Ugaritic Texts Research Articles

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Get access M. H. POPE, El in the Ugaritic Texts. (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, vol. II.) 1955. Pp. x + 116. ( E. J. Brill, Leiden. Price: FI. 14, for subscribers to Vetus Testamentum, FI. 11.) O. EISSFELDT O. EISSFELDT Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Semitic Studies, Volume 1, Issue 4, October 1956, Pages 402–403, https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/1.4.402 Published: 01 October 1956

Sleep: an Aspect of Jewish Anthropology

Two observations should be made by way of introduction. (1) It is important to realise that the Old Testament references to sleep and other related matters are not very numerous. Not only so but they are purely incidental. That does not mean that they are unimportant, but it is a warning against making hasty deductions, or attempting to formulate definitive conclusions regarding the Hebrew attitude to sleep. (2) It is salutary to remember that even in our day there is still no one theory of sleep that commands the unanimous assent of psychologists or neurologists. In this region the experts are still in the realm of conjecture. Sleep is still the crux in physiology and psychology. Nothing better than hypotheses have been offered to explain it. If we keep this in mind we shall be prepared to find that for the Hebrews too sleep was a mystery. It was not, however, an entrance to the realm of the weird and the uncanny as it was for other ancient peoples. There are three roots used in Hebrew for sleep-num, yasen, and rddham. Properly speaking nzmn means to be drowsy or to slumber; ydsen signifies to sleep; while rddham is used to describe a heavy or deep sleep; and in spite of some overlapping the differences in meaning which these three roots convey are observed in the Old Testament. See, e.g., Ps. cxxi 4, Is. v 27, Jb. xxxiii 15. Cf. also the Ugaritic Text Krt. i 31 ff., where sleep and drowsiness are distinguished. Nzm describes an altogether lighter form of sleep than that implied byyasen or rddham. Tenmdh answers to what the modern neurologist describes as the pre-dormitum stage of sleep; i.e., the period that precedes sleep proper when the flow of thought becomes modified. As conscious thought detaches itself increasingly from volition the sleeper slips imperceptibly into what the Old Testament calls sendh, and, on occasion, into tardemdh where the flow of thought continues in dreams and figments of the imagination.

The Ugaritic Texts and Textual Criticism

The Ugaritic Texts and Textual Criticism

Ras Shamra Notes. VII the Ugaritic Fantasia of the Gracious and Beautiful Gods

THE UGAiTIac composition here partly presented in translation was first published by Virolleaud, under a title of which the above is a translation, in Syria, 1933: 128 fif. It has been republished in all the several subsequent collectanea of the Ugaritic texts. The discussions of this fascinating composition have been numerous and varied in treatment.' Of particular interest to the present writer is Gaster's very original presentation of the dramatic character of what is really a playa phase of literary discussion which is still desiderated for all the IUgaritic 'epics.' Gaster's work, by reason of its foreign publication, may not be known at large. But he has presented a sample of it in a recent article, 'Ezekiel and the Mysteries,' JBL 1941: 289 Sf., in particular, pp. 290 f.., along with valuable parallels from the ancient Oriental fields.2 Gaster has most ingeniously presented the dramatic character of the composition with its rubrics and refrains, along with the attempt to picture the attendant performance of the actors. There may also be cited the brief but illuminating remark by Dussaud in his study of the drama of 'Anat (RHR 1938: 137) : Il ne faut pas perdre de vue que ces recits mythiques etaient une representation du rituel et qu'ils etaient recites au cours des ceremonies religieuses. The first part of the composition is complicated with various details, themes, rubrics, introduction of the personae dramatis. It opens with the introductory invocation: I will invoke the Gracious and Beautiful Gods,7 etc., repeated with expansion in 11. 23iff. The theme, Peace of nomads and settled folk, is given twice (11. 7, 26). Motand-8r, the god of infertility, is presented as sitting, in his hand the sceptre of barrenness, in his hand the sceptre of widowhood (1. 8), followed by the presentation of pruning of the vines, evidently an agricultural rite. There are introduced in double course the divine heroines of the drama, Atirat and Rahmay (11. 13, 28).3 L. 14 is a rubric directing a sacrifice, 'the cooking of a kid in curds'; cf. Ex. 23: 19. The following study deals only with 11. 32-68a, the centre of the drama. The goddess's cry to Il.

The Ugaritic Texts of Danil and Krt

The Ugaritic Texts of Danil and Krt