Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Dave:

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 6:53 PM, <dwashbur AT nyx.net> wrote:

>
> Actually, the biggest problem with the word for "worship" that this guy is
> talking about has
> always been the infixed shin and tau, but the very same word in the same
> root appears with
> the same meaning in Ugaritic, which would seem to show that there's another
> root XWH that
> appears in this "hishtaph`el" stem with the meaning "bow down" etc.  See
> e.g. Holladay's
> lexicon and most of the literature on Ugaritic.
>
> Dave Washburn
>
> One question for me is, were $XH and $XX separate words in Biblical Hebrew?
Both refer to the same physical action. One is listed in the hitpael, the
other in other binyanim.

As for Ugaritic, the date of its writing vary by up to six centuries
depending on which historian you ask, but the biggest issue is that it is a
cognate language. One of the signs of cognate languages is that though
similar, they are different: different grammar, similar sounding vocabulary
can have very different meanings, and so forth. There is no evidence in
Hebrew of this “histaph’el” stem, making this Ugaritic evidence moot.

Karl W. Randolph.