This study offers a synchronic and diachronic account of the Biblical Hebrew verbal tense system during the Second Temple period, based on the books of Esther, Daniel, and Ezra and Nehemiah, along with the non-synoptic parts of Chronicles.

This book constitutes the first detailed corpus-based analysis of the verbal morphology and syntax employed in the Eastern European Maskilic (Jewish Enlightenment) Hebrew prose fiction written between 1857 and 1881. This verbal system exhibits biblical, rabbinic and medieval elements as well as unprecedented features and similarities to Israeli Hebrew and Yiddish. The first section of the work offers a selective examination of maskilic verbal morphology, while the second section constitutes a thorough examination of the functions of the verbal conjugations and the third section surveys selected features of verbal syntax. The work fills a serious gap in the Hebrew philological literature and will therefore be of great relevance to students and scholars of diachronic Hebrew language and linguistics.

This is the first major study of the Biblical Hebrew verbal system of a prophetic book. It is also the first book-length study in over 60 years to focus on how genre affects the Hebrew verbal system. It advances a data-driven argument that Biblical Hebrew verb forms do not function one way in prose and another way in poetry. Lastly, the author addresses the diachronic development of Hebrew between the destruction of the First Temple and the writing of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Verb in Archaic Biblical Poetry: A Discursive, Typological, and Historical Investigation of the Tense System offers a comprehensive analysis of the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and discursive properties of the verb in the corpus of archaic" biblical poetry (The Song of Moses, Song of the Sea, Song of Deborah, Song of David, Blessing of Jacob, Oracles of Balaam, Blessing of Moses, and Song of Hannah). The approach integrates modern research on tense, aspect, and modality, while also addressing the complicated philological issues in these texts. The study presents discursive analysis of biblical poetic texts, systemic description of each text’s tense system, and reconstruction of the archaic verbal tenses as attested in part of the corpus.

How do texts of Scripture make sense or hold together as a unity? This question is especially germane to the Masoretic Text of Hosea, which is often seen as an unintegrated composition by some, or an artful literary whole by others. Such judgments often come without clear definitions and criteria for (in)coherence. This book brings descriptive clarity to this issue through a discourse analysis of cohesion and coherence in Hosea 12–14 based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. This study showcases the theme of divine mercy in Hosea 12–14 and gives readers tools for discourse-linguistic analysis of the Hebrew Bible.

The Companion to Ancient Israel offers an innovative overview of ancient Israelite culture and history, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fields. Distinguished scholars provide original contributions that explore the tradition in all its complexity, multiplicity and diversity. A methodologically sophisticated overview of ancient Israelite culture that provides insights into political and social history, culture, and methodology Explores what we can say about the cultures and history of the people of Israel and Judah, but also investigates how we know what we know Presents fresh insights, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fields Delves into ‘religion as lived,’ an approach that asks about the everyday lives of ordinary people and the material cultures that they construct and experience Each essay is an original contribution to the subject

Most of the papers in this volume originated as presentations at the conference Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew: New Perspectives in Philology and Linguistics, which was held at the University of Cambridge, 8–10th July, 2019. The aim of the conference was to build bridges between various strands of research in the field of Hebrew language studies that rarely meet, namely philologists working on Biblical Hebrew, philologists working on Rabbinic Hebrew and theoretical linguists. This volume is the published outcome of this initiative. It contains peer-reviewed papers in the fields of Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew that advance the field by the philological investigation of primary sources and the application of cutting-edge linguistic theory. These include contributions by established scholars and by students and early career researchers.

Introduces basic and critical issues of Hebrew syntax for beginning and intermediate readers of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew is an in-depth examination of Hebrew words that are of Akkadian origin or transmitted via Akkadian into the Hebrew lexicon.

In this examination of Zion theology and how it arises in the book of Psalms Antti Laato's starting-point is that the Hebrew Bible is the product of the exilic and postexilic times, which nonetheless contains older traditions that have played a significant role in the development of the text. Laato seeks out these older mythical traditions related to Zion using a comparative methodology and looking at Biblical traditions alongside Ugaritic texts and other ancient Near Eastern material. As such Laato provides a historical background for Zion theology which he can apply more broadly to the Psalms. In addition, Laato argues that Zion-related theology in the Psalms is closely related to two events recounted in the Hebrew Bible. First, the architectural details of the Temple of Solomon (1 Kings 6-7), which can be compared with older mythical Zion-related traditions. Second, the religious traditions related to the reigns of David and Solomon such as the Ark Narrative, which ends with David's transfer of the Ark to Jerusalem (2 Sam 6). From this Laato builds an argument for a possible setting in Jerusalem at the time of David and Solomon for the Zion theology that emerges in the Psalms.