Author Description

This monograph exhaustively investigates the semantic domain of ‘gift’ in Ancient Hebrew, which comprises 28 substantives. The investigation firstly focuses on the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations that determine the meanings of each individual lexeme and subsequently provides an overall picture of the developments and extensions of the whole lexical field across the different layers of Ancient Hebrew. The investigation sheds new light on the debated issue of the so-called sectarian Qumran writings, by demonstrating that they attest to distinctive patterns of lexical organisation that are not found elsewhere in Ancient Hebrew. The appendix finally discusses the feasibility of drawing concept related conclusions on the basis of linguistic data, thus sketching a possible map of the concept of ‘gift’.