Richard Pleijel, Om Bibel 2000 och dess tillkomst: Konsensus och konflikt i översättningsprocessen inom Bibelkommissionens GT-enhet

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“Go Out from Your Sign”: Rashi to Genesis 15:5 as a Reference to Astrological Primary Direction – Its Background in Rabbinic Literature and Parallels in Abraham bar Ḥiyya

This article suggests that Rashi’s exegetical commentary to Gen 15:5, in which Abram counts the stars, is meant to invoke an association with the astrological technique known as Primary Directions (based on equating one degree of Right Ascension in the rotation of the earth around its axis with one year of life), which was one of the main methods of prognostication in pre-modern astrology – beginning already in Hellenistic times and quite central in Mediaeval astrological thinking. Rabbinic sources discussing the relevant biblical passage and the idea of Abraham as a supreme astrologer are analysed, along with parallel material from Abraham bar Ḥiyya and Ibn ʿEzrā. The article examines both what Rashi kept and what he removed from his Rabbinic sources, and elaborates on the role of astrological thinking in his milieu.   https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2020/v33n3a1

Tillbaka till dåtiden? Om bibelvetenskapens roll och metoder

The exegetical subjects have a particular interdisciplinary role within academia, implying that their responsibilities and significance are – and should be – under constant debate. In his article, church historian Joel Halldorf, argues for the overt use of theological interpretations (in the narrow sense of "normative theology") in the exegetical discipline. Halldorf thereby highlights some current key issues concerning the identity of biblical studies in Sweden, both in academia and in society: Where should the discipline be positioned in relation to humanities and theology? Which target groups should be catered to? What is the task of the biblical scholar? Here we present our reply to Halldorf's reflections and visions about the methods and significance of biblical studies. According to us, Halldorf offers an oversimplified view of what historical-critical research means and presents historical research as something utterly contrary to the theoretical developments of the latter half of the twentieth century. This, we argue, is a misrepresentation of the boundaries of these theoretical currents. Furthermore, we want to highlight the importance of context-oriented interpretations of textual traditions from antiquity, as well as the danger inherent in conducting research without consideration to historical context. We argue that the non-confessional nature of biblical studies is in fact a prerequisite for participation in an international and multifaceted research milieu

In memoriam Tryggve N.D. Mettinger (1940–2023)

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The Sound of Serpents and Serpent-Slayers in Indo-European and Northwest Semitic

This paper is centered around using poetic-mythological vocabulary from Northwest Semitic languages as a key to reconstruction of IE phraseology. Mythological material from the NWS area – especially Ugaritic – can sometimes be shown to represent Indo-European borrowings into NWS poetic language; by studying these cases, knowledge may be gleaned about the loan-giver.The famous phrase *egwhent ogwhim (“he slew the serpent”, or its laryngealisticequivalent, *h1egwhent h3egwhim) has a reconstructible analogue in Proto-NWS (*maḫaṣ́a naḥaša – based on Hebrew and Ugaritic material), suggesting an early loan from IE into NWS or Central Semitic. In an earlier publication, I reconstructed this Semitic phrase with an emphatic sibilant/affricate in the first word: *maḫaṣa naḥaša (arguing that the sequence nasal-guttural-sibilant in both words represents an attempt to create a sort of counterpoint – using different sounds – of the assonance of the two *gwh-s in the IE phrase from which it was calqued). Deeper study of the phonology of the Semitic phrase suggests, however, that the first word was originally not *maḫaṣa but *maḫaṣ́a(the similar roots *mḫṣ́ and *mḥṣ, both meaning something like “strike”, having been conflated). This reconstruction, based on inner-Semitic poetic data, and its use of the highly marked phoneme *ṣ́– which phonetically was probably an ejective lateral fricative with affrication, [tɬʼ] – can indirectly provide clues tothe phonetics of the IE phrase by which it was inspired: specifically, of the repeated *gwh phonemes (a repetition for which the borrowers tried to create a sort of analogue using the repeated phoneme-series nasal-guttural-sibilant/affricate). The reconstruction thus illustrates poetic calquing through phono-semantic matching (as defined by Ghilʿad Zuckermann).This comparison supports the interpretation of *gwh as a breathy-voiced, highly marked and complex phoneme (as opposed to suggestions questioning the breathy phonation), as I will argue that the choice of the complex (and unstable) Semitic sound *ṣ́ – with a special airstream mechanism as well as added affrication – represented a conscious way of imitating the dual (and poetically effective) occurrences of *gwh in the PIE phrase. If one adopts the reconstruction with a laryngeal, *h3egwhim, the effect becomes even greater, as *h3 was probably (?) itself articulated as a labialized uvular fricative, reinforcingthe assonance with *gwh, and the occurrence of this laryngeal would mesh well with the dual gutturals (ḫ/ḥ) of the calqued Semitic phrase.The presentation thus focuses on the interplay between phonetics, etymologicalpoetics, inter-phyletic loans and phono-semantic calquing, illustrating how the study of “cross-border” poetic interaction can illustrate the phonetic realization of early poetic phraseology