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Languages from the World
of the Bible

Languages from the World
of the Bible
edited by
Holger Gzella
De Gruyter
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make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be
found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org
An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra-
ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to
make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be
found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org
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e-ISBN 978-1-934078-63-1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliogra-
Languages from the world of the Bible / edited by Holger Gzella.
fie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über
  p. cm.
http :/I/ndcnlbu.ddensb b.dibel aiobgrruafbpahri.cal references and index.
 ISBN 978-1-934078-61-7 (alk. paper)
©IS B2 N01 19. 67M 8W-ia3dl-dt1el1er- 0dE2ea1 sG8ter0ur8ny-t 4perh GilomlbogHy, .B e2rl.i nS/eBmoisttioc nphilology. 3. Middle East—Languages—
De-rIuSGcBkrN au m(nPdmD BFa)ir n,9 dC7u8on-m3g-:p1 Da1-ru0act2ki1v &8e0 .C 9o-.41,.  OMrtsidndalme eEastern literature—Relation to the Old
♾e-I GSTBeedNstr au(EmcPkeUtn Batu).  9f s75ä8.u -3Mre-1fird1e-d0iel2em1 E8 Pa0as6pt-ei2renr literature—Relation to the New Testament. 6. Bible.
PISrSinONte .0Td1. —7in9C -G0rei9tr8imc6iasnmy, interpretation, etc. 7. Bible. N.T. — Criticism, interpretation, etc. 
e-ISIS. NG 0z1e7ll9a-,3 H25o6lger, 1974 –
ww w.PdeJ2g5rLuy3t6e r.c2o0m11
 492—dc23   2011038199
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© 2012 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Boston/Berlin
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
© Original edition „Sprachen aus der Welt des Alten Testaments“ 2009 by WBG
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliogra-
(Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), Darmstadt
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Contents
Preface ............................................................................................................ vii
On Transcription ........................................................................................... xi
Abbreviations ............................................................................................... xv
Introduction .................................................................................................... 1
Holger Gzella
The Alphabet ................................................................................................. 14
Alan Millard
Ugaritic .......................................................................................................... 28
Agustinus Gianto
Phoenician ..................................................................................................... 55
Holger Gzella
Ancient Hebrew ........................................................................................... 76
Holger Gzella
The Languages of Transjordan ................................................................. 111
Klaus Beyer
Old and Imperial Aramaic ........................................................................ 128
Margaretha Folmer
Old South Arabian ..................................................................................... 160
Rebecca Hasselbach
Old Persian .................................................................................................. 194
Michiel de Vaan & Alexander Lubotsky
Greek ............................................................................................................ 209
Andreas Willi
West Semitic and Greek letterforms ........................................................ 243
Maps ............................................................................................................. 247
Index ............................................................................................................ 251

Preface
Scholarship increasingly emphasizes the considerable linguistic and cul-
tural diversity of the environment in which the biblical texts originated
over time. Both the neighboring civilizations in the immediate vicinity
of ancient Israel, and the Near Eastern world empires, have contributed
to shaping the biblical world, although in different respects and during
successive periods. Whereas literary and administrative traditions in par-
ticular have undergone many influences from the more remote cultures
of Mesopotamia and Egypt (which are well known even to the point of
exhaustion), the Hebrew language took on its shape and evolved first and
foremost in a matrix of closely related tongues in Syria-Palestine. This
region also maintained early contacts with the Arabian Peninsula, was
incorporated into the Persian Empire, and eventually became part of the
Greco-Roman Near East.
It is, however, the alphabetic script that unites the languages of
Syria-Palestine, Arabia, Persia, and Greece. Their investigation belongs
to various academic fields but often does not surface, at least not at
a regular rate, in university curricula. Among the plethora of current
methods and research interests in biblical exegesis and Ancient Near
Eastern Studies, philology no longer occupies the principal place.
Nonetheless, a thorough knowledge of the primary sources in their
original forms remains the most important point of departure for all
further concerns.
The present volume aims at furnishing concise yet fresh and up- to-
date overviews of the most pertinent varieties of the languages in ques-
tion without merely repeating what has been said elsewhere. It also
addresses their interaction within a clear historical framework while at
the same time maintaining a reasonably sharp focus. Hence it takes a
more technical approach than Kaltner and McKenzie’s Beyond Babel1 but
has a less ambitious scope than Woodard’s Cambridge Encyclopedia of the
1 John Kaltner and Steven McKenzie (eds.), Beyond Babel: A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew
and Related Languages (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
viii Preface
World’s Ancient Languages2 or Kaye’s Phonologies of Asia and Africa and the
same editor’s Morphologies of Asia and Africa published ten years later.3
They all provide useful further reading.
Since this book is an updated and thoroughly revised translation
from the German,4 it shares a number of shortcomings with in the origi-
nal version. It would have been impossible to eliminate them without
causing a significant delay in publication. The cuneiform languages have
been deliberately excluded, because they already feature in a volume of
a similar kind.5 For an excellent modern survey of Akkadian in English,
which some readers will no doubt miss here, one may refer to Hueh-
nergard and Woods, “Akkadian and Eblaite”.6 A brief description spe-
cifically geared toward the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian varieties
of Akkadian, which are of particular importance for the world of the
Hebrew Bible, remains high on the editor’s wish list, though. Likewise,
there is, unfortunately, no treatment of Ancient North Arabian either;
a contribution was requested for the German edition but not received.
The editor’s Introduction, for what it is worth, contains a few general
remarks on this topic and further bibliographic references. Egyptian and
some later varieties of Hebrew and Aramaic (as in the Dead Sea Scrolls)
would make very sensible additions, too, “had we but world enough,
and time.”
The chapters on the Transjordanian languages and on Greek were
translated by Peter T. Daniels; the others by the authors themselves.
Peter Daniels and Gene McGarry also served as copyeditors. As the
contributors belong to three different generations and work in five dif-
ferent countries, their pieces reflect several distinct, though often in-
terrelated, academic traditions and styles. This diversity of notational
conventions, specialized terminology, and organization of the data has
been intentionally preserved, not least because it is so characteristic of
the field as such and its shortage of unifying factors: Semitic philol-
ogy in its present pluralistic form has been shaped throughout the ages
2 Roger D. Woodard (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); reprinted unaltered in a series of re-
gionally organized paperbacks (2008).
3 Alan S. Kaye (ed.), Phonologies of Asia and Africa, 2 vols. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1997); Morphologies of Asia and Africa, 2 vols. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2007).
4 Sprachen aus der Welt des Alten Testaments (1st ed., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch-
gesellschaft, 2009; 2nd ed., 2012).
5 Michael P. Streck (ed.), Sprachen des Alten Orients (1st ed., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftli-
che Buchgesellschaft, 2005; 3rd ed., 2007).
6 John Huehnergard and Christopher Woods, “Akkadian and Eblaite,” in Woodard
(ed.), Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages [n. 2], 218–287.
Preface ix
by the combined efforts of mainly biblical scholars, Arabists, students
of the ancient Near East, and dialectologists; it is thus governed by a
blend of native grammatical traditions, the nineteenth-century teaching
of Greek and Latin, and insights of modern descriptive and historical
linguistics.
I dedicate my own work on this book to the memory of my father.
Holger Gzella
Leiden, September 2011