26 Theological librarianship • Vol. 12, No. 1 april 2019

Both Huehnergard’s Introduction and Bordreuil and Pardee’s Manual offer excellent introductions to the Ugaritic language.15 The strength of Huehnergard’s text is his mastery of comparative linguistics, which is very important for a language as poorly preserved as Ugaritic. Bordreuil and Pardee’s contribution is a presentation of the language with cuneiform script used at Ugarit (which is absent in Huehnergard’s book). Pardee and Bordreuil are masters of Northwest Semitic philology, and this manual is a necessary tool for all students of the language.

The standard Ugaritic lexicon is Del Olmo Lete’s dictionary, a thorough treatment of the language.16 It provides detailed linguistic comparison, as well as references to the few Ugaritic words that appear in Mesopotamian cuneiform.17 Though it is expensive, no other works are as helpful. Older resources cannot be recommended because the state of knowledge of Ugaritic has changed so quickly in the last thirty years. The grammars and handbooks of Cyrus Gordon, Daniel Sivan, and Stanislov Segret should be used primarily for studying the history of scholarship and not as authoritative reference works. Unfortunately, Schniedewind and Hunt is not reliable for students because of its frequent mistakes and out-of-date bibliography.18

Aramaic

Aramaic is second in importance only to Hebrew for studying the Old Testament. Much of Daniel and parts of Ezra are written in Aramaic, but Aramaic is important in other respects. Aramaic was a dominant language for commerce in the ancient Near East as well as the lingua franca of the Persian and Neo-Assyrian Empires. Moreover, it was the language used by the author of Genesis when Laban names the place where he made a covenant with Jacob (Gen. 31:47). In addition, some of the earliest translations and scholarly treatments of the Bible are in Aramaic (and Syriac). Aramaic has a long, complicated history that touches many disciplines, yet is rarely considered to be its own discipline. Gzella’s Cultural History does a great job of providing a summary of Aramaic in its different stages and parts.19

The best reference grammar for Biblical Aramaic is still Bauer and Leander’s Grammatik des Biblisch-Aramäischen. It is thorough, well organized, and historically oriented.20 Two reliable pedagogical grammars are the works of Rosenthal and Johns.21 Both grammars focus on Biblical Aramaic and assume a prior knowledge of Biblical Hebrew. Other more recent teaching grammars include those by Muraoka and Qimron.22

15 John Huehnergard, An Introduction to Ugaritic (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, 2012); Pierre Bordreuil and Dennis Pardee, A Manual of Ugaritic, [English ed.]. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009).

16 Gregorio Del Olmo Lete and Joaquín Sanmartín, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 2 nd rev. ed., trans. W.G.E. Watson, Handbook of Oriental Studies 67 (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

17 A full study of these syllabic spellings for Ugaritic can be found in John Huehnergard, Ugaritic Vocabulary in Syllabic Transcription, Revised, Harvard Semitic Studies 32 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008). The revised edition has a thoroughly updated appendix where Huehnergard has updated the research as well as corrected earlier mistakes in the work.

18 William M. Schniedewind and Joel H. Hunt, A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture, and Literature (New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007); Cyrus Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook: Grammar, Texts in Transliteration, Cuneiform Selections, Glossary, Indices (Analecta Orientalia 38. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1967); Stanislav Segert, A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language: With Selected Texts and Glossary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Daniel Sivan, A Grammar of the Ugaritic Language (Leiden: Brill, 2001).

19 Holger Gzella, A Cultural History of Aramaic: From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam (Boston: Brill, 2015).

20 Hans Bauer and Pontus Leander, Grammatik Des Biblisch-Aramäischen (Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1927).

21 Franz Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, 7 th ed., Porta Linguarum Orientalium 5 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2006); Alger F. Johns, A Short Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, Revised edition (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 1972).

22 Takamitsu Muraoka, A Biblical Aramaic Reader: With an Outline Grammar (Leuven; Paris: Peeters, 2015); Elisha Qimron, Biblical Aramaic (Jerusalem: Mosad Biali ḳ, 2002).