Literary Importance of the Texts
After preliminary work by many scholars, Cyrus Gordon worked out a Ugaritic Grammar and later put out an edition of the texts calledUgaritic Literature. The decipherment of the texts showed the important parallels between Ugaritic and Hebrew literary style and vocabulary. By 1936 H. L. Ginsberg had made some far-reaching observations with regard to common structural elements. Ginsberg’s study showed that Canaanite poetry, like Hebrew, was basically accentual, that is, it consisted of numbers of feet, each of which was accented. Since the Ugaritic language is very closely connected with biblical Hebrew, much light has been shed upon Hebrew lexicography. Any recent lexicon of Hebrew must take into consideration the vocabulary used at Ugarit. Future Hebrew dictionaries will include many words hitherto misunderstood or only partially known.
For example, the word beth-heber (Prov. 21:9; 25:24) hitherto rendered “house” has been shown from Ugaritic and Assyrian to mean specifically “a storehouse.” These verses could then be rendered “It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a contentious woman and in a storehouse.” It is of interest to note that the Egyptian proverbs of Amenemope, which have many parallels to the biblical Book of Proverbs, employs a word for “storehouse” in exactly the same sense.
Religious Significance of the Ugaritic Inscriptions
By far the most important contribution of the religious texts from Ras Shamra (Ugarit) is in giving the Bible student background material for the study of Old Testament religions. The epics set forth very clearly the Canaanite pantheon. We now know that this pantheon of the Canaanites was headed up by the god El, the supreme Canaanite deity. This is also a name by which God is known in the Old Testament (cf. Gen. 33:20). This name, El, often occurs in Old Testament poetry (Ps. 18:31, 32; Job 8:3). It occurs frequently also in prose in compound names, for example, El Elyon, the God Most High (Gen. 14:18); El Shaddai, Almighty God (Gen. 17:1); El Hai, the living God (Josh. 3:10). El is a common Semitic word for God.
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