This monograph exhaustively investigates the semantic domain of ‘gift’ in Ancient Hebrew, which comprises 28 substantives. The investigation firstly focuses on the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations that determine the meanings of each individual lexeme and subsequently provides an overall picture of the developments and extensions of the whole lexical field across the different layers of Ancient Hebrew. The investigation sheds new light on the debated issue of the so-called sectarian Qumran writings, by demonstrating that they attest to distinctive patterns of lexical organisation that are not found elsewhere in Ancient Hebrew. The appendix finally discusses the feasibility of drawing concept related conclusions on the basis of linguistic data, thus sketching a possible map of the concept of ‘gift’.

This book provides an exhaustive analysis of the semantic domain of ‘gift’ in Ancient Hebrew. The investigation focuses on the single lexemes and provides an overall picture of the developments of the lexical field across the linguistic layers of Ancient Hebrew.

Jewish Monotheism is built on a fundamental assumption: God has spoken to the Jews and commanded them to follow His law. But what exactly are - "God's words"? This monograph examines the notion of "word" in Ancient Judaism from the Bible to the Mishnah - from Scripture to this prominent Hebrew law handbook redacted at the beginning of 3rd century c.e. It explores the notion of human and divine "word" and its transformation in the narrative, legal, poetical, and theological pieces of Jewish literature. It pays particular attention to the semantic evolutions of all those substantives that designate a "word" or any other relevant element of speech that both humans and God use to communicate with each other. The monograph offers an analysis of the word field of the substantives of "word" from a double perspective - a linguistic and a cultural one. On the one hand it relies on Eugenio Coseriu's semantics and on the disseminated notion of "Hebrew functional languages." It starts from the presupposition that every term has its own meaning only due to its connection with other terms - called "lexical field." It also argues that Hebrew can be divided into several "functional languages" that have different social and communicative functions: a narrative, legal, poetical, and performative one. On the other hand, the monograph also takes into account the reception history of Scripture through its main ancient translations into Greek, Aramaic, and Syriac. In doing so, the monograph examines the word field of the substantives of "word" also from a cultural perspective and shows the evolution of this fundamental portion of Jewish literature.

In Hebrew Lexical Semantics and Daily Life in Ancient Israel, Kurtis Peters hitches the world of Biblical Studies to that of modern linguistic research. Often the insights of linguistics do not appear in the study of Biblical Hebrew, and if they do, the theory remains esoteric. Peters finds a way to maintain linguistic integrity and yet simplify cognitive linguistic methods to provide non-specialists an access point. By employing a cognitive approach one can coordinate the world of the biblical text with the world of its surroundings. The language of cooking affords such a possibility – Peters evaluates not only the words or lexemes related to cooking in the Hebrew Bible, but also the world of cooking as excavated by archaeology.

The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the book of Ben Sira can be properly understood only in the light of all contemporary Second Temple period sources. With this in mind, 20 experts from Israel, Europe, and the United States convened in Jerusalem in December 2008. These proceedings of the Twelfth Orion Symposium and Fifth International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira examine the Hebrew of the Second Temple period as reflected primarily in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the book of Ben Sira, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Mishnaic Hebrew. Additional contemporaneous sources—inscriptions, Greek and Latin transcriptions, and the Samaritan oral and reading traditions of the Pentateuch—are also noted.

Despite its centrality in mainstream linguistics, cognitive semantics has only recently begun to establish a foothold in biblical studies, largely due to the challenges inherent in applying such a methodology to ancient languages. The Semantics of Glory addresses these challenges by offering a new, practical model for a cognitive semantic approach to Classical Hebrew, demonstrated through an exploration of the Hebrew semantic domain of glory. The concept of ‘glory’ is one of the most significant themes in the Hebrew Bible, lying at the heart of God’s self-disclosure in biblical revelation. This study provides the most comprehensive examination of the domain to date, mapping out its intricacies and providing a framework for its exegesis.