The Hebrew Bible abounds with variants: expressions that are different, yet are similar in some respect-their meaning or their written or oral form. It is notoriously difficult to ascertain whether two expressions are variants, and, if so, what type of variant they are. I argue that the solution is to define precisely the vague notion of similarity of sound or meaning, and that linguistics provides such measures. Specifically, phonology can tell us the likelihood that a specific phoneme would be confused with another, and semantics can tell us under which conditions two expressions mean the same. I demonstrate this approach with a test case-the two different descriptions of the decorations of the Molten Sea: (sic) in 1 Kgs 7 and (sic) in 2 Chron 4.
The paper examines indications of a morphosyntactically conditioned complementary distribution of the prepositions /*il/ (< /*ilay/) and /l-/ (< /*la/ or /*li/), originally underlying the respective words and in post-Biblical Hebrew texts. Within the Bar-Kosiba letters, Tannaitic Hebrew and the Samaritan reading tradition of the Pentateuch, /*il/appears to be employed with pronominal suffixes, whereas /l-/ is found with syntactic complements. The paper proposes that the Samaritan reading tradition elucidates the rarer indications of this complementary distribution in the other texts: is only read in the Samaritan reading tradition as a reflex of/*il/ with pronominal suffixes, but as a reflex of /l-/ with syntactic complements, suggesting /*il/followed by syntactic complements to have been reanalyzed as /l-/ preceded by a prosthetic vowel [V-].
This study explores various aspects of the socio-historical landscape of the Chaldean region of Bit-Amuk & amacr;nu in 5(th) century BCE Southern Babylonia, through the lens of two previously unpublished texts from the town of & Scaron;& amacr;tir. The study offers an editio princeps of these texts, with a detailed analysis that provides new insights into the town's human landscape. Particular attention is given to the interactions between the Babylonian and West-Semitic inhabitants of & Scaron;& amacr;tir, as well as their involvement with local institutions, especially the town's local temple.
Plurals of nouns such as (sic) have been explained by appeal to the Plural of Result (also called the "Plural of Composition" or the unwieldy "Plural of Natural Object in an Unnatural Condition"). Under this theory, singular forms of such nouns refer to a substance, while plural forms of the same noun refer to multiple, separate instantiations of the substance. This paper will first chart the history of this grammatical category. It will then be shown that this grammatical category does not explain the data of Biblical Hebrew. Finally, an alternative account to the Plural of Result will be given, using insights from the linguistics of the mass-count noun distinction.
