THE JOURNAL OF SEMITIC STUDIES has a new issue (50.2, Autumn 2005) out. Some relevant articles include:

Hans-Peter Müller
Der Gottesname B'L Und Seine Phraseologien Im Hebräischen und im Phönizisch-Punischen
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 281-296

The article deals with the semantics of Hebrew and Phoenicio-Punic b'l and with its functions in special phrases indicating attributes, appositions, localizations etc., above all in the phrase ba'al samayim and its isoglosses. Its ultimate aim is to make a proposal on the function of Ba'al religion as such in the context of the Ancient Oriental view of life.

Avi Sheveka
A Trace of the Tradition of Diplomatic Correspondence in Royal Psalms
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 297-320

This paper suggests that the phrase וארשת שפתיו בל מנעת (Ps. 21:2) reflects an idiom from the tradition of diplomatic correspondence (documented in EA9), that expresses a proper ‘brotherhood’ relationship between equal kings. Besides explaining the use of the hapax legomenon ארשת in this specific instance, this assumption gives us a key to explaining the fact that a variant of this word — ירשת — appears in another psalm (Ps. 61:6) in a very similar context. The author suggests that the Israelite court scribes saw this word as particularly designated for requests made by a king from his counterpart, because they knew this word — which disappeared from Hebrew — only through their education in schools for scribes, where they were trained in the international diplomatic style. In both cases, then, the use of this word was a result of a conscious intention to imitate diplomatic style while referring to relations between the king and God, an intention motivated by rhetorical needs. This attempt exposes for us some of the authors' theological conceptions. While proving these conclusions the author reexamines the debated question of Psalm 61's classification, and shows that there are decisive arguments for deciding (versus the dominant opinion) that this is indeed a royal psalm.

Vincent DeCaen
On the Distribution of Major and Minor Pause in Tiberian Hebrew in the Light of the Variants of the Second Person Independent Pronouns
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 321-327

This paper establishes for the first time the nature and distribution of Tiberian Hebrew (TH) pausal phonology. The results are consistent with the proposal by Dresher (1994) that TH pause is a direct function of intonational phrase boundaries. His prosodic analysis is extended here by establishing the half-verse as the maximal prosodic domain for TH phonology. It is on this basis that we can explain the statistical distribution of pause at syntactic and accentual phrase boundaries, extending the first approximation of the syntactic projection of TH pause delineated in Revell (1980). The results reported here define a long-term research programme in TH prosody.

E. Martín Contreras
Continuity of the Tradition: Masorah with Midrashic Explanations
J Semitic Studies 2005 50: 329-339

This article examines three masoretic lists with midrashic explanations placed in appendix IV of codex M1 from the Complutensian University Library. The study shows the original final form of these three lists and their content suggests that the traditions that present textual commentaries in the midrashim up until medieval times coexisted with the Masorah.

There are also a great many interesting book reviews.

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