Many thanks to Jim Eisenbraun (and Gina Hannah) for sending me a copy of Eisenbruans‘ A Manual of Ugaritic (by Pierre Bordreuil and Dennis Pardee) to review.

Anyone who teaches or studies Ugaritic will want to take a serious look at adding this book to his or her collection of resources. I had high hopes for this book and I was not disappointed.

The manual was first published as Manuel d’Ougaritique in 2004 (by Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner S. A.). This 2009 edition not only provides an English translation, but also incorporates corrections, modifications (of some grammatical presentations and also some text interpretations), and updates to the bibliography. The authors note in the preface that the “most important of the modifications is in the presentation of the verbal system particular to poetry.”

The hardcover book is 355 pages and contains three parts: A grammar (82 pages), a selection of texts, and a glossary (165 pages). The book includes a CD. After using the material for a while, I think I would promote this as a CD accompanied by a hardcopy book! The CD has the entire book in PDF format, full-color photos of all the texts in the book and hand-copies of all the texts. The PDFs are hyperlinked so that it is easy to move from text, to hand-drawn plate, to color photograph very easily. I quickly found myself preferring the electronic version. I am able to easily search the contents to find specific information, can print out pages for marking up translation practice, and can enlarge the photographs up to 600% before losing definition. Some of the texts can be found online at Inscriptifact in better resolution, but the ease of access and the hyperlinked connections to the other material in the book make the digital material of this manual hard to beat.

The first part of the book begins with an introduction (20 pages) to the history and culture of Ugarit and the discovery of the cuneiform tablets. Topics in this section include: geography, decipherment of the alphabetic cuneiform writing system, languages in use at Ugarit, archives of Ugarit, history of the kingdom, descriptions of texts found at Ras Shamra, and an overview of the Ugaritic language.

The grammar section of the book is organized into 8 categories:

• Writing System
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Derivational Processes
• Compounding
• Syntax
• Vocabulary/Lexicon
• Particularities of Poetic Texts

Features of the grammar are illustrated with numerous examples (often from the texts presented later in the manual). This is not a typical language “textbook” per se, in that it does not have lessons or explicit exercises. Nevertheless, it would make a fine text for a Ugaritic course.

The brevity of grammar presentation is consistent with the intent that this manual is a rudimentary introduction and not meant to be a comprehensive reference of Ugaritic grammar. The authors suggest that those who desire to become more proficient should expand their knowledge in three principal ways:

1. immerse themselves in the study of the Ugaritic texts;
2. consult a wide variety of secondary sources, some of which are indicated in the list of works cited;
3. learn at least one other Semitic language, preferably a language for which the (or a) vocalization is known, such as Arabic, Aramaic, or Hebrew.

This, of course, is the best way to develop skill and proficiency in any ancient language. Namely, by reading as many texts as possible in that language.

One great strength of this book is the diversity of literary genre for the texts selected for inclusion: Mythological Texts, Ritual Texts, Incantations, “Scientific” Texts, Letters, Legal Texts, Administrative Texts, and Abecedaries. A total of 55 texts are presented. All but the abecedaries have a transcription of the cuneiform signs into Roman characters, an English translation, a vocalized text, and notes (which explain epigraphic difficulties, and aid the reader in the analysis of a word, a formula, or a text). Each of the 55 texts appears in the textbook as a hand drawn facsimile of the tablet and on the CD in both the hand-drawn form and as a color photograph. The photographs for the book are all new (with one exception) and greatly add to the pedagogical value of the book. In fact, the ability to reference the photographs and facsimiles of each text makes it more likely for students and teachers to incorporate learning and using the cuneiforms, rather than relying on transcriptions. This is a significant advantage that other Ugaritic manuals/grammars/textbooks are missing (e.g., Sivan’s A Grammar of the Ugaritic Language).

The glossary includes all attestations of each word in the selected texts (except for the conjunction w). The glossary is organized by root, but nominal forms, which begin with a consonant other than the initial consonant of the root, are given a cross-reference entry. The order utilized follows the sequence of the Ugaritic alphabet (as found in several abecedaries). I found the 165-page glossary easy to navigate and useful in the information included. Again, with the ability to search the PDF version, it was even quicker to find entries.

Thoughts
I’ve mentioned several times that I like having the hyperlinks in the PDF of this manual. However, I wish that the publishers had taken this opportunity to go one step further with the hyperlinks. This manual would be even more useful if all the attestations in the glossary had hyperlinks to the text (and from the word in the text to the glossary). This would allow a reader to quickly move not only from text to photograph/plate but also directly to the glossary and then to another attestation of the same word in another context.

The Introduction could have benefitted from maps and photographs of the archeological site. I know these materials are available elsewhere, but it would have been helpful (for a classroom, for instance) to have them accessible from the PDF version.

Not everyone will agree with all the decisions on describing the Ugaritic grammar. This is to be expected. However, Bordreuil and Pardee are well-qualified (and respected) in their field and anyone who is serious about studying Ugaritic would do well to give attention to their presentation. Even if you do not agree, you will surely need to understand their position in order to be part of the ongoing scholarly conversation.

I wonder how the PDF of this manual would work on an iPad or other eReader? I am very interested to see how publishers are moving forward to take advantage of new technologies. One additional benefit of having the PDF version, is that (if you have a full version of Acrobat, and not just the Reader) you can insert your own comments and notes into the text. Of course, you would have to do a “save as” onto your hard drive in order to save user comments and markup.

Eisenbrauns has taken a risk in providing the PDF of the entire manual on the CD. Pirating of such electronic versions of books is, unfortunately, becoming too common and threatens to force publishers to protect their products in ways that remove some of the benefits of the electronic versions. The Manual of Ugaritic is listed at $69.50 (but is currently for sale with a 10% discount at Eisenbrauns ) and I think it is a very reasonable cost for the resource (especially compared to some other Ugaritic resources). I encourage readers to honor this trust that the publisher has given its readers and not illegally share the document. I applaud Eisenbrauns for making the Ugaritic manual so useful by being generous in including the photographs, plates, and entire book in electronic hyptertexted format. Please take the time to report any misuse to the publisher. This is the only way we will be able to continue to receive such helpful resources.

Bottom line: Do you study Ugaritic? Buy the book!

If you need a bookmark for this text, you can download my Ugaritic Transliteration Bookmark!

This is the publisher blurb:

Until recently, biblical studies and studies of the written and material culture of the ancient Near East have been fragmented, governed by experts who are confined within their individual disciplines’ methodological frameworks and patterns of thinking. The consequence has been that, at present, concepts and the terminology for examining the interaction of textual and historical complexes are lacking.

However, we can learn from the cognitives sciences. Until the end of the 1980s, neurophysiologists, psychologists, pediatricians, and linguists worked in complete isolation from one another on various aspects of the human brain. Then, beginning in the 1990s, one group began to focus on processes in the brain, thereby requiring that cell biologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, linguists, and other relevant scientists collaborate with each other. Their investigation revealed that the brain integrates all kinds of information; if this were not the case, we would not be able to catch even a glimpse of the brain’s processing activity.

By analogy, van Wolde’s proposal for biblical scholarship is to extend its examination of single elements by studying the integrative structures that emerge out of the interconnectivity of the parts. This analysis is based on detailed studies of specific relationships among data of diverse origins, using language as the essential device that links and permits expression. This method can be called a cognitive relational approach.

Van Wolde bases her work on cognitive concepts developed by Ronald Langacker. With these concepts, biblical scholars will be able to study emergent cognitive structures that issue from biblical words and texts in interaction with historical complexes. Van Wolde presents a method of analysis that biblical scholars can follow to investigate interactions among words and texts in the Hebrew Bible, material and nonmaterial culture, and comparative textual and historical contexts. In a significant portion of the book, she then exemplifies this method of analysis by applying it to controversial concepts and passages in the Hebrew Bible (the crescent moon; the in-law family; the city gate; differentiation and separation; Genesis 1, 34; Leviticus 18, 20; Numbers 5, 35; Deuteronomy 21; and Ezekiel 18, 22, 33).

Read the post here.

First, I wonder about how much Western/Anglo culture affects international translation efforts when the tools for translation are in English and generated (for the most part) by the Western Church. Is a layer of interpretation inserted between the Ancient Hebrew text and the target/receptor language and text? I think that sometimes (not always) we tend to miss just how “foreign” our own English translations are from the original text. I think most people would agree that the best situation is generating a translation from the Hebrew directly into the target language, but this is rarely the case (for lots of different reasons). What best practices will help to appropriately use the current tools, and what is the way forward?

Second, I am surprised by the ability (of some) to accept the need for accommodation to communicate the ancient text (i.e. the Hebrew Bible) into a tribal or remote language so that it is contextually appropriate and understandable, and yet have resistance to allowing modern English translations to likewise reflect their current culture in a meaningful way. Is there a blindspot to our own situated-ness?

Well, when we were in seminary, my husband* and I (and a few of our friends, whose names I have kept anonymous for their own protection…unless they want to claim their brilliance in the comments below) had some late nights studying such material which yielded the following list. We hope you won’t find them too Deuteronomiculous.

Deuteronomania: an obsession with finding deuteronomical historical references.
Deuteronomonopoeia: all the references to �Babel� in the Old Testament
Deuteronomaly: a deuteronomomic reference that just shouldn�t be there
Deuteronomalicious: the attitude of opponents of the theory of deuteronomical history
Deuteronomono! What Saul yelled as he lept onto his own sword.
Deuterognome: little idol statues found on Israelite front lawns.
Deuterognostic: a pre-pre-pre-Christian cult; responsible for every lie in The Da Vinci Code.
Deuteronomocalifragilisticexpialidocious: If you say it loud enough, you might seem precocious!
Deuteronomalignant: that sick feeling you have the day after your OT exam when you realize you left the most obvious points about DH off your exam essay.
Deuteronomaniac: a DH geek.
Deuteronomesticated: the condition of a former Deuteronomaniac who has just lost interest, to the extent that he no longer sends daily emails to his friends with the subject line: �Those Crazy Redactors, Look What They�re Up to Now!�
Deuteronomolicious! That tasty sensation of being done forever with Old Testament History and theology!
Deuteronomasia: making up plays on words based on the word Deuteronomy
DeuteronoMiss: the female redactor of the DH, who is responsible for the intriguing stories, in Judges, of women who put men to shame (Jael/Sisera; Deborah/Barak; Abimelech/that lady with the millstone; Delilah/Samson, etc).
Deuteronomystical: the ecstatic, trancelike state that a person reaches after reading 2,000 pages of OT scholarship in two weeks as preparation for the final.
Deuteronomastication: what the neighbor�s dog did with my OT notes the day after the final.
Deuteronomerchant: someone who makes their living writing and selling books about the DtH.
Deuteronomercenary: the soldier who takes holy war just a little too far.
Deuteronomishizzolist:South side. Holla.
I always try to do unto others as I would have them Deuternomy
Deuteronymy (1) when both authors of a work assume fictitious names (e.g., the secret Gospel of Jannes and Jambres that David Brown has yet to get his hands on) (2) The figure of speech only found in semitic languages where the dual form of one noun stands for another noun associated with it (go figure).
Deuteroewy: accidently stepping in someone else’s business.
Deuteronomiserable: Trying to remember the difference between Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic.
Deuteronomystery: Why couldn’t they have come up with a really different word for one or the other?
Deuteronautic: the lost laws of ship-building believed to be original to the book of Deutoronomy.
Deuteronauticalist: 2 Kings laws of ship-building which forbade off-shore sacrifices, laying the basis for the later theonomic application to sanctioning riverboat gamblers by execution.
Deuteronaughty: adjective describing one who has broken Deuteronomic law. e.g., �Israel was sent into exile because they had been very Deuteronaughty.�
DeuteronoMac: A brand of theology that used to be available in small, medium and large sizes; now you can only get it in large, Supersize, and Megasupersize (cf. OT reading list)
DeuteronoMac (alternate version): A version of the Deuteronomic Law not as widespread as DeuteronoWindows. It did seem to function better, however, across a wide variety of contextualizations. It was even able to sychronize with the IotaPod during the hellenized 2nd Temple period.
Deuteronomasochist � one who subjects himself to reading hundreds of pages of painful OT theology
Deuteronosadist � one who requires said theology for reading
Deuteronomonastic -someone who spends so much time studying DH that he might as well live in a cave somewhere
Deuteronomnemonic: a cognitive tool for memorizing obscure deutoronomic facts based on catchy word play

*Many thanks to my husband, Mark Traphagen, who blogs at The League of Inveterate Poets for letting me post this silliness here.

Now, on to an annotated photojournal of how we built several garden beds this week.

We started off with a semi-level area of the yard that gets good sunlight. I dug in a frame of cinder blocks that would be 3 ft by 10 ft. We chose cinder blocks so that we could reposition or enlarge the garden bed in the future with less difficulty.

Here is the completed frame. Eventually it will be painted (by the kids).

The soil in our yard is almost completely composed of highly compacted clay.

Here I’ve turned the soil. Before the topsoil is added, I will remove the sod and clay clomps.

It’s a small garden to start off with. Just 30 square feet. But we plan to maximize every bit of it. The holes in the cinder blocks will be filled with soil and will house small annuals, herbs, and trailing greens.

My favorite garden purchase: a pair of boots. Absolutely necessary for working in the muck.

We ordered three cubic yards of garden mix topsoil (has a blend of topsoil, sand, mulch, compost). After working with clay for days, this stuff is black gold.

We were expecting rain, so there was not a moment to lose. I was watching Ruby, so into the baby carrier she went so that I could continue to work in the garden.

Here I am shoveling the topsoil (which was dumped in the front yard) into containers to transport to the backyard garden area. The wheelbarrow was inoperable because its front tire had come completely off its rim. I’m shoveling into the yard waste bin which has wheels. Once I wheel a load to the garden, I topple it over, lift one end and dump out the topsoil.

Ruby cheers me on.

Do not be deceived by that wheelbarrow in the photo. This was taken before I tried to use it and realized it was not functional.

Still shoveling. I ended up moving every last cubic inch of that topsoil (a total of 139,968 cubic inches).

Maggie and Ethan helped by filling in the cinder block holes with topsoil.

On Saturday morning, Sarah and I went to the Durham Farmers Market and purchased the plants. Unfortunately, I did not take my camera along.

Here we are back at the garden bed. Maggie and Ethan are planting some flowering annuals and small spreading green plants into the holes.

Sarah helps the kids make sure the plants are put in properly.

After we lost our second tree on the property in a month, we had quite a few log cuttings around the place. I put some to good use by using them to hold in another bed on the side of the house. This will only be temporary since the wood will surely be a taste temptation to insects. Next year we’ll look to replace the wood with stones. But I like how it looks. This is a shady bed. I’ve put in a bleeding heart bush, some columbine, and a bit of coral bells. Still deciding on the rest of the inhabitants for this garden bed.

Ethan and Maggie fill the holes that Sarah has made for the sugar snap peas.

Here we are continuing to plant.

We’re putting in 4 varieties of tomatoes. Sarah’s favorite is a cherry-size called Sungold. They are a delicious yellow tomato.

Watering the new plants (and giving them a boost of fertilizer). In addition to the tomatoes, we’ve got 3 kinds of lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, a zucchini, broccoli and the sugar snaps.

Here’s the bleeding heart I put in.

This is the start of my kirimahu. We found a gorgeous jasmine at the Farmers Market and I placed it at our mailbox.� I also put in some lavender and a few low growing plants for variety at the front. My favorite garden in the yard will be in the back woods. I have already acquired a beautiful little trillium (grown from seed… not taken from a natural area!) and some lilies of the valley.

Eventually, this will be rimmed with some stones.

Ethan asked me to take this picture of him… so his Aunt Hannah could see him.

We’re looking forward to seeing how this garden grows. We hope to add more beds next year. We also plan to buy produce at the local farms and the Farmers Market so that we can freeze or preserve some of the good foods grown around here.