A historical relationship has long been suspected between the Northwest Semitic existential particles like Biblical Hebrew יֵשׁ and Biblical Aramaic אִיתַי , negative existentials like Syriac layt ... Show moreA historical relationship has long been suspected between the Northwest Semitic existential particles like Biblical Hebrew יֵשׁ and Biblical Aramaic אִיתַי , negative existentials like Syriac layt and Akkadian laššu, the Arabic negative copula laysa, and the East Semitic verbs i-ša-wu “to exist” (Eblaite) and išû “to have” (Akkadian). But due to various formal and semantic problems, no Proto-Semitic reconstruction from which all these words can regularly be derived has yet been put forward. This article argues that the Akkadian sense of “to have” is typologically the oldest and reconstructs a Proto-Semitic grammaticalization of *yiyθaw “it has” to *yθaw “there is/are”. Also in Proto-Semitic, a negative counterpart was formed through contraction with the negative adverb “not”, yielding *layθaw and *laθθaw. Show less
After World War I, Iraq was established as an Arab kingdom under British tutelage. The official state ideology of Arab nationalism provided room for Christians and Jews, and Iraq’s first king was... Show moreAfter World War I, Iraq was established as an Arab kingdom under British tutelage. The official state ideology of Arab nationalism provided room for Christians and Jews, and Iraq’s first king was known for his tolerant rhetoric towards non-Muslims. At the same time, events such as the Simele massacre of 1933 against Assyrians and the Farhud of 1941 against Jews show that the ideal did not always materialize. Despite having a shared religious heritage and Classical Syriac as a common ecclesial language, the Syriac Christians belonged to different denominations and there were large differences in languages that were used outside the church, causing different attitudes towards society. One group, mainly consisting of Chaldean Catholics, made a radical positive choice for Arabic and supported Arab nationalism. Another group, mainly connected to the Church of the East, saw themselves as Assyrian and stressed their use of Neo-Aramaic for informal and formal purposes. Other positions included that of secular Christians who stressed their Arab identity and argued against the influence of religion in society. The dissertation shows that while Arab nationalism provided room for Christians, this ideology was at the same time strongly restrictive for Christians who sought to stress their own culture. Show less
For nearly a thousand years, the texts of the Hebrew Bible were transmitted both in writing, as consonantal texts lacking much of the information on their pronunciation, and orally, as an... Show moreFor nearly a thousand years, the texts of the Hebrew Bible were transmitted both in writing, as consonantal texts lacking much of the information on their pronunciation, and orally, as an accompanying reading tradition which supplied this information. During this period of oral transmission, sound changes affected the reading tradition. This paper identifies a number of sound changes that took place in the reading tradition by comparing their effects on Biblical Hebrew to those on Biblical Aramaic, the related but distinct language of a small part of the biblical corpus: sound changes that affect both languages equally probably took place in the reading tradition, while those that are limited to one language probably preceded this shared oral transmission. Drawing this distinction allows us to reconstruct the pronunciation of Biblical Aramaic as it was fixed in the reading tradition, highlighting several morphological discrepancies between the dialect underlying it and that of the consonantal texts. Show less
This group of inscriptions was found at several sites southwest of Taymāʾ, on the way to Al-ʿUlā. They were discovered by Dr Bader al-Faqayr, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography,... Show moreThis group of inscriptions was found at several sites southwest of Taymāʾ, on the way to Al-ʿUlā. They were discovered by Dr Bader al-Faqayr, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts, King Saud University during his geographical survey of the province, in the spring of 2008. The study of these fifteen inscriptions provides twenty-three personal names; four of them occur for the first time in Nabataean inscriptions. They provided us with thirteen lexical items, two of which are attested for the second time in Nabataean inscriptions: gʾyʾ ‘the tailor’ and yhwdyʾ ‘the Jew’. Show less
This article presents four new Nabataean inscriptions from Umm el-Jimāl in north-eastern Jordan. The first text, which is dedicatory, is dated to year fifty-five of the Roman Province of Arabia, ad... Show moreThis article presents four new Nabataean inscriptions from Umm el-Jimāl in north-eastern Jordan. The first text, which is dedicatory, is dated to year fifty-five of the Roman Province of Arabia, ad 161. The second one mentions the dedication of a mqrtʾ ‘hollow basin’, a word that is not at- tested previously in the Nabataean inscriptions. The remaining two texts are tombstones whose shape and contents are similar to the previously published tombstones from the Ḥawrān region. Show less
This paper deals with a new unpublished Nabataean inscription found in al-ʿAdnāniyah town, which is located to the north of Muʾtah in the Governorate of Karak in southern Jordan. The inscription... Show moreThis paper deals with a new unpublished Nabataean inscription found in al-ʿAdnāniyah town, which is located to the north of Muʾtah in the Governorate of Karak in southern Jordan. The inscription represents a new addition to the corpus of Nabataean inscriptions from the Moab Plateau. The text, which is dated to the 29th year of Aretas IV, mentions the construction of rbʿyʾ, a term that has not been attested previously in Nabataean. Show less
This doctoral dissertation consists of a linguistic study of the Aramaic of Targum Jonathan. Targum Jonathan (and its twin Targum Onqelos) is a paraphrastic translation of the Hebrew Bible into... Show moreThis doctoral dissertation consists of a linguistic study of the Aramaic of Targum Jonathan. Targum Jonathan (and its twin Targum Onqelos) is a paraphrastic translation of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic. Although it is usually recognized that it reached its final shape in Babylonia in the early centuries of our era, nowadays it is generally assumed that it was originally composed on Palestinian soil and found its way to Babylonia at a later stage. The question of its exact origin, however, has never been conclusively answered. Taking the Books of Samuel as a basis, this doctoral dissertation investigates five points of the syntax of the Aramaic of Targum Jonathan (determination, viz. the uses of the absolute and emphatic states; morphosyntax of the numerals; distribution of the genitive constructions; the verbal system and word order). The findings of this study are then systematically compared to what is known at present of the syntax of other pre-modern Aramaic idioms, in an attempt to classify the Aramaic of Targum Jonathan along dialectological lines and shed additional light on its provenance. Show less
