The purpose of this dissertation is to explicate the role of donkeys in the symbolism and ceremonies of the biblical world. This requires an analysis of the relevant archaeological and textual materials from the ancient Near East as well as a fresh look at the biblical passages …
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Uncovered in 1975, the Tell-Mardikh-Ebla archive was the first large collection of cuneiform tablets discovered in the age of the personal computer. Starting with the Ebla texts of Cybernetica Mesopotamica , and using the software program WordCruncher, I modified the format in w…
In the biblical narrative of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah found in the Deuteronomistic History, the end of a king's rule is summed up in a series of stock statements that begins with the poetic idiom for death: "and [the king] lay with his fathers." The summary statements al…
In this dissertation I draw on the Nessana papyri corpus and relevant comparable material (including papyri from Petra and Aphrodito and inscriptions from the region) to argue that ethnic, linguistic and imperial identities were not significant for the self-definition of the res…
This dissertation explores the meaning of five psalms in the Septuagint version (104, 105, 110, 111, 112), not as interpreted in their reception history but as intended by their translator. The basis for distinguishing the production of a translated document from its reception h…
The specific nature of the Appeal to the living texts in ancient Egypt is investigated from the Old Kingdom through the New Kingdom. A data set has been collected of some 294 Appeal texts divided chronologically into (1) Old Kingdom (45 texts), (2) First Intermediate Period (47 …
The title of this dissertation is "The Verbal System of Biblical Aramaic: A Distributional Approach." The thesis is that Biblical Aramaic has a primary verbal form for narration and a primary verbal form for discourse. The qtl form presents the foreground of narration, and the y…
This dissertation argues that Qohelet, the author of Ecclesiastes, directly quotes the Epic of Gilgamesh. The specific quotation comes from Gilgamesh tablet X which is quoted by Ecclesiastes 9:7-10. Chapters one and two of the dissertation argue that in order to demonstrate the …
Northwest Semitic syntax has been explored extensively on a phrasal and clausal level. This has contributed much to our understanding of the languages in this linguistic family. There have also been numerous studies on micro level, and isolated occurrences of literary devices wi…
This study deals with Ancient Egyptian and Yoruba of West Africa, an enduring historical problem in African historiography. This dissertation builds upon Lucas's book (Lucas 1948). The central argument of Lucas's book is that Yoruba originated from Ancient Egypt. A lot of Africa…
This study examines the Hebrew variants in the manuscripts of the book of Deuteronomy found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Little work has been done analyzing variants found in individual scrolls and assessing what these individual variants tell us about the textual history of that…
The Verbs of Esther: A Discourse Analysis of a Post-Exilic Text seeks to describe the narrative main clause verbs, the quotation formula verbs, and the verbs in quotations found in the text of Esther. These verbs provide key information about the discourse structure of the text.…
Torah study is the definitive religious activity of Rabbinic Judaism. Earlier, Torah study did not enjoy preeminence, and this difference indicates that a dramatic shift took place in the conception of Torah. The emphasis on Torah study in Psalm 119 is unique within the Hebrew B…
In this dissertation I clarify the significance of verb form selection in the Qumran sectarian texts by determining the extent to which the semantic value of the Hebrew finite verb is temporal, aspectual, or modal in the selected corpus. Standard grammars claim Hebrew was aspect…
My dissertation has two goals: the first is to prove that historical syntax has a value in subgrouping; the second is to reconstruct parts of the syntax of the Aramaic dialect groups. The work focuses on three topics: the development of adverbial subordination, nominal modifiers…
The economic structure and administration of Egypt's Old Kingdom remain unevenly understood, partly as a result of assumptions formed based on the reliance on material from later periods of Egyptian history, as well as through the improper application of contemporaneous evidence…
The Syriac chant traditions of the Chaldean and Antiochene rites reached South India at various stages in the history of the St. Thomas Christians. In spite of attempts by the Portuguese missionaries to suppress the Syriac tradition in the sixteenth century, and the voluntary ef…
This dissertation applies Afrocentric methods of decipherment to a sacred symbol selected from the ancient Egyptian language of Mdw Ntr (Words of God). The chosen symbol is transliterated by Egyptologists as neb and translated ideographically as lord, master. My purpose is to de…
Aramaic offers some of the richest sources of dialectal variation within the Semitic language family. Yet comparative dialectal studies in Aramaic syntax are virtually non-existent. The purpose of this dissertation is to exploit the fact of multiple Aramaic translations of the b…