RAS SHAMRA— HARRIS 499 



by the literary authenticity of the Bible. With all the political, 

 social, and cultural separation of the Hebrews from the Canaanite 

 world, they learned the language of the Canaanites, and with it the 

 culture of its literary tradition. The literature of the Bible rested 

 solidly on the rich background of Canaanite literature, and the form 

 in which it has come down to us is often much closer to the original 

 than we had suspected. 



The other outstanding characteristic of the Ugaritic poems is the 

 wealth of repetition and key phrases. There are certain fixed pairs 

 of synonyms which recur frequently in special parts of the poems, 

 or throughout them: n^mm wysmm "pleasant and gracious"; Ut 

 hhhtm * * * nhlat bhklm "fire in the houses * * * flames 

 in the palaces"; rgm * * * tny * * * "lie said * * * 

 he repeated * * *." Some phrases recur so as to seem hke a 

 refrain, giving a strophic character to that section of the poem; 

 in other cases there are stock descriptions (e. g., in supplication scenes, 

 in challenges) which are used whenever the scene occurs. The whole 

 gives a Homeric touch to the mythological poems. It is not common 

 in the Bible, perhaps because of the lack of epic poetry in it; and in 

 the epic prose of the Bible we see a different and perhaps more sophis- 

 ticated beauty in the simplicity and functional brevity of the telling. 

 But this rich repetition of Ugaritic must be an old feature of primitive 

 poetry, and is known elsewhere in Semitic. 



UGARITIC IN THE SEMITIC FAMILY 



The Semitic family of languages is one of the best known and most 

 carefully studied of linguistic groups. The criteria of its various 

 divisions are well defined, and it is therefore indicative of how much 

 we have still to learn that several varying opinions have been put 

 forth as to the place of the new-found language of Ugarit within the 

 family. Semitic languages are grouped together into three large di- 

 visions: east, northwest, south. The eastern group, Akkadian, is 

 marked off from the other two by many historical developments of 

 its own, but it has certain specific affinities with Canaanite and South 

 Arabic, probably going back to proto-Semitic times when these were 

 perhaps in special contact. The southern group includes North 

 Arabic and South Arabic (with Ethiopic) ; these agree with the whole 

 northwestern group in several special respects, particularly in the 

 development of the verbal system. 



The Northwest Semitic group includes the languages spoken in 

 liistorical times in Palestine-Syria and, probably, the regions north 

 and east of Syria. The earliest clear material of this stock which we 

 have comes from the north from the turn of the second millennium; 

 it is called Amoiite, but the exact character of the dialect is unknown. 

 In Palestine and Syria, throughout the second and first millennium, 

 there were spoken dialects which we call Canaanite. We know some- 



