Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 3/18/07, Rolf Furuli wrote:

> Dear Yitzhak,
>
> My dissertation is not published privately but by Awatu Publishers, Oslo
> Norway (awatu AT online.no), and it is
> distributed by Eisenbrauns. I know that the publisher has sent  exemplars
> for  a peer-review to several scholarly journals. But keeping in mind the
> work-load of a professor and that fact that the book has 516 pages, it may
> take some time for a review to appear. Why not ask your University library
> to buy a copy?

There are several degrees of "private publishing."  One can open up his own
personal private publishing company and publish through them.  Alternatively,
one can go to a publishing company and pay them to publish the book.  The
company is not owned by the person, but all the expenses of publishing are
taken up by him.  In the case of scholarship, one can differentiate scholarly
publishers from the rest ("private").  Here private is more ambiguous and can
even refer to a popular publishing company.  Actually, although I was probably
influenced by the Wikipedia article that said it is privately
published, I really
only originally intended the last, ambiguous degree -- that is, that you had 
not
had your study peer-reviewed.  However, given the above claims, I felt it
necessary to try investigate this little point as much as possible.

From an investigation of relevant websites, it appears that Awatu Publishers
is you.  If so, it is the most explicit type of private publishing there is.

For example, this page, describing Awatu Publishers, lists the address
clearly on the top: http://www.hermesac.no/Awatu_Publishing.pdf
Awatu Publishers
Øvre Smestadvei 47B
0378 Oslo
Norway
It also lists only two books, by you, as published by this publisher.  In 
fact,
if one googles for "Awatu Publishers" there are the only two books that ever
come up! (mostly on this page, and on Eisenbraun's lists)

Now, we can look you up in the phonebook:
http://www.gulesider.no/tk/index.c?drill=firstname%3A%5ERolf%24%7C&offset=0&q=furuli
Rolf Furuli
Øvre Smestadv. 47 B, 0378 Oslo
Rolf Johan Furuli

On a different pdf, we find:
http://www.plan-og-bygningsetaten.oslo.kommune.no/getfile.php/plan-%20og%20bygningsetaten%20(PBE)/Internett%20(PBE)/Dokumenter/Postjournal/Postjournal%20190506.pdf
Dok.dato: 19052006 Grad: U 0 Par.:
Jour.dato: 19052006
I Fra: Rolf Furuli
Sak: Øvre Smestadvei 47B, redskapsbod
Dok: Melding om tiltak - Øvre Smestadvei 47B
Saksansv: PR / PAB2 / SPE Saksbeh: PR / PAB2 / SPE

It is clear that Awatu Publishers then is located at the same address as
you.  They seem to publish only two books, by you.  They have no website.
They have no phone contact.  They only have email and mail.

The Wikipedia article on your name:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rolf_Furuli&diff=prev&oldid=115516357
states that this study has been privately published and this change was
performed by someone in Norway.

To sum up:
1) Awatu Publishers is a Norwegian based publishing company.
2) Someone in Norway went through to the trouble of saying a study of yours
which was published by Awatu Publishers was published privately, implying
that it is your own publishing company.
3) The address of Awatu Publishers matches your address in the phonebook
and another website.
4) Awatu Publishers appears to have published only two books, both of them
by you.
5) Awatu Publishers has no website or independent phone number or address.
6) Awatu's email address and your email address are both at the same
hosting company.

In contrast, you imply that Awatu Publishers is not a private publishing
company of yours and that you know that the publisher has sent exemplars
to several scholarly journals.

I note that the statement that you know that the publisher sent exemplars
etc. is not inconsistent with the contrary claim that you are the publisher.

I am not going to state anything categorical about you, or Awatu, and only
say that list members can draw their own private conclusions.  Like anything
else, it is just evidence.  Each person is entitled to his or her own
interpretation
of that evidence.

In light of the above, there seems little point in discussing the other points
of your mail.

However, the point of 1 Kings 6:38 is not that it signals the end of the
action but that it is pretty clear that it does not signal the beginning of
the action since the beginning of the action did not take place in the
11th year.  Thus, 1 Kings 6:38 is a contrast to 1 Kings 6:1 in that
it shows 1 Kings 6:1 does not show the beginning of the action.  It
also shows us that it is not by contrasting two verses (especially two
with one made up!), that we learn about the meaning of wayyivɛn in
1 Kings 6:1, but by contrasting 1 Kings 6:1 with all other verses.
In fact, since 1 Kings 6:1 was only a pick by choice, it is only by
contrasting all possible pairs that we can try to see what meaning
is conveyed by the verb.  An example of this would be David
Kummerow's point about the distributional semantics of temporal
adverbs and verb forms such as yiqtol or qatal, if that example holds
up.

Regarding my suggested program for study, you said, "This  would be
an interesting study, but most of it is unnecessary in order to find how
many conjugations classical Hebrew has."  How do you know if you
haven't seen the results of such a study?  For example, you yourself in
the above examples mix the typologically later LBH (Chronicles) with
SBH (1 Kings).  How do you know that you can mix them?  These are
problems of methodology and yes, if your study is methodologically
flawed, there may be interest in studying it, but probably not for the
reasons you advocate.

Yitzhak Sapir