Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>]

Ian, I did not intend to be rude. Sorry if I led you to take it that way.
There are complex twists in your arguments, ones which I do not believe are
justified. But, since I accept you were not deliberately being confusing, I
have to conclude that you are confused. Maybe I am also.

What do you understand by "cognate" when speaking of words? How, in your
understanding, can words (of similar form in different languages) be related
but not cognate?

I suppose there could be some confusion somewhere in our thinking between
the roots `rb and qrb. The latter means "draw near" in Hebrew, and includes
the sexual meanings. Does it appear with ayin instead of qoph in Ugaritic?
There are also at least two distinct roots `rb in Hebrew (corrseponding, I
understand, to different pronunciations of ayin at least in early Hebrew);
one, meaning "evening", is cognate with the Arabic gh-r-b as in Maghreb =
west, place of the evening, and the other is cognate with the Arabic `rb as
in `arab "Arab", which is both Arabic and Hebrew. Perhaps someone who knows
more Hebrew and Ugaritic than either of us can put us right on which root
underlies `rbt in the Ugaritic text in question.

Meanwhile, I thought you might be describing this text as "infamous" because
of the part it plays in David Rohl's proposed revised chronology, as set out
in his book "A Test of Time" or "Pharaohs and Kings". For the benefit of you
and others who have not read his book, I will describe briefly (and from
memory for the moment) what he has to say about this text. He interprets it
as a description of an eclipse at sunset (b++ "ashamed" as metonymy for
"darkened"; `rbt as "setting"). He then compares this with results from
modern astronomy which show that there was a total eclipse of the sun at
Ugarit near to sunset only once in the whole 2nd millennium (eclipses are
very rare!) and that was in (I think) 1004 BCE. That is of course more than
200 years later than the conventional date for the end of Ugarit. Rohl makes
this a major plank of his chronology. Of course, as you have pointed out
before, Ian, Rohl's chronology conflicts with the evidence from Assyrian
king lists. But I was interested to see evidence on this list last week that
the chronology of those king lists has been deliberately falsified.
Admittedly that falsification is a matter of 18 years, not more than 200.
But it doesn't inspire great confidence in the use made of these lists as
the major plank of conventional chronology and of counter-argument to Rohl's
theories.

Peter Kirk

----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 2:47 AM
Subject: Re: Infamous Ugaritic text: an eclipse


> At 12.21 19/06/00 +0100, you wrote:
> >Ian, your logic amazes me with its twists.
>
> I can understand that. I'm trying to undeerstand the significance of the
> text -- with its philological twists. However, my review contains nothing
> strange.
>
> >I can't bring you up on everything.
>
> I realise, Peter. (But I don't understand why you need to be so plain rude
> in your post, being amazed at someone's logic being so twisty, imply that
> one is being deliberately confusing.)
>
> >But you are certainly confused here, or else deliberately
> >confusing.
>
> How would you know? (And why accuse someone of being deliberately
> confusing, when you have no criteria for such an accusation, which to me
> seems baseless?)
>
> >I don't know much Ugaritic, but it is clear that `rb(t) is
> >cognate with the Hebrew word for "evening",
>
> This is an argument based on appearance. This has little philological
> value, Peter. The Ugaritic verb `rb specifically means "to go in" or
> "enter" -- and can even have sexual implications. The words may be
related,
> but what that relationship is doesn't necessarily mean "cognate". One can
> see how it can relate to the Hebrew word for "evening", for this was the
> time when the sun went in at the end of the day. But the exact
relationship
> between the two words in the two langauges is not a clear one.
>
<snip>