DOCSLIB.ORG

Arabic in Context Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Arabic in Context Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics Arabic in Context Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics Editorial Board A.D. Rubin and Ahmad Al-Jallad volume 89 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ssl Arabic in Context Celebrating 400 Years of Arabic at Leiden University Edited by Ahmad Al-Jallad leiden | boston Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jallad, Ahmad, 1985- editor. Title: Arabic in context : celebrating 400 years of Arabic at Leiden University / edited by Ahmad Al-Jallad, Leiden University. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: Studies in Semitic languages and linguistics ; volume 89 | Papers presented at a colloquium held in November 2013 in Leiden on the theme of "Arabic in Context," organised on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Leiden's chair in Arabic. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2017009364 (print) | lccn 2017016711 (ebook) | isbn 9789004343047 (E-book) | isbn 9789004343030 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: Arabic language–History–Congresses. | Arabic language–Congresses. Classification: lcc pj6075 (ebook) | lcc pj6075 .a725 2017 (print) | ddc 492.709–dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009364 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0081-8461 isbn 978-90-04-34303-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34304-7 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Foreword vii Preface x List of Figures xiv List of Abbreviations in Linguistic Glosses and Paradigms xv List of Contributors xvi What is Arabic? 1 Arabic in Its Semitic Context 3 John Huehnergard 2 How Conservative and How Innovating is Arabic? 35 Andrzej Zaborski Arabic in Its Epigraphic Context 3 The ʿAyn ʿAbada Inscription Thirty Years Later: A Reassessment 53 Manfred Kropp 4 Aramaic or Arabic? The Nabataeo-Arabic Script and the Language of the Inscriptions Written in This Script 75 Laïla Nehmé 5 Graeco-Arabica I: The Southern Levant 99 Ahmad Al-Jallad Classical Arabic in Context 6 Traces of South Arabian Causative-Reflexive Verbal Stem in Arabic Lexicon? 189 Daniele Mascitelli 7 Arabic allaḏī / illi as Subordinators: An Alternative Perspective 212 Lutz Edzard vi contents 8 Raphelengius and the Yellow Cow (Q 2:69): Early Translations of Hebrew ˀādōm into Arabic ˀaṣfar 227 Jordi Ferrer i Serra 9 Terminative-Adverbial and Locative-Adverbial Endings in Semitic Languages: A Reassessment and Its Implications for Arabic 271 Francesco Grande 10 On the Middle Iranian Borrowings in Qurʾānic (and Pre-Islamic) Arabic 317 Johnny Cheung Qurʾānic Arabic in Context 11 Traces of Bilingualism/Multilingualism in Qurʾānic Arabic 337 Guillaume Dye 12 A Syriac Reading of the Qurʾān? The Case of Sūrat al-Kawṯar 372 Martin F.J. Baasten Middle and Modern Arabic in Context 13 Orthography and Reading in Medieval Judaeo-Arabic 395 Geoffrey Khan 14 Linguistic History and the History of Arabic: A Speech Communities Approach 405 Alexander Magidow 15 Digging Up Archaic Features: “Neo-Arabic” and Comparative Semitic in the Quest for Proto Arabic 441 Naʿama Pat-El 16 The Arabic Strata in Awjila Berber 476 Marijn van Putten and Adam Benkato Index of Qurʾānic Verses 503 Index of Languages and Subjects 504 Foreword “As far as my knowledge extends, no other people is known to have expended so much toil, effort and industry on refining their language.” So wrote Thomas Erpenius (1584–1624), the professor of Arabic at Leiden University, in his inau- gural lecture, ‘On the excellence and dignity of the Arabic language,’ delivered in Leiden on 8 May 1613.1 It is to the efforts of mediaeval Arab scholars in gram- mar, lexicography and linguistics that Erpenius refers here, continuing by stat- ing that, “An almost countless number of their most distinguished men have written grammar books and diverse grammatical tracts, some of which are in verse and others in prose.”2 Erpenius himself would go on to make Herculean contributions to the study of Arabic in Europe and therefore forms a perfect connection between the theme of this volume and the occasion of the meet- ing that gave rise to it. The studies presented here represent papers delivered at a colloquium held in November 2013 in Leiden on the theme of “Arabic in Context,” organised on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Leiden’s chair in Arabic. Bringing together Arabicists, Semiticists, historians, epigraphists and papyrologists, the conference focused on Arabic in its earliest stages. Connecting the study of the history of Arabic to the long and varied Leiden tradition of scholarship on the subject was timely, but the conference’s approach to the topic provided even more relevant linkages. In his lecture Erpenius emphasises that all students, medical doctors, geog- raphers and scientists would do well to learn Arabic in order to be able to read the books of the ancient Greeks and Romans only preserved in their Arabic translations. The Arab achievement in prose and, especially, poetry provide another reason. Most importantly therefore, he adds, scholars and students will, through Arabic, have access to the texts produced in a language which has “more important books on any sort of knowledge than can ever be found any- where else.”3 In his scholarship and teaching, Erpenius offered a similar broad and interdisciplinary perspective on Arabic language and culture. 1 He had been appointed extraordinary professor of Arabic on 9 February 1613 following a joint decision by the university, the city of Leiden and the governors of the United Netherlands Provinces to institute such a post in 1599. For Thomas Erpenius, see further Arnoud Vrolijk and Richard van Leeuwen, Arabic Studies in the Netherlands. A Short History in Portraits, 1580– 1950 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 31–40. 2 Robert Jones (tr.), “Thomas Erpenius (1584–1624) On the Value of the Arabic Language,” Manuscripts of the Middle East 1 (1986), 15–25, 19. 3 Jones, “Thomas Erpenius,” 19. viii foreword Erpenius’s grammar was the first of its kind for a European audience and remained the standard for the next two centuries.4 He made editions of his- torical and grammatical treatises, translated a collection of Arabic proverbs and fables, and also produced a scholarly edition with Latin translations of a Quranic chapter and an Arabic edition of the New Testament. Meanwhile, he planned to produce an historical account of the Muslims, a geographical study, and a linguistic and literary-cultural history of the Arabic language. Appointed professor of Hebrew and other Semitic languages in 1620, he expanded his domain by compiling grammars of Aramaic and Syriac, having planned a gram- mar of Ethiopic as well. At the university he emphasised the importance of studying Turkish next to Arabic to gain a better understanding of the Arabic- speaking world which at his time was mostly under Ottoman rule. Such extraordinary breadth in disciplinary mastery and scholarly energy can hardly be matched by single scholars today. It is, however, the approach to the Arabic-speaking world and the Arabic language through its various cultural and linguistic dimensions that has been the guiding principle at Leiden University ever since. Indeed, it is through communal scholarly effort, academic meetings and joint projects that such multidisciplinary methodology can be realised. Contextualizing Arabic studies within different disciplines—Semitics, epigra- phy, papyrology, dialectology, history and archeology—the conference “Arabic in Context” and the volume that resulted from it show what can be achieved in this way. Two trends can be observed in the field, one methodological, the other chronological, and the essays presented here offer original insights and in many cases new primary material to address them. Documentary sources in the form of inscriptions, papyrus documents, archaeology and material finds give us a fresh view on the development of the Arabic language and script beyond reconstructions of internal developments and theoretical treatises. Incorporating linguistic domains that are not generally studied in conjunction with Arabic offers another “outsider” look. Through the inspired contributions of a growing group of scholars, it is now clear that Arabia has much more in the way of textual resources than was ever expected, making it one of the most literate environments of antiquity. The history of the Arabic language and script, it is now evident, long pre-dates the rise of Islam, with which the language is most obviously connected. This offers interesting perspectives on the way in which religion, ethnicity, language, script, and politics coincided in this region in antiquity. It also shows that 4 Grammatica Arabica, Leiden 1613. foreword ix the appearance of Islam in seventh-century Arabia, while obviously having important long-term effects also for the development of Arabic, should not necessarily be considered a sudden watershed event in the history of the ancient world. This volume shows how fruitful such a long-term view on the history of the Arabic language within its historical and linguistic context is. Ahmad Al-Jallad, the convenor of the conference and editor of this volume should be congratulated on his vision to present the history of the Arabic language in this light.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • “The Overuse of Italian Loanwords in the Daily Speech of Tripoli University Students: the Impact of Gender and Residential Place”
    العدد العشرون تاريخ اﻹصدار: 2 – ُحزيران – 2020 م ISSN: 2663-5798 www.ajsp.net “The Overuse of Italian Loanwords in the Daily Speech of Tripoli University Students: the Impact of Gender and Residential Place” Prepared by Jalal Al Dain Y. Abidah, English Dept., Faculty of Education - Janzour, Tripoli University 19 Arab Journal for Scientific Publishing (AJSP) ISSN: 2663-5798 العدد العشرون تاريخ اﻹصدار: 2 – ُحزيران – 2020 م ISSN: 2663-5798 www.ajsp.net Abstract The study tries to explore the impact of social factors of gender and residential place on the use of Italian loanwords by Libyan university students (using Tripoli University as an example) and how the mentioned social factors affect their daily speech. To answer the questions of the study, a sample of 60 Tripoli university students are selected randomly in the campus (A) of University of Tripoli. They were divided into two groups according to their Gender and residential place. In order to collect data, a questionnaire was developed for this purpose. It generated data regarding the use of 150 Italian loanwords by both groups. The mean of using Italian loanwords in both groups was analyzed and computed using SPSS. However, the study reveals the impact of residential area where Italian loanwords were more incorporated by rural students than urbanites. The results of the study revealed that there was a significant statistical difference at (α≤0.05) among the means of both groups regarding the use of Italian loanwords in daily speech due to residential area. In contrasts, gender emerges as insignificant. Keyword Italian loanwords, Colloquial Arabic, Gender, Libya.
    [Show full text]
  • A Sociolinguistic View of "Hazl" in the Andalusian Arabic "Muwashshaḥ
    A Sociolinguistic View of "hazl" in the Andalusian Arabic "muwashshaḥ" Author(s): David Hanlon Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 60, No. 1 (1997), pp. 35-46 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/620768 Accessed: 31-08-2015 13:05 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press and School of Oriental and African Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 163.10.30.70 on Mon, 31 Aug 2015 13:05:02 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A sociolinguisticview of hazl in the Andalusian Arabic muwashshah DAVID HANLON BirkbeckCollege, London The documented history of the theory of the muwashshah and one of its constituent parts, the kharja, spans almost 800 years: from Ibn Sana' al-Mulk (d. 608/1211) to the present day. Apologists for the various theories broadly belong to one of two schools, which for the sake of convenience I shall label 'integralist' and 'partialist'.
    [Show full text]
  • The Historical Development of the Maltese Plural Suffixes -Iet and -(I)Jiet Having Spent the Last Millennium in Close Contact Wi
    The historical development of the Maltese plural suffixes -iet and -(i)jiet Having spent the last millennium in close contact with several Indo-European languages, Maltese, the modern descendant of Siculo-Arabic (Brincat 2011), possesses various pluralization strategies. In this paper I explore the historical development of two such strategies of Semitic- origin: the suffixes -iet and -(i)jiet (e.g. papa ‘pope’, pl. papiet; omm ‘mother’, pl. ommijiet). Specialists agree that both suffixes originated from the Arabic plural suffix -āt (Borg 1976; Mifsud 1995); however, no research has explained the development of -(i)jiet, nor connected its development to that of -iet. I argue that the development of -(i)jiet was driven by the influx of i- final words which resulted from contact with Italian: Maltese speakers affixed -iet to such words, triggering a glide-epenthesis that occurs elsewhere in Maltese (e.g. Mifsud 1996: 34) and in other varieties of Arabic (e.g. Erwin 1963; Cowell 1964; Owens 1984; Harrell 2004). With a large number of plurals now ending in ijiet, speakers reanalyzed this sequence as a unique plural suffix and began applying it to new non-i-final words as well. Since only Maltese experienced this influx of i-final words, it was only in Maltese that speakers reanalyzed this sequence as a separate suffix. Additionally, I argue against an explanation of the development of -(i)jiet that does not rely on epenthesis. With regard to the suffix -iet, I argue that two properties unique to it – the obligatory omission of stem-final vowels upon pluralization, and the near-universal tendency to pluralize only a-final words – emerged from a separate reanalysis of the pluralization of collective nouns that reflects a general weakening of the Semitic element in Maltese under Indo-European contact.
    [Show full text]
  • Different Dialects of Arabic Language
    e-ISSN : 2347 - 9671, p- ISSN : 2349 - 0187 EPRA International Journal of Economic and Business Review Vol - 3, Issue- 9, September 2015 Inno Space (SJIF) Impact Factor : 4.618(Morocco) ISI Impact Factor : 1.259 (Dubai, UAE) DIFFERENT DIALECTS OF ARABIC LANGUAGE ABSTRACT ifferent dialects of Arabic language have been an Dattraction of students of linguistics. Many studies have 1 Ali Akbar.P been done in this regard. Arabic language is one of the fastest growing languages in the world. It is the mother tongue of 420 million in people 1 Research scholar, across the world. And it is the official language of 23 countries spread Department of Arabic, over Asia and Africa. Arabic has gained the status of world languages Farook College, recognized by the UN. The economic significance of the region where Calicut, Kerala, Arabic is being spoken makes the language more acceptable in the India world political and economical arena. The geopolitical significance of the region and its language cannot be ignored by the economic super powers and political stakeholders. KEY WORDS: Arabic, Dialect, Moroccan, Egyptian, Gulf, Kabael, world economy, super powers INTRODUCTION DISCUSSION The importance of Arabic language has been Within the non-Gulf Arabic varieties, the largest multiplied with the emergence of globalization process in difference is between the non-Egyptian North African the nineties of the last century thank to the oil reservoirs dialects and the others. Moroccan Arabic in particular is in the region, because petrol plays an important role in nearly incomprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Algeria. propelling world economy and politics.
    [Show full text]
  • Classical and Modern Standard Arabic Marijn Van Putten University of Leiden
    Chapter 3 Classical and Modern Standard Arabic Marijn van Putten University of Leiden The highly archaic Classical Arabic language and its modern iteration Modern Standard Arabic must to a large extent be seen as highly artificial archaizing reg- isters that are the High variety of a diglossic situation. The contact phenomena found in Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic are therefore often the re- sult of imposition. Cases of borrowing are significantly rarer, and mainly found in the lexical sphere of the language. 1 Current state and historical development Classical Arabic (CA) is the highly archaic variety of Arabic that, after its cod- ification by the Arab Grammarians around the beginning of the ninth century, becomes the most dominant written register of Arabic. While forms of Middle Arabic, a style somewhat intermediate between CA and spoken dialects, gain some traction in the Middle Ages, CA remains the most important written regis- ter for official, religious and scientific purposes. From the moment of CA’s rise to dominance as a written language, the whole of the Arabic-speaking world can be thought of as having transitioned into a state of diglossia (Ferguson 1959; 1996), where CA takes up the High register and the spoken dialects the Low register.1 Representation in writing of these spoken dia- lects is (almost) completely absent in the written record for much of the Middle Ages. Eventually, CA came to be largely replaced for administrative purposes by Ottoman Turkish, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was function- ally limited to religious domains (Glaß 2011: 836).
    [Show full text]
  • Agreement in Tunisian Arabic and The
    Agreement in Tunisian Arabic and the collective-distributive distinction Myriam Dali and Eric Mathieu The puzzle Like their sound plural (SP) counterparts, the φ-features of broken plurals (BP) subjects in Tunisian Arabic (TA) normally agree with the verb in gender and number but, as seen in (1), they can also fail to agree with the verb. Rjel `men' is masculine plural while the verb is unexpectedly inflected in the feminine singular (in Standard Arabic, this is only possible with non-humans). Is this a case of agreement failure? (1) El rjel xerj-u / xerj-et The man.bp go.outperf-3.masc.pl / go.outperf-3.fem.sg `The men went out.' [Tunisian Arabic] The proposal First, we show that the contrast in (1), gives rise to a semantic alter- nation, as first observed by Zabbal (2002), where masc plur agreement has a distributive interpretation, while fem sing agreement receives a collective interpretation. We build on Zabbal's (2002) insights but re-evaluate them in light of recent developments in the syntax and semantics of plurality and distributivity, and we add relevant data showing that the collective-distributive contrast seen in (1) is not tied to the nature of the predicate. Zabbal makes a distinction between plurals denoting groups (g-plurals) and plurals denot- ing sums (s-plurals). He first argues that the g-plural is associated with N (making it lexical and derivational) while the s-plural is under Num (inflectional). We provide arguments and evidence for his second proposal, briefly introduced towards the end of his thesis, namely that the g-plural is in fact inflectional and thus not under N.
    [Show full text]
  • Arabic and Contact-Induced Change Christopher Lucas, Stefano Manfredi
    Arabic and Contact-Induced Change Christopher Lucas, Stefano Manfredi To cite this version: Christopher Lucas, Stefano Manfredi. Arabic and Contact-Induced Change. 2020. halshs-03094950 HAL Id: halshs-03094950 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03094950 Submitted on 15 Jan 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Arabic and contact-induced change Edited by Christopher Lucas Stefano Manfredi language Contact and Multilingualism 1 science press Contact and Multilingualism Editors: Isabelle Léglise (CNRS SeDyL), Stefano Manfredi (CNRS SeDyL) In this series: 1. Lucas, Christopher & Stefano Manfredi (eds.). Arabic and contact-induced change. Arabic and contact-induced change Edited by Christopher Lucas Stefano Manfredi language science press Lucas, Christopher & Stefano Manfredi (eds.). 2020. Arabic and contact-induced change (Contact and Multilingualism 1). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/235 © 2020, the authors Published under the Creative Commons Attribution
    [Show full text]
  • Syntactic Analysis of the Tunisian Arabic
    Syntactic analysis of the Tunisian Arabic Asma Mekki, Inès Zribi, Mariem Ellouze, Lamia Hadrich Belguith ANLP Research Group, MIRACL Lab., University of Sfax, Tunisia [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract. In this paper, we study the problem of syntactic analysis of Dialectal Arabic (DA). Actually, corpora are considered as an important resource for the automatic processing of languages. Thus, we propose a method of creating a treebank for the Tunisian Arabic (TA) “Tunisian Treebank” in order to adapt an Arabic parser to treat the TA which is considered as a variant of the Arabic lan- guage. Keywords: Dialectal Arabic, Syntactic analysis, Treebank creation, Tunisian Arabic. 1 Introduction Arabic language is a mixture of the Dialectal Arabic (DA) used by the Arabian native speakers and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the official language studied in schools, newspapers, etc. Nowadays, Arabic Dialects (AD) are the most widely used variety of Arabic, which promotes their treatments. However, the dialects mark pho- nological, morphological, syntactic and lexical differences when compared to the MSA. Actually, AD written in social networks, blogs or even some written documents do not follow an orthographic standard, which complicates the fact of having some adequate corpora able to be used for creating linguistic tools for DA. In this paper, we will propose a method for creating a syntactic parser in favor of the Tunisian Arabic. First, we will identify the syntactic differences between the MSA and the TA. Then, we will present an overview of the Arabic syntactic parsers.
    [Show full text]
  • Inflected Article in Proto-Arabic and Some Other West Semitic Languages*
    ASIAN AND AFRICAN STUDIES, 9, 2000, I, 24-35 INFLECTED ARTICLE IN PROTO-ARABIC AND SOME OTHER WEST SEMITIC LANGUAGES* Andrzej Z a b o r s k i M. Zebrzydowskiego 1, 34-130 Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Poland The Arabic, Canaanite and Modern South Arabian definite article has a common origin and goes back to an original demonstrative pronoun which was a compound inflected for gen­ der, number and probably also for case. It can be reconstructed as *han(V)~ for masc. sing., *hat(V)~ for fern. sing, and *hal(V)- for plural. Assimilations of -n- and -t- to the following consonant (including -n-l- > -11- and -t-l- > II) neutralized the opposition of gender and number and led to a reinterpretation of either hcil/’al- or han/’an-> ’am- synchronically as basic variant. In Aramaic the suffixed definite article was due not to simple suffixation o f hā but to a resegmentation of the postposed compound demonstrativehā-zē-[n(ā)] and suffixation of enclitic hā> -ā which has been generalized. The problem of the definite article in the West Semitic languages has been discussed by many scholars, so that there is a rather abundant literature on the subject and opinions differ widely. Older studies were briefly reviewed by Barth (1907), while in the most recent contribution D. Testen (1998) discusses most of the newer studies (e.g. Wensinck 1931, Ullendorf 1965, Lambdin 1971, Rundgren 1989) and he develops a hypothesis going back at least to Stade (1879, § 132a; cf. Croatto 1971) saying that the Arabic, Canaanite and Modern South Arabian1 definite article goes back to an “assertative” particle */ (sic!) which is continued both by la- i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • Old South Arabian
    Old South Arabian Rebecca Hasselbach 1. Introduction The term “Old South Arabian” (OSA) designates the languages attested in inscriptions from pre-Islamic southwest Arabia. Most of the inscrip- tions were discovered in the area of today’s Yemen, specifically the east- ern central Yemeni highlands and the wadi deltas leading to Ramlat as-Sabʿatayn. A smaller number of inscriptions has been found in today’s Oman and northern Arabia. Since medieval Arab grammarians referred to this area as “Ṣayhad,” the language of the inscriptions is also called “Ṣayhadic” ( Beeston 1984: 1). This designation, however, is not gener- ally used today. The terms “Old South Arabian” and “Epigraphic South Arabian” are more commonly encountered in the scholarly literature. 1.1. Origin and history The historical period of southwest Arabia begins in the early first millen- nium bce, although material records, which include rock paintings that originate between the fifth and second millennia bce, have shown that the area was settled long before this time (Müller 1987: 50). It is a matter of dispute when the tribes that produced the inscriptional material mi- grated into southwest Arabia and where they came from (Schippmann 2001: 17). The most widely accepted theory today is that an unknown group migrated into the area in the late third millennium bce, since we do not find evidence for significant changes in the material culture after that time. Furthermore, there is evidence that the population of south- west Arabia was of a mixed nature at the beginning of the first millen- nium ce, so that we can say with relative certainty that there must have occurred several waves of migration (Schippmann 2001: 17).
    [Show full text]
  • Language, Script and Society in the Axumite Kingdom1
    Language, Script And Society In The Axumite Kingdom1 Rainer Voigt 1. Classical Ethiopic as a Christian Language One of the decisive turning points in Ethiopian history occurred in the first half of the 4th century A.D. when Ethiopia further opened herself up to the Hellenistic culture and by now also to the Near-Eastern Christian culture. This is witnessed by the Axumite royal inscriptions, which – though not anchored in the cultural awareness of the Ethiopians – “had caught the attention of several travellers early on” („schon in früherer Zeit von verschiedenen Reisenden bemerkt“). We owe our first summary to David Heinrich Müller (Epigraphische 1894), who edited the Axumite inscriptions with a commentary based on “impressions taken by Theodore Bent”. Further royal inscriptions by King ‘Ezana were collected during the Deutsche Aksum-Expedition (DAE) under the leadership of Enno Littmann, who published his findings in the monumental work entitled: Sabaische, griechische und altabessinische Inschriften (1913).2 He took up this topic again in his article „Äthiopische Inschriften“ (1950). These inscriptions, already fully but by no means exhaustively explained and commented upon, have been supplemented by only one additional inscription, found in Axum in 1981 and published in 1991 (v. S. Uhlig: Trilinguale 2001) by E. Bernand / A. J. Drewes / R. Schneider (Recueil des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie 1 A previous version of this paper was given at the Second International Enno Littmann Conference, that took place in Aksum / Tigrai (Ethiopia) in January 2006, and at the 19th Annual Conference of the Institute of Language Studies, that was organized in June 2007 in Addis Ababa.
    [Show full text]
  • Wisdom Editing in the Book of Psalms: Vocabulary, Themes, and Structures Steven Dunn Marquette University
    Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects Wisdom Editing in the Book of Psalms: Vocabulary, Themes, and Structures Steven Dunn Marquette University Recommended Citation Dunn, Steven, "Wisdom Editing in the Book of Psalms: Vocabulary, Themes, and Structures" (2009). Dissertations (2009 -). Paper 13. http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/13 Wisdom Editing in the Book of Psalms: Vocabulary, Themes, and Structures By Steven Dunn, B.A., M.Div. A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin December 2009 ABSTRACT Wisdom Editing in the Book of Psalms: Vocabulary, Themes, and Structures Steven Dunn, B.A., M.Div. Marquette University, 2009 This study examines the pervasive influence of post-exilic wisdom editors and writers in the shaping of the Psalter by analyzing the use of wisdom elements—vocabulary, themes, rhetorical devices, and parallels with other Ancient Near Eastern wisdom traditions. I begin with an analysis and critique of the most prominent authors on the subject of wisdom in the Psalter, and expand upon previous research as I propose that evidence of wisdom influence is found in psalm titles, the structure of the Psalter, and among the various genres of psalms. I find further evidence of wisdom influence in creation theology, as seen in Psalms 19, 33, 104, and 148, for which parallels are found in other A.N.E. wisdom texts. In essence, in its final form, the entire Psalter reveals the work of scribes and teachers associated with post-exilic wisdom traditions or schools associated with the temple.
    [Show full text]