BEYOND BABEL Resources for Biblical Study Steven L. McKenzie Editor Number 42 BEYOND BABEL A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages BEYOND BABEL A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages Edited by John Kaltner and Steven L. McKenzie Society of Biblical Literature Atlanta BEYOND BABEL A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages Copyright © 2002 by the Society of Biblical Literature All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Office, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30329 USA. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beyond Babel : a handbook for biblical Hebrew and related languages / edited by Steven McKenzie & John Kaltner. p. cm. — (Resources for biblical study ; no. 42) ISBN 1-58983-035-0 1. Middle Eastern philology. 2. Semitic philology. 3. Middle East—Languages— Grammar, Comparative. 4. Middle Eastern literature—Relation to the Old Testament 5. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. McKenzie, Steven L., 1953- II. Kaltner, John, 1954- III. Series. PJ25 .B54 2002b 492—dc21 2002011759 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper CONTENTS Preface vii Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 John Huehnergard, Harvard University Akkadian 19 David Marcus, Jewish Theological Seminary of America Ammonite, Edomite, and Moabite 43 Simon B. Parker, Boston University Arabic 61 John Kaltner, Rhodes College Aramaic 93 Frederick E. Greenspahn, University of Denver Egyptian 109 Donald B. Redford, Pennsylvania State University Hebrew (Biblical and Epigraphic) 139 Jo Ann Hackett, Harvard University Hebrew (Postbiblical) 157 Baruch A. Levine, New York University Hittite 183 Harry A. Hoffner Jr., The University of Chicago Phoenician 207 Charles R. Krahmalkov, The University of Michigan Ugaritic 223 Peggy L. Day, University of Winnipeg [...]... equivalents, Akk has preserved the original Sumerian values of the cuneiform signs Sample Text: Law One of the Code of Hammurabi (= CH) Transliteration: ssum-ma a- wi-lum a- wi-lam ỳ-ub-bi-ir-ma ne-er-tam e-li-ssu id-di-ma la uk-ti-in-ssu mu-ub-bi-ir-ssu id-da-ak Normalization: ssumma awilum awilam ubbợrma neertam elissu iddima laa uktợnssu mubbirssu iddõk Translation: If a man accuses (another) man and has brought... Masoretes In comparative reconstruction, as the name suggests, cognate forms of related languages are compared in an attempt to get at an earlier stage Cognates are forms, such as Hebrew kesep and Akkadian kaspum (see above), that exhibit a similar form and meaning and that can be shown to share a common ancestor Hebrew kesep and Akkadian kaspum clearly have similar meanings, and their root consonants,... food-offering. In these word sets we see an apparently regular correspondence of Hebrew h and the lack of a consonant in Akkadian But in other instances, Hebrew h corresponds to Akkadian hh: Hebrew haameess and Akkadian hhamiss five; Hebrew )aah and Akkadian ahHum brother; Hebrew mooah marrow and 8 Avi Hurvitz, The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew: A Study in Post Exilic Hebrew and Its Implications... Afro-Asiatic (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) Other members of the Afro-Asiatic phylum are ancient Egyptian; the Berber languages of North Africa; the Cushitic and Omotic languages of Ethiopia, Somalia, and neighboring countries; and the vast family of Chadic languages in central and western sub-Saharan Africa The fact that most of these branches, with the notable exception of Egyptian, are not attested before... by the remaining Northwest Semitic languages (essentially, Aramaic and Ugaritic), and then Arabic and the Old South Arabian languages In addition to factors of genetic proximity, account must also be taken of cultural and historical considerations For example, for much of the second millennium B.C.E., and into the first, Akkadian was a lingua franca throughout the Near East, that is, a language used... obvious, reason to study other languages is that such study can shed considerable light on the grammar and vocabulary of biblical Hebrew itself and thus on the biblical text proper Although classical Hebrew has never ceased to be an object of study, the fact remains that it has long been a dead language (i.e., a language that no one has learned as a first language), a language of texts only, and so it... communication among peoples speaking different languages, and there are as a result a significant number of Akkadian loanwordsborrowingsin Hebrew, such as sk,m, tax and t/nK]smi storehouses.3 Similarly, Aramaic served as a lin] gua franca for most of the first millennium, and the influence of Aramaic on Hebrew as a result of the pervasiveness of the former is considerable, in both vocabulary and grammar.4... other, and distinct languages will have emerged These languages are said to be genetically related to one another because they share a common ancestor Comparative linguistics is the study of the relationships among related languages and between such languages and their common ancestor Frequently, especially in the case of incompletely attested languages, the study of languages in the same family will clarify... Semitic languages, such as Akkadian, classical Arabic, and Ugaritic, exhibit a threefold case system, each of the cases marked, on singular nouns, by one of the short vowels after the base: -u for nominative, -i for genitive (used after constructs and after prepositions), -a for accusative (for the direct object and in various adverbial uses) In Hebrew as well as in other languages (such as Aramaic, modern... only, and so it must be learned and explained with the tools of philology (the study of texts) (In this, biblical Hebrew is similar to Latin, classical Greek, and classical forms of Aramaic and Ethiopic, all of which have been the subject of a continuous tradition of study, and unlike, say, Akkadian, Egyptian, and Ugaritic, languages that had been completely forgotten and that had to be recovered or reconstructed