Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Michael,
> Bill,
>       This is another whole can of wiggly things.  There are three
> opinions on this one is "yes" and the other is "no."  8-)  Really, the
> question is extremely comples.  The only positive support for the second
> reading you cite is that the same construction is found regularly in
> Ugaritic and once in Amos.  The first *far* removed geographically from
> Canaan, as well as linguistically removed.
[snip]

Excuse me?  Ugaritic is a well-known Canaanite/semitic language,
and the Ugaritic texts have told us more about Canaanite life and
religion than we ever knew before.  The language, in both structure
and vocabulary, is so similar to biblical Hebrew it's almost eerie.  I
don't know where you got your information, but I suggest you
double-check it.  Ugaritic has been one of the most useful tools of
the last century for understanding Hebrew, and is "far removed"
neither historically, geographically or linguistically.  If anything, it's
just the opposite.


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"Éist le glór Dé."