In 1961 William L. Morgan published "The Hebrew Language in Its Northwest Semitic Background", in which he presented a state-of-the-art description of the linguistic milieu out of which Biblical Hebrew developed. Moran stressed the features found in earlier Northwest Semitic languages that are similar to Hebrew and he demonstrated how the study of those languages sheds light on Biblical Hebrew. Since Moran wrote, our knowledge of both the Hebrew of the biblical period and of Northwest Semitic has increased considerably. In the lights of new epigraphic finds and the significant advances in the fields of Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic in the past four decades, the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem convened an international research group during the 2001-2002 academic year on the topic "Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic setting: Typological and Historical Perspectives." The volume presents the fruits of the year-long collaboration and contains twenty articles based on lectures given during the year by members of the groups and invited guests. A wide array of subjects are discussed, all of which have implications for the study of Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic.

Series: Pericope 4 - Scripture as written and read in antiquity Bible scholars and translators are often confronted with the problem of sectioning biblical texts. Until recently sentence division and paragraphing were largely left to the imagination of the individual scholar. This resulted in a wide range of different divisions of one and the same text. There is, however, a lot of long neglected evidence on how the ancient scribes themselves understood the structure of the texts they were transmitting. Research in ancient scribal traditions shows that in the entire ancient Near East scribes provided their texts with special, structuring markers. For example, rulings, lines left open, extra large capitals, different colouring at the beginning of new passages, and for the division into smaller units, strokes, dots and spaces. Actually many markers lending structure to our modern texts appear to be derived from very ancient customs. This volume contains the papers read during the Third Pericope Meeting held in connection with the SBL International Meeting at Berlin, 2002. Topics discussed are the unit delimitation in parts of Genesis, Numbers, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Psalms, and Song of Songs. Furthermore general studies on Masoretic accentuation, the importance of pausal forms for unit delimitation, description of scribal practices in the Jewish tradition, as well as unit division in Northwest Semitic texts are included. Pericope is a new successful series that aims at making available data on unit delimitation found in biblical and related manuscripts to the scholarly world and to evaluate these data for the benefit of biblical interpretation. From the Contents R. de Hoop, Genesis 49 Revisited: The Poetic Structure of Jacob's Testament and the Ancient Versions R. de Hoop, `Trichotomy' in Masoretic Accentuation in Comparison with the Delimitation of Units in the Versions: With Special Attention to the Introduction to Direct Speech M.C.A. Korpel, The Priestly Blessing Revisited (Num. 6:22-27) M.C.A. Korpel, WhoIs Who? The Structure of Canticles 8:1-7 I. Kottsieper, Zu graphischen Abschnittsmarkierungen in nordwestsemitischen Texten J.M. Oesch, Skizze einer formalen Gliederungshermeneutik der Sifre Tora J.W. Olley, Trajectories in Paragraphing of the Book of Ezekiel G.T.M. Prinsloo, Unit Delimitation in the Egyptian Hallel (Psalms 113{118) P. Sanders, Pausal Forms and the Delimitation of Cola in Biblical Hebrew Poetry E. Ulrich, Impressions and Intuition: Sense Divisions in Ancient Manuscripts of Isaiah

The recovery of numerous narratives of many types from throughout the Near East has encouraged scholars to compare these texts with those found in scripture. Most such comparisons have set biblical stories up against various Near Eastern mythic-epic poems.

Preliminary Material -- Early Extra-biblical Evidence -- The Waw-Consecutive in Hebrew Prose -- The Waw-Consecutive in Qumran Literature -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index of Texts -- Index of Authors -- Index of Subjects.

"A brief comparative grammar of the ancient Northwest Semitic languages, with text selections, commentary, and glossaries"--