I am taking a break from unpacking by reading a bit from my newly purchased 2nd edition of Shmuel Ahituv’s volume on ancient Semitic inscriptions in the Land of Israel. It is a very handy resource. There are other books on this topic, but this is the only one that provides a picture of the inscription (and if the picture is hard to read a hand copy is included), along with the inscription rendered in a modern Hebrew font, a vocalization of the inscription, and a short treatment of the text–all in the same page(s). KAI for instance has some of these features but provides them in separate volumes. If you are interested in ancient Semitic inscriptions, I recommend this volume. It provides a very convenient overview of the inscriptions and Ahituv’s vocalization is interesting to see also (of course you should not be locked into his interpretation as the only possible one, but instead as a good guide). This book is written in modern Hebrew, and if you don’t know modern Hebrew but would like to (and if you already know biblical Hebrew), you might want to check out Muraoka’s Modern Hebrew for Biblical Scholars. Modern Hebrew is a very valuable scholarly language for biblical studies and it should not be ignored alongside French and German.
Handbook of Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions
From the Period of the First Commonwealth and the Beginning of the Second Commonwealth (Hebrew, Philistine, Edomite, Moabite, Ammonite, and the Bileam Inscriptions)
2nd edition
Encyclopaedia Miqra’it Library – EML 21
by Shmuel Ahituv
Bialik Institute,2005
480 pages with 400 illustrations,Hebrew
Paper
ISBN: 9653429043
List Price: $65.00
Your Price: $39.00
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Modern Hebrew for Biblical Scholars
An Annotated Chrestomathy with an Outline Grammar and a Glossary
Second edition
.
by T. Muraoka
Harrassowitz Verlag,1998
xlv + 183 pages,English
Paper
ISBN: 3447040823
Your Price: $54.00
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