Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 83:2 (Fall 2021)
Article: Reviews Of Books
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 83:2 (Fall 2021) p. 391

Reviews Of Books

Takamitsu Muraoka, A Syntax of Qumran Hebrew. Leuven: Peeters, 2020. Pp. lix + 387. €95.00, cloth.

This volume is an important achievement in scholarship of the ancient languages related to the study of Scripture. Takamitsu Muraoka—a celebrated Japanese philologist still at work even now in his 80s—is no stranger to such achievements, having updated P. Joüon’s grammar of Biblical Hebrew (2006) and published grammars of Classical Syriac, Egyptian Aramaic, Qumran Aramaic, and Septuagint Greek, among numerous other works. In the present volume, Muraoka continues that theme, presenting the first exhaustive syntax of Qumran Hebrew since it became known with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the late 1940s.

The corpus analyzed in this Syntax includes all Hebrew documents from the eleven Qumran caves (including those of the Hebrew Bible), as well as Hebrew documents from other Judean sites and a few select other texts such as the Damascus Document manuscripts from the Cairo genizah. Statistically, the first group is by far the most predominant and is now available thanks to the completion of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series among other primary editions. Very little of this corpus is datable with more certainty than some time between 250 BC and AD 135. The Hebrew language attested in these documents is of course post-biblical and sectarian, representing what Muraoka is satisfied to call a “Standard Literary Hebrew” used in southeast Palestine and the Jordan Valley (p. xxii). Notably, while many features of Biblical Hebrew appear also in Qumran Hebrew, they are often absent entirely from the nearly contemporary Mishnaic Hebrew, the reasons for which are under serious debate. Ultimately, Qumran Hebrew is distinct enough from either to necessitate its own syntax, pointing out continuities with Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew as appropriate.

The volume has two parts, each with three sections, all of which is followed by lengthy and useful indices. Part 1 treats morphosyntax, which Muraoka defines as dealing with “categories such as singular and plural, for instance” (p. xxvii). The first section covers the pronoun (personal, demonstrative, relative, etc.). The following section then discusses the morphology of the noun and adjective, including gender, number, definiteness, and prepositions. The third section is much longer than the first two, as it covers the vast terrain of the verb. Muraoka organizes this section first into binyanim, followed by the perfect and imperfect conjugations, then “the inverted tenses,” by which Muraoka means finite verbs with the waw prefix (e.g., wayyiqtol and weqatal). The section then continues on with the participle and the infinitive forms of...