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Semitic Languages and Cultures

  • Book Series
  • 16 issues
  • ISSN Print: 2632-6906
  • ISSN Digital: 2632-6914

This series includes philological and linguistic studies of Semitic languages, editions of Semitic texts and works relating to the cultures of Semitic-speaking peoples.

Further information
The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1 - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1

  • Geoffrey Khan
This book presents the current state of knowledge of the Tiberian pronunciation tradition of Biblical Hebrew and a full edition of one of the key medieval sources, Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ ‘The Guide for the Reader’, by ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn. There is also an accompanying oral performance of samples of the reconstructed pronunciation by Alex Foreman.
The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 2 - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 2

  • Geoffrey Khan
This book presents the current state of knowledge of the Tiberian pronunciation tradition of Biblical Hebrew and a full edition of one of the key medieval sources, Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ ‘The Guide for the Reader’, by ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn. There is also an accompanying oral performance of samples of the reconstructed pronunciation by Alex Foreman.
Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew

  • Shai Heijmans
This volume presents a collection of articles centring on the language of the Mishnah and the Talmud – the most important Jewish texts (after the Bible), which were compiled in Palestine and Babylonia in the latter centuries of Late Antiquity. Despite the fact that Rabbinic Hebrew has been the subject of growing academic interest across the past century, very little scholarship has been written on it in English.
Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions

  • Aaron D. Hornkohl
  • Geoffrey Khan
This volume brings together papers relating to the pronunciation of Semitic languages and the representation of their pronunciation in written form. The papers focus on sources representative of a period that stretches from late antiquity until the Middle Ages. A large proportion of them concern reading traditions of Biblical Hebrew, especially the vocalisation notation systems used to represent them. Also discussed are orthography and the written representation of prosody.
Jewish-Muslim Intellectual History Entangled: Textual Materials from the Firkovitch Collection, Saint Petersburg - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Material Culture

Jewish-Muslim Intellectual History Entangled: Textual Materials from the Firkovitch Collection, Saint Petersburg

  • Adang Camilla
  • Bruno Chiesa
  • Omar Hamdan
  • Wilferd Madelung
  • Sabine Schmidtke
  • Jan Thiele
This timely volume presents, for the first time, edited fragments of six texts by adherents of the Muʿtazila, a school of rational theology that emerged in the eighth century CE, including Karaite copies and recensions of works by Muslim authors, notably ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Hamadhānī and ʿAbd Allāh b. Saʿīd al-Labbād, as well as original Jewish Muʿtazilī treatises. The collection is concluded by an anonymous Rabbanite refutation of the highly influential polemical tract against Judaism, entitled Ifḥām al-yāhūd.
Studies in the Grammar and Lexicon of Neo-Aramaic - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

Studies in the Grammar and Lexicon of Neo-Aramaic

  • Geoffrey Khan
  • Paul M. Noorlander
The papers in this volume represent the full range of research that is currently being carried out on Neo-Aramaic dialects. They advance the field in numerous ways. In order to allow linguists who are not specialists in Neo-Aramaic to benefit from the papers, the examples are fully glossed.
The Marvels Found in the Great Cities and in the Seas and on the Islands: A Representative of ‘Aǧā’ib Literature in Syriac - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Literature

The Marvels Found in the Great Cities and in the Seas and on the Islands: A Representative of ‘Aǧā’ib Literature in Syriac

  • Sergey Minov
This volume presents the original text, accompanied by an English translation and commentary, of a hitherto unpublished Syriac composition, entitled the Marvels Found in the Great Cities and in the Seas and on the Islands.
New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew

  • Aaron D. Hornkohl
  • Geoffrey Khan
This volume contains peer-reviewed papers in the fields of Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew that advance the field by the philological investigation of primary sources and the application of cutting-edge linguistic theory. These include contributions by established scholars and by students and early career researchers.
Diversity and Rabbinization: Jewish Texts and Societies between 400 and 1000 CE - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • History

Diversity and Rabbinization: Jewish Texts and Societies between 400 and 1000 CE

  • Gavin McDowell
  • Ron Naiweld
  • Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra
This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Age and the growing influence of the rabbis within these communities during the same period.
A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic

  • Esther-Miriam Wagner
This volume is the first linguistic work to focus exclusively on varieties of Christian, Jewish and Muslim Arabic in the Ottoman Empire of the 15th to the 20th centuries, and present Ottoman Arabic material in a didactic and easily accessible way.
Points of Contact: The Shared Intellectual History of Vocalisation in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

Points of Contact: The Shared Intellectual History of Vocalisation in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew

  • Nick Posegay
This book investigates the theories behind Semitic vocalisation and vowel phonology in the early medieval Middle East, tracing their evolution to identify points of intellectual contact between Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew linguists before the twelfth century.
The Neo-Aramaic Oral Heritage of the Jews of Zakho - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

The Neo-Aramaic Oral Heritage of the Jews of Zakho

  • Oz Aloni
Aloni focuses on three genres of the Zakho community’s oral heritage: the proverb, the enriched biblical narrative and the folktale.
Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts, Volume 1 - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics
  • Literature

Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts, Volume 1

  • Geoffrey Khan
  • Masoud Mohammadirad
  • Dorota Molin
  • Paul M. Noorlander
This comparative anthology showcases the rich and mutually intertwined folklore of three ethno-religious communities from northern Iraq: Aramaic-speaking (‘Syriac’) Christians, Kurdish Muslims and—to a lesser extent—Aramaic-speaking Jews.
Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts, Volume 2 - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics
  • Literature

Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts, Volume 2

  • Geoffrey Khan
  • Masoud Mohammadirad
  • Dorota Molin
  • Paul M. Noorlander
This comparative anthology showcases the rich and mutually intertwined folklore of three ethno-religious communities from northern Iraq: Aramaic-speaking (‘Syriac’) Christians, Kurdish Muslims and—to a lesser extent—Aramaic-speaking Jews.
Sefer ha-Pardes by Jedaiah ha-Penini: A Critical Edition with English Translation - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Literature

Sefer ha-Pardes by Jedaiah ha-Penini: A Critical Edition with English Translation

  • David Torollo
This groundbreaking new work is the first full critical edition and English translation of the Hebrew book *Sefer ha-Pardes* [The Book of the Orchard], written at the end of the thirteenth century by the Provençal Jewish author Jedaiah ha-Penini.
Diachronic Variation in the Omani Arabic Vernacular of the Al-ʿAwābī District: From Carl Reinhardt (1894) to the Present Day - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics
  • Literature

Diachronic Variation in the Omani Arabic Vernacular of the Al-ʿAwābī District: From Carl Reinhardt (1894) to the Present Day

  • Roberta Morano
In this monograph, Roberta Morano re-examines one of the foundational works of the Omani Arabic dialectology field, Carl Reinhardt’s Ein arabischer Dialekt gesprochen in ‘Oman und Zanzibar (1894). This German-authored work was prolific in shaping our knowledge of Omani Arabic during the twentieth century, until the 1980s when more recent linguistic studies on the Arabic varieties spoken in Oman began to appear.
Studies in the Masoretic Tradition of the Hebrew Bible - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

Studies in the Masoretic Tradition of the Hebrew Bible

  • Daniel J. Crowther
  • Aaron D. Hornkohl
  • Geoffrey Khan
This volume brings together papers on topics relating to the transmission of the Hebrew Bible from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period. We refer to this broadly in the title of the volume as the ‘Masoretic Tradition’. The papers are innovative studies of a range of aspects of this Masoretic tradition at various periods, many of them presenting hitherto unstudied primary sources.
The Bible in the Bowls: A Catalogue of Biblical Quotations in Published Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Magic Bowls - cover image
  • Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures
  • Linguistics

The Bible in the Bowls: A Catalogue of Biblical Quotations in Published Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Magic Bowls

  • Daniel James Waller
The Bible in the Bowls represents a complete catalogue of Hebrew Bible quotations found in the published corpus of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic magic bowls. As our only direct epigraphic witnesses to the Hebrew Bible from late antique Babylonia, the bowls are uniquely placed to contribute to research on the (oral) transmission of the biblical text in late antiquity; the pre-Masoretic Babylonian vocalisation tradition; the formation of the liturgy and the early development of the Jewish prayer book; the social locations of biblical knowledge in late antique Babylonia and socio-religious typologies of the bowls; and the dynamics of scriptural citation in ancient Jewish magic.