeled “the Modernist movement” (col. 1039). His mission of furthering “the increasing use of the historical critical method among Catholic biblical scholars” led to his excommunication, after which he positioned himself more as “a scholar working in the History of Religion” (col. 1040).It is helpful to have the three Lightfoots (J. B. of Cambridge, John the Hebraist, and R. H. the Bultmann follower and early Gospels redaction critic) distinguished. There is some tension, though, between Dale C. Allison Jr.’s reading of J. B. Lightfoot and that found in “Liberal Theology (Christian)” by Mark Chapman. Allison notes that Lightfoot’s work “served, in the English-speaking world, to discredit F. C. Baur and the so-called Tübingen school” (col. 609). Chapman claims Lightfoot for the liberal cause (“moderately liberal”) and admits that the work of Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort “was regarded by some as overturning” Baur’s claims but then paints a picture of scholarship moving on (col. 450). Allison offers the fascinating observation that Lightfoot’s lectures were so heavily attended that they “were moved to the great hall at Trinity College to accommodate the crowds” (col. 609). The appeal was not liberal theology. Chapman registers an equally suggestive fact about Baur’s homeland, where liberal theology first arose and then gained ascendancy in state Protestantism under various scholarly paradigms: “In 1830 Protestant theology students in Germany [this would include those in training for pastoral ministry] amounted to about one-quarter of all matriculated students. This had fallen to less than eight per cent by 1914” (col. 451).