Days of Our Years: A Lexical Semantic Study of the Life Cycle in Biblical Israel [Kietas viršelis]

Eng (William Paterson U. New Jersey) has dusted off his 1998 PhD dissertation at Drew University and updated it with insights from his own research and from publications during the intervening decade or so. It is a semantic study of the vocabulary of the life cycle in the Hebrew Bible, concentrating on major lexemes pertaining to the young, the mature, and aged. These have all been studied before, he says, but in isolation from each other, and this is the first to analyze them in the context of the whole life cycle. He also looks at the concept of the life cycle in the Ancient Near East and Greek periods in literary, historical, archaeological, and anthropological sources. He concludes by outlining the six stages of the life cycle in biblical Israel and their accompanying Hebrew terminology. T&T Clark is an imprint of Continuum. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) This study is an investigation into the lexical meanings of Hebrew terms for the human life cycle in the Old Testament. The investigation differs from previous studies in that the terms are studied from the perspective of a specific semantic domain (age) and not in isolation from each other. In addition, other modern linguistic approaches are applies, including syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis. This study is an investigation into the lexical meanings of Hebrew terms for the human life cycle in the Old Testament.