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Rhetorica Semitica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

Although any lingering doubts about the lexical value of the Semitic particle bal ought by now to have been dispelled by the observations of Labuschagne and Aartun, a few further remarks on the problems involved in contextual analysis might not be altogether superfluous. While this particular instance of etymological overkill is not included there, the several pitfalls encountered in the practice respectively of comparative philology and textual emendation are meticulously documented in Barr's monograph on methodology. And the dangers of ‘pan-Ugaritism’ have been signalled more than once. The purport of these caveats is clear: textual problems will not always (or even often) be solved by reference to cognates. Occasional solutions may be lexical, seldom morphological, and even more rarely syntactic, since ‘meaning’ is, in the final analysis, a product of context.

Type
Notes and Communications
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1983

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References

1 Labuschagne, C. J., ‘Ugaritic BLT and BILTl in Is. X 4’, VT, XIV, 1964, 97–9Google Scholar.

2 Aartun, K., Die Partikdn des Ugaritischen, I, AOAT 21/1, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1974, 26–7Google Scholar.

3 Barr, J., Comparative philology and the text of the Old Testament, Oxford, 1968, especially, perhaps, 76124Google Scholar.

4 e.g. Driver, G. R., JSS, x, 1965, 112–17Google Scholar (reviewing M. Dahood, Proverbs and Northwest Semitic philology); Pope, M. H., JSS, XI, 1966, 228–41Google Scholar (reviewing J. Gray, The legacy of Canaan); J. C. De, Moor and P. Van Der, Lugt, BO, XXXI, 1974, 326Google Scholar (reviewing L. R. Fisher, Ras Shamra parallels, I); Avishur, Y., ‘Should a Ugaritic text be corrected on the basis of a Biblical text ?’, VT, XXXI, 1981, 218‘20Google Scholar (CTA 16: I: 26–28 and Jer. 8: 23).

5 O'Callaghan, R. T., ‘Echoes of Canaanite literature in the Psalms’, VT, IV, 1954, 166–7Google Scholar, followed by Gray, Legacy, 277.

6 Dahood, M., Psalms I, Anchor Bible 16, Garden City, N.Y, 1966, 86, dependent, it would seem, upon a traditional emendationGoogle Scholar

7 Wright, W., A grammar of the Arabic language, Cambridge, 1955, II, 334–5Google Scholar; Reckendorf, H., Die syntaktischen Verhältnisse des Arabischen, Leiden, 1967, para. 117Google Scholar; idem, Arabische Syntax, Heidelberg, 1921, paras. 32, 160.3(c).

8 Gordon, C. H., Ugaritic textbook, Rome, 1965, paras. 9.18–9, 10.6, 11.10, 12.4, 13.6, 19.466;Google ScholarPubMed cf. Dahood, M., Ugaritic-Hebrew philology, Rome, 1965, 22–3, 35–6.Google Scholar

9 Brockelmann, C., Grundriss der vergleichenden Orammatik der semitischen Sprachen, Hildesheim, 1961 (1913), II, 181200Google Scholar; Glinert, L., ‘Negative and non-assertive in contemporary Hebrew’, BSOAS, XLV, 1982, 434–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Dahood, M., Psalms I, 61Google Scholar, 66; for a quite different solution to the problem exhibiting a diametrically opposed method, cf. Driver, G. R., Semitic Writing, Oxford, 1976, 202 bottomGoogle Scholar.

11 ibid., 194, 197.

12 ibid., 295, 299.

13 idem, Psalms III (1970), 401.

14 ibid., 399.

15 ibid., 393.

16 ibid., 308, 311.

17 ibid., 344, 350.

18 M. Dahood, Proverbs, 31.

19 ibid., 41.

20 BS0AS, XLV, 1, 1982, 10Google Scholar (ref. Freedman, D. N., Pottery, poetry, and prophecy:studies in early Hebrew poetry. Winons Lake, Indiana, Eisenbrauns, 1980, 271Google Scholar, n. 1). In Is. 40:24 anaphoric ap bal may surely be analysed ‘neither…nor…nor’.