Ugaritische Grammatik

Happily, our own Jake McCarty took my advice and has submitted some thoughts on Dennis Pardee's review of Josef Tropper's Ugaritische Grammatik. Jake assures me that this should be of interest to the general reader. Enjoy. - RD

Brief thoughts on Pardee’s review (Inhaltsverzeichnis Band 50 (2003/2004)) of Tropper’s Ugaritische Grammatik (AOAT 273).

Dennis Pardee’s recent 400 page review of Josef Tropper’s Ugaritische Grammatik has set a new standard for book reviews. Pardee, Professor of Northwest Semitics at The University of Chicago, is perhaps the only American savant who has devoted the bulk of his time to the study of Ugaritology. (Or so M. Smith argues in Untold Stories.) This lacuna is unfortunate because the Ras Shamra corpus is the most significant parallel—or context—to the Hebrew Bible.

Context, accordingly, is the keystone for both Tropper and Pardee. Tropper uses every extant text to build his case and Pardee argues that the task is too large and one-sided. Because there is such a paucity of data, Pardee notes that for a grammar to be so exhaustive it must have dealt thoroughly with every text--an impossible feat. Furthermore, problems in paleography have not been mitigated even though Tropper makes a Herculean attempt at enumerating the Schriftlehre of Ugaritic. How can one really translate hepatic and iatrogenic texts when one cannot read the letters? Pardee wryly suggests that Tropper may be playing a bit of lansquenet with the occasional calque.

I think Pardee is correct, (though he has put Tropper on the cucking-stool). Nevertheless, no serious Biblical student can afford to be without Ugaritische Grammatik in the coming generations. Tropper is a vade mecum though its publication may have been a bit jejune.

- Jake McCarty