« There's a Carnival Coming and It's Less Than Week Away
Main
Peer Review and Blogging - Discussing and Being Discussed »
August 27, 2007
Mitchell Dahood and the Ras Shamra Parallel Project
In a recent post, John Hobbins mentioned that he was a student of Mitchell Dahood. In the same post, he also mentioned the usefulness of Logos Software’s Ugaritic Library. Among the works in The Ugaitic Library are three volumes called, The Ras Shamra Parallels. My teacher, Loren Fisher, conceived and managed this project and was editor the first two of these volumes. My graduate school colleague, Stan Rummel, edited the third volume. While I had a hand in several parts of the project as a whole, I feel a particular affection for the second volume. Stan and I were associate editors of that volume. I also wrote a chapter for the volume and had a role in another chapter that went well beyond the call of duty for any associate editor.
Mitchell Dahood was part of the team of scholars that Loren brought together for the project. We were privileged to have Dahood visit us a few times in Claremont. One of the jobs of an associate editor was to review the work of the contributors and, as politely as possible, point out any errors in fact, style or omission. To put it charitably, some scholars took criticism from lowly graduate students better than others did. Father Dahood was among those who were consistently gracious and helpful. His chapters were long and complex and we had a lot of great interaction, mostly by mail in those days. I do think that one comment John made in his post is worth repeating,
Dahood had a way of reading Hebrew as if it were Ugaritic and Ugaritic as if it were Hebrew. To do so, of course, is fraught with risk.
When Logos first announced The Ugaritic Library, I expressed some considerable concern about how it was being marketed and to whom. My concern was that a marketing demo seemed to suggest that someone who knew neither Hebrew nor Ugaritic could successfully make use of this library. But for someone like John who knows both languages extremely well, I am sure it is a very useful, if dated, set of tools. With one exception, I have every volume in The Ugaritic Library in my personal library. What I don't have is the search engine that comes with the software. Perhaps I should ask Santa for it. But then, I've been promoting a trip to Rome as a joint gift from Santa to Shirley and me. Conflicts, always conflicts.
Posted by Duane Smith at August 27, 2007 2:23 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2229
Comments
Post a comment
Please read Abnormal Interest's Comments Policy.