In his review of A Companion to the Ancient Near East (ed. D. Snell. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), Geoffrey D. Summers describes my chapter on the languages of the Ancient Near East as “somewhat unbalanced in its coverage and descriptive in its approach.” I must say that I fully agree with his statement.
Although the chapter in question is based on a much longer piece I wrote for that volume, the printed version was extensively abbreviated by the volume editor without my knowledge.
Because of the very substantial cuts (over 60% of my original), the result is neither a representative overview of the subject matter nor, most certainly, the contribution I submitted and intended to present.
I would not dare argue about the hodge-podge nature of the volume, but I can bear witness to the hodge-podge quality of the editing. I believe the appropriate term here is not so much editing, but rather butchering.