Ugaritic

So outside of the Bible text.

It was used in ancient Babylon and Assyria in the Ugaritic language.

There's record of the word Salaam being recorded in the 3000s and the 2000s in northwest Syria, the Levant.

Levant just means the area of Judea and Israel and so forth.

...

in, in, in, not just the Bible, but in the Ugaritic culture.

Um, and w- so for, to have Cyrus Gordon, who is a tremendously respected Bible scholar, you know, archeologist, [laughs] um, comment on it and be, and for him to recognize, 'cause he, you know, he knows his stuff.

Like, "Wow, that's Paleo-Hebrew." And then even, even that level of scholarship by him can't even get in foot in the door.

There are no significant differences between the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint versions of Nahum.

However, because of the unique poetry of Nahum, studies in Ugaritic and of Neo-Assyrian literature can aid in one's examination of the Hebrew of the text.

The historical backdrop of Nahum can aid one significantly in examining the text as well.

Assyria, represented by Nineveh, had already conquered the northern kingdom and posed a significant threat to the southern kingdom.

He later earned a master's degree in 1999 from Brigham Young University with a dual emphasis on in Near Eastern and Native American Archaeology.

From there, he dug in Syria, Jordan, and the American Southwest and picked up reading knowledge of Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Quranic Arabic.

He was mentored by archaeoastronomers Von Del Timberlin and Alexander Gerstein, has published in specialist journals, and has worked with the Utah Rock Art Research Association and the Utah Cultural Astronomy Project.

He wrote The Celestial Code of Scripture, which is the book we will be covering in this episode, which was published by Monkfish in 2021 after approximately 20 years of work because of what he says he stumbled onto as a BYU graduate student.

to say the least.

I mean, come on.

Knowledge of Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Biblical Hebrew, even just that.

Aramaic, even just that.

That is terrifying.

And then if we look at the Ugaritic texts from ancient Syria, we find this pervasive mythological motif where human kings are described as being adopted and literally suckled by female deities like the goddess Sanat.

I read that in the notes, and it is such a visceral, weird image to modern ears.

Why would they emphasize the king nursing from a goddess?

They were shouting, essentially, Marduk has become king, re-enthroning him annually.

Okay, I see where this is going.

Mawinkle looked at the Ugaritic texts and found the exact same pattern with their storm god.

The god fights the chaotic sea, defeats him, and the heavenly assembly declares, now he shall reign.

Well, I mean, yeah.

I mean, if, if, if you talk to Christians today, I mean, a lot of this stuff is, like, rather new, within the last, like, 100 years, because in 1928, archeologists discovered, uh, the city of Ugarit, which was in, you know, the ancient Canaanite city, and in there you get the Ugaritic material of the Baal Cycle, which talks about the divine council, to where then biblical scholars looked at that and said, "Wait, the Bible has, has this divine council thing that's going on in Psalm 82." So what...

But, but what the biblical authors did very often is they were obviously living in the ancient world.

They, they were exposed to Egyptian mythologies.

And it took me long because, you know, I only had Hebrew, I only had, uh, uh, French and Greek.

So I had to take, um, Hebrew, I had to take Aramaic, I had to take Ugaritic, um, all right, f- French, German.

So I, I, I had to take German, um, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Ugaritic along with, uh, with the French.

So I had to pass six language exams, all right? And that's another reason why it took me, you know, pretty long.

I mean, uh, I mean, if I, again, if I had to do it again, I would've, you know, taken my languages before, you know, things like that.

So it's not a name, it's a title, because it's known as the Praised One, the Blessed One, the Anointed One, the Messiah.

It was first used in Ugaritic in 1400 BC, borrowed by the Hebrews in 1000 BC, introduced in the Bible 11 times.

Song of Solomon 5:16 is the Mahmadim, who is the altogether lovely one, referring to Solomon himself.

It was subsequently employed by Saint Ambrose looking at So- Song of Solomon 5:16.

Stephen Kaufman was there.

I had a number of courses with him, Bible courses, as well as Ugaritic and Aramaic and comparative Semitics.

Yeah, okay, so they were just some of the names I remember, and in fact, I've been talking about Gringus quite a bit, just mentioning law, and I remember meeting him, just seems like a very wonderful, dignified man, and I...

Kaufman was very interesting.

I could study Hebrew Bible.

I could do Bible courses and learn all of that better, improve my Hebrew.

But also I could take Akkadian and Ugaritic and Aramaic and Ancient Near Eastern history and literature and all of that.

So it was a program that was designed to push those two together.