Several decades ago canonical criticism came to dominate the study of the canon and even indeed all of biblical studies by its emphasis on the biblical canon's dogmatic content. An investigation of this canonical criticism brings its weak points to light: most notably the insufficient attention that is given to the canon's historical development. This new historical study begins with the earliest stages of the process of forming the canon rather than its final stages as most studies do. It shows how the canon, in essence, was already formed in the early stages of its historical development....

In this study, the war stories from the Old Testament book of "Kings" are compared to ten extrabiblical texts. Narratological analysis is applied to deconstruct the ideology of the respective literary compositions. The Old Testament ideology of war seems to be neither typically Israelite, as Gerhardt von Rad put it, nor commonly Ancient Near Eastern, as Manfred Weippert thought it to be. This poses the question whether the reading experience of biblical war stories is so very different from, for instance, Assyrian royal inscriptions, both in terms of its literary value and its ideological...

Since the Book of Chronicles is increasingly studied on its own, and not as a copy of 1-2 Samuel and 1-2, this study treats the various aspects and themes of this rich document. It provides an analysis of specific texts and topics uncovering the Chronicler's permanent creativity to transform Israel's tradition(s) into a new theological and ideological system of its own.

This study presents a thematic investigation of Ibn Daud's philosophical treatise ha-Emunah ha-Ramah The Exalted Faith]. It examines the question whether current interpretation is correct in assuming that the thesis is primarily concerned with working out a synthesis between philosophy and religion, or whether, as Ibn Daud indicates at te beginning of the book, it is basically concerned with the problem of free will. In order to answer this question the author examines the structure of Ibn Daud's philosophical work by analysing its topics and their interrelation, and by paying...

Since the study of M. Lambert about the niph'al in 1990, hardly anything new has been published on this verbal stem. This study offers a new approach of the niph'al in Biblical Hebrew. It is studied in relation to the other passive-reflexive verbals stems. The book also presents an overview of all verbal roots of which niph'al forms occur.

The present study investigates the function of the verbal forms in biblical Hebrew narrative, using the Joseph story (Gen. 37-50) as a corpus. It demonstrates how the 'tense', 'aspect' and 'sequentiality' function as factors in the choice of the verbal forms in both main clauses and subordinate clauses. The tense distinction past vs. non-past basically works as a factor in the choice of the freestanding conjugations, except for the stative verb, the verb with a stative sense, the passive construction, or the performative utterance. Moreover, the traditional aspectual opposition complete vs....

This book offers an account of the role of gemination as a grammatical and lexical feature of Akkadian and a comprehensive treatment of the nominal and verbal categories that are characterized by it. It argues that gemination is basically an iconic phenomenon: its presence correlates with an extension in the meaning of the word vis-a-vis that of the corresponding word without gemination. This semantic extension is often realized as plurality; in other cases gemination has been subject to a process of grammaticalization, through which it has acquired a more abstract function, mostly that of...

This book presents a comprehensive discussion of three famous poems which are studied as works of art. A full description of their prosodic regularity, as well as the variations on it, is given, and goes hand in hand with a detailed structural analysis of the lower and higher textual units. Great care is taken to find the correct delimitation of cola (half-verses), verses, strophes and stanzas, and, in the case of Deut.32, of its four big sections, after which all things fall into place. The articulation of the higher units underpins the discursive or argumentative structure of Deut.32 and...