Ugaritic Narrative Poetry Paperback – January 1, 1997

For a message I have, and I will tell you, / A word, and I will recount to you,The word of tree and the whisper of stone, / The converse of Heaven with Earth, / Of Deeps with Stars.I understand the lightning which the Heavens do not know, / The word people do not know, / And earth's masses do not understand.Come and I will reveal it / In the midst of my mountain, Divine Sapan, / In the holy mount of my heritage, / In the beautiful hill of my might. (See "The Baal Cycle," pages 110, 113)The venerable (founded 1880) Society of Biblical Literature has been publishing its "Writings from the Ancient World" series of translations since 1990. It is intended to cover the literatures of Northeast Africa (i.e., Egypt) and Southwest Asia between the earliest writing, c. 3000 B.C.E., and the conquest of pretty much the whole region by Alexander the Great, in 330 B.C.E. And it is not limited to material with some Biblical connection. Right now the series runs to almost thirty volumes, not all of them currently in print. The whole series, when completed, will dwarf the old stand-by for convenient translations, "Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament" -- which hasn't been revised since the late 1960s.(In case anyone was wondering, the SBL also has a companion series of "Writings from the Greco-Roman World".)One of my favorites in the Ancient World series is 1997's "Ugaritic Narrative Poetry," edited by Simon B. Parker, with translations by Parker himself, and Edward L. Greenstein, Theodore J. Lewis, David Marcus, and Mark S. Smith. As the title indicates, it contains the narrative verse from ancient Ugarit -- all of it that has been recognized -- and, in addition to the translations, it has direct transliterations of the whole corpus. Comparison of words and passages to Biblical narrative and poetic texts -- a topic with a very large literature -- although not overly emphasized, is thereby made a great deal easier, and at a reasonable-looking price. Although not quite the "latest word," it is the latest comprehensive collection available in English. It has a whole section of minor narratives, mostly incomplete, many of them from spells or rituals, most otherwise found only in technical editions.As such, it still outclasses the excellent second edition of "Stories from Ancient Canaan" (2012), translated by Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith, with its smaller selection, and English-only, beginner-friendly, format. ("Stories" may be a better place to start, though, as I emphasized in my recent review of the volume's Kindle edition; the two reviews complement, rather than duplicate, each other.)For those who have never heard of Ugarit and its literature, an explanation may be in order. (My apologies to those of you who know this stuff already, and were maybe hoping for a really clever review.)Ugarit was an ancient city at Ras Shamra on the Mediterranean coast, now in Syria, mentioned from time to time in Egyptian New Kingdom texts (it had been an Egyptian vassal until the growing Hittite Empire made the sort of offer you REALLY can't refuse). Destroyed near the end of the Bronze Age, it was accidentally discovered in 1928, and a long series of excavations began in 1929. Clay tablets with writing, and some other inscribed objects, soon turned up.An early, rather startling find, was that, in addition to the use of the Babylonian cuneiform, standard for the time and region, its scribes had a different cuneiform script in which to write their own language. With what turned out to be some lucky guess-work, it was quickly deciphered, and proven to be an alphabetic script, and the language akin to the later forms of Canaanite (Phoenician and Punic, Biblical Hebrew, Moabite) and Aramaic (including Christian Syriac), and with interesting resemblances to Arabic.The language could be grappled with fairly directly, since, unlike other cuneiform systems, it was not cluttered with signs with multiple phonetic values, signs used as whole words, without phonetic value, signs used to distinguish the type of noun (name-of-a-god, for example).In fact, when a text giving the characters in their official order was found, it turned out to represent a prototype of our own alphabet (which had passed through Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman hands), not to mention the Hebrew alphabet (from Phoenician by way of Aramaic) and the Samaritan script (Phoenician by way of Palaeo-Hebrew script).Another listing of the characters eventually turned up, giving a different order, apparently underlying that used for the ancient South Arabian alphabets.It still wasn't the "original" alphabet, which was probably written, rather than impressed in clay; for one thing, it had a set of "extra" characters at the end, used for foreign (non-Semitic) words, indicating a history which included adaptations to political and cultural circumstances.Even more exciting, for the sort of people who get excited about such things, some of the texts contained literary, rather than bureaucratic texts. (Bureaucracies seem to have produced writing as an aid to accounting, and then spontaneously generated paperwork, even though they sometimes had to use clay for it....)Also attention-getting were the names familiar from the Hebrew Bible (sometimes as common nouns), and even early Rabbinic aggadic midrash (story-telling expository texts): Athiratu (Asherah), Ba'lu (Baal), Lotan or Litan (Leviathan) Mot (Death), Rapiuma (the Rephaim), Rashap (resheph, 'spark'), and Prince Yamm ("the prince of the sea" in midrash). A major figure in some of the poems was a less-familiar goddess, Anat, who figured in the Bible mainly as a place name (Anathoth, the hometown of Jeremiah), and perhaps in the Elephantine Papyri as the mysterious Anath-Yahu.And so on.... Within a decade, enough was being read to show that the forms and norms of Biblical verse (and not just the verse) needed to be re-evaluated, as part of a larger, and older, literary tradition. And the stories, as they became clearer, had their own interest. Major attention was given to the tale of Kirta (or Keret, or Kret, or KRT), the king who needed a wife to bear more children after his whole family had died, and appealed to the High God, El; Aqhat, or how the wise Danel searched for his son, murdered to please the vengeful goddess Anat; and Baal, or "Baal and Anat," a cycle of power-struggles among the gods.This interest eventually generated a stream of translations, in several languages, as well as a series of critical editions. I have read most of the English-language translations, probably starting with one or another revision of Cyrus H. Gordon's pioneering effort (probably the 1965 edition of "The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilization"), or H.L. Ginsberg's translations in Pritchard's "Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament" (1950 edition; pages 129-155). After those two, I went on to Theodor H. Gaster's wonderfully literate and richly annotated rendering of the Baal Cycle in "Thespis: Ritual, Myth and Drama in the Ancient Near East" (1950, revised 1966[?]); G.R. Driver's comprehensive 1956 "Canaanite Myths and Legends" in the 'Old Testament Studies' series; the 1977 revision of Driver by J.C.L. Gibson; and Gordon's last revision, "Poetic Legends and Myths from Ugarit," published in the journal "Berytus" (1977). The first edition of Coogan's "Stories from Ancient Canaan" came along in 1978. After that, I mostly read some of the ever-increasing secondary literature, returning sometimes to Gaster's literate, if antiquated, translation, and its wide-ranging commentary (when Baal is given war-clubs with names, Gaster not only explains the names, he tells you about other thunder-gods whose weapons have names).So, when, after almost twenty years, a newer, and more complete collection, with transliterations (like Driver/Gibson, but less technical), came along, I felt that I was as well-equipped as a lay reader was likely to be for judging its literary quality, and how it handled difficult or controversial passages. At the time, I only had access to a library copy of Parker et al., which was subject to recall, but I was favorably impressed by the use of English, and the short (although sometimes very abundant) notes to the translation. (Unlike Gaster's comments, these were very much to the immediate point -- although both sets are helpful.) As for translation issues, I had to put myself in the translator's hands, but their solutions at least seemed probable -- and in a number of cases had been proposed or defended in articles with which I was (then) fairly familiar.Having, finally, obtained a paperback copy of "Ugaritic Narrative Poetry" (which I can freely mark up, book-mark, etc.) over a dozen years after that first reading, I remain as impressed as before.

These poems are generally lacking crucial parts of their beginnings, middles, and/or ends. Still, they offer glimpses of otherwise little known Canaanite myths that came to underlay Phoenician, Philistine, and even Hebrew beliefs. Indeed, the verses often prefigure passages in the Psalms, which came some 2-6 centuries later. The mainly consonantal nature of the writing means that almost no vowels appear in the transliterations, but the translations are quite readable. Hopelessly fragmentary but fascinating. A number of translator-scholars are involved, but precious little biographical info. about them appears.

A book we were not able too find before. Very interesting

This volume contains Ugaritic poetry with the original in one column (transliterated from the cuneiform alphabet) and the translation in the other. The translations are first rate and offer a good contrast to Dennis Pardee's translations in the Context of Scripture. For students of the Bible or people just interested in ancient literature this volume is far more affordable than the Context of Scripture and is an excellent introduction to Northwest Semitic poetry. The reader will find many parallels to the Hebrew Bible, especially in its use of parallelism in poetry. Also, the Baal Myth, here called the Baal cycle, puts some flesh on the bones of a god mentioned in the Bible, although only for hostile purposes as Baal was a rival of the God of Israel, YHWH. I highly recommend this volume.

Excellent! Good introductions to each of the Ugaritic texts included. It provides the unvocalised Ugaritic text alongside the English translation, clearly marking the lines beside the text. The translator's footnotes appear at the end of each text. Some translators unnecessarily deviate from word order, so that one who is not looking at the Ugaritic text (but relying entirely on the English translation) may miss out on elements of the literary style. The book includes a helpful concordance, bibliography, glossary, and indexes in the back.

Almost any ANE Poetry or other ANE materials such as these can be found on-line. The commentary helped me understand the salient points, but I usually look on the web first. I still like to have a book in my hand, though. Yes, I would recommend this work. I would suggest you peruse it's contents on Amazon, to read the commentary in order to help assess its value to what you are attempting to understand.

This book is a must have for anyone interested in the literature of the ancient near East and how that literature helped shape the Old Testament

excellent treatment of the subject matter and a good addition to the SBL series

Another great book in the series