This publication is a collection of studies devoted to various aspects of the semantics and lexicography of Ancient Hebrew. All contributions except the last two were originally delivered as papers to a symposium held in July 1994 at Leiden University. The symposium rounded off a three-year-long international network funded by the European Science Foundation under the leadership of Prof. Dr. J. Hoftijzer, from whose contribution to the present volume one may gain an insight into the conception and philosophy of the research project and its history so far. This volume will, in addition to some earlier publications which have appeared in the Zeitschrift fur Althebraistik, give the reader some idea of the general thinking which has assisted the authors in the formulation of their approach to the task lying before them. It ought to be emphasised, however, that all the studies appearing in this volume ought to be of interest to any Hebraist and Old Testament scholar, for they are hardly "in-house" publications, but address some important aspects of the Ancient Hebrew semantics and lexicography.

Since 1995 five centres in Europe (Cambridge, Firenze, Leuven, Oxford, and Roma) have been engaged in a joint research project, Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database. The project aims at building an ongoing database which consists of a critical and exhaustive assessment of lexico-semantic studies on the vocabulary of Ancient Hebrew published since the end of the Second World War. The corpus includes not only Biblical Hebrew, but also epigraphic materials, Ben Sira, and Hebrew documents from the Judean Desert. Each centre has been working on lexemes belonging to a particular field. The present volume publishes results of this research on select lexemes covering the field of cosmos (/bri'ah/), cursing (/'-R-R/, /m'erah/, /N-Q-B/, /Q-B-B/, way /derekh/, /msillah/, /ma'gal/, /mish'ol/, royal appurtenance (/hadom/, /kisse/, /nezer/, /'atarah/, /shevet/). The editor of the volume is the chair of the Executive Committee of the project.

Blessings and curses represent complex social and theological phenomena, and challenge our linguistic and conceptual understandings of the society in which they are used. This volume gathers together the semantic information for the words used in ancient Hebrew (including inscriptions, Ben Sira and Qumran) for the field of 'blessing and cursing'. Since semantics must take into account the context in which the words are used, Part 1 surveys different approaches to the understanding of blessing and cursing in Israelite religion and society, and the anthropological and linguistic approaches taken in interpreting them. The relevance of these approaches to a semantic study is noted, and a summary of the second part of the volume is given. Part 2 is a detailed presentation of the data for each word, including discussion of the root, morphology, translations in the ancient versions, position within the semantic field and scholarly literature. The aim is to provide as full a treatment as possible for a semantic interpretation of the field. The volume has been produced as part of the international project, the Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database.

The chapters of this volume address a variety of topics that pertain to modern readers’ understanding of ancient texts, as well as tools or resources that can facilitate contemporary audiences’ interpretation of these ancient writings and their language. In this regard, they cover subjects related to the fields of ancient Hebrew linguistics and Bible translation. The chapters apply linguistic insights and theories to elucidate elements of ancient texts for modern readers, investigate how ancient texts help modern readers to interpret features in other ancient texts, and suggest ways in which translations can make the language and conceptual worlds of ancient texts more accessible to modern readers. In so doing, they present the results of original research, identify new lines and topics of inquiry, and make novel contributions to modern readers’ understanding of ancient texts. Contributors are Alexander Andrason, Barry L. Bandstra, Reinier de Blois, Lénart J. de Regt, Gideon R. Kotzé, Geoffrey Khan, Christian S. Locatell, Kristopher Lyle, John A. Messarra, Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé, Jacobus A. Naudé, Daniel Rodriguez, Eep Talstra, Jeremy Thompson, Cornelius M. van den Heever, Herrie F. van Rooy, Gerrit J. van Steenbergen, Ernst Wendland, Tamar Zewi.

The author employs cognitive semantic and frame semantic to demonstrate the basic semantic structure of the Biblical Hebrew verb שׁלם.

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.

Colours play a vital role in the daily lives of all peoples. Truly remarkable is the human ability to see such a vast array of colours. Just as intriguing is the way languages develop lexemes to reference the colours that the eye sees. In recent years there have been many investigations into the way that languages add colour lexemes. This research has shown that languages, as a rule, follow similar definable steps in the addition of basic colour lexemes. Anthropologists have discovered that in languages of primitive cultures lexemes for colour play different roles than they do in languages of industrialised societies. Consequently studies of colour lexemes of such languages need to employ different methods of inquiry into such a language's colour vocabulary. Additional insights have been gained through the study of colour lexemes in ancient languages. This study makes a contribution to the field of the semantics of colour by investigating ancient Hebrew colour lexemes as found in the Hebrew Scriptures, ancient inscriptions, Ben Sira and Qumran. In part 1 there is a consideration of the physical phenomenon of colour and a review of recent research on languages' acquisition of colour terms. Part 2 presents the detailed analysis of each Hebrew colour lexeme according to the format of the Semantics in Ancient Hebrew Database; included is the position of each lexeme with its semantic field and the scholarly literature. This volume is produced as part of the international project, the Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database.