Rolf Furuli | |
---|---|
Born | Rolf Johan Furuli December 19, 1942 Oslo, Norway |
Occupation(s) | University teacher, translator, writer |
Title | Emeritus |
Spouse | Anne-Sissel (d. 2023) |
Academic background | |
Education | |
Thesis | A New Understanding of the Verbal System of Classical Hebrew—An Attempt to Distinguish Between Pragmatic and Semantic Factors (2005) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Linguism |
Sub-discipline | Semitic languages |
Institutions | University of Oslo,The Norwegian Institute of Paleography and Historical Philology |
Main interests | Vav-consecutive,Modern Hebrew verbs,Bible translations, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures ,Tetragrammaton |
Signature | |
Rolf Johan Furuli (born 19 December 1942) is a Norwegian linguist who was a lecturer [1] in Semitic languages at the University of Oslo; [2] he retired in 2011. Furuli has taught courses of Akkadian,Aramaic,Ethiopic,Hebrew,Phoenician,Syriac,and Ugaritic at the University of Oslo and at The Norwegian Institute of Paleography and Historical Philology.
Furuli started his studies of New Babylonian chronology in 1984.[ citation needed ] In 1995 he graduated from the University of Oslo with a Master of Arts degree,with a thesis on the system of verbs in classical Hebrew. [3] In 2005 he received his Doctor of Arts with a thesis on definite and indefinite verbs in the Hebrew Bible. [3] In 2005,Furuli defended his doctoral thesis suggesting a new understanding of verbal system of Classical Hebrew. [4]
In a review of the thesis,professor Elisabeth R. Hayes of Wolfson College,Oxford,wrote:"While not all will agree with Furuli's conclusions regarding the status of the wayyiqtol as an imperfective form,his well-argued thesis contributes towards advancing methodology in Hebrew scholarship." [5] Old Testament lecturer David Kummerow stated that Furuli's research "has gone astray in that his methodology has assumed too much",adding that "the value of Furuli's research is not to be found in his 'new understanding' but rather in the helpful extended cataloguing of non-prototypical and construction-dependent functions of the verbal conjugations of [biblical Hebrew]". [6] Professor John A. Kaltner said:
Semantic considerations have long dominated in treatments of the Hebrew verbal system, and Furuli's call to take into account pragmatic factors is an important one that is worth considering. How his alternative model will be received remains to be seen, but at the very least his work might encourage some to think of more than just semantics when trying to understand the Hebrew verb. [7]
From 1999 Furuli held a position as assistant professor at the University of Oslo, [8] before retiring in 2011.
Furuli was a Jehovah's Witness and served as an elder for 56 years, also holding positions as a circuit overseer and a district overseer. [9] [10] In 2020, Furuli published a book entitled My Beloved Religion—and the Governing Body in which he maintains that the denomination's core doctrines and interpretations of biblical chronology are correct, but challenges the authority of the Jehovah's Witnesses' leadership. [10] Subsequently, on June 17, 2020 he was disfellowshipped from the denomination. [11]
Furuli has defended the religious views of Jehovah's Witnesses, [12] [13] including their view that Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 607 BC rather than the broadly recognised dating of its destruction in 587 BC. In response, in a 2004 issue of Journal for the Study of the Old Testament , Lester L. Grabbe, professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull, said of Furuli's study: "Once again we have an amateur who wants to rewrite scholarship. ... F. shows little evidence of having put his theories to the test with specialists in Mesopotamian astronomy and Persian history." [14]
Furuli has written works about Bible translation and biblical issues. He has translated a number of documents from Semitic languages and Sumerian into Norwegian. [15]
The history of ancient Israel and Judah spans from the early appearance of the Israelites in Canaan's hill country during the late second millenium BCE, to the establishment and subsequent downfall of the two Israelite kingdoms in the mid-first millenium BCE. This history unfolds within the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The earliest documented mention of "Israel" as a people appears on the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription dating back to around 1208 BCE. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient Israelite culture evolved from the pre-existing Canaanite civilization. During the Iron Age II period, two Israelite kingdoms emerged in the region: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.
Hezekiah, or Ezekias, was the son of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah according to the Hebrew Bible.
The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands of Judea, the landlocked kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. Jews are named after Judah, and primarily descend from people who lived in the region.
Yahweh was an ancient Levantine deity, and national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Though no consensus exists regarding the deity's origins, scholars generally contend that Yahweh is associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman, and later with Canaan. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age, if not somewhat earlier.
Jehovah's Witnesses is a nontrinitarian, millenarian, restorationist Christian denomination. As of 2023, the group reported approximately 8.6 million members involved in evangelism, with around 20.5 million attending the annual Memorial of Christ's death. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the destruction of the present world system at Armageddon is imminent, and the establishment of God's kingdom over earth is the only solution to all of humanity's problems.
The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were forcibly relocated to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The deportations occurred in multiple waves: After the siege of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, around 7,000 individuals were deported to Mesopotamia. Further deportations followed the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple in 587 BCE.
The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures is a translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society; it is used and distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. The New Testament portion was released first, in 1950, as the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, with the complete New World Translation of the Bible released in 1961.
Jehovah's Witnesses have been criticized by adherents of mainstream Christianity, members of the medical community, former Jehovah's Witnesses, and commentators with regard to their beliefs and practices. The Jehovah's Witness movement's leaders have been accused of practicing doctrinal inconsistencies and making doctrinal reversals, making failed predictions, mistranslating the Bible, harshly treating former Jehovah's Witnesses, and leading the Jehovah's Witness movement in an autocratic and coercive manner. Jehovah's Witnesses have also been criticized because they reject blood transfusions, even in life-threatening medical situations, and for failing to report cases of sexual abuse to the authorities. Many of the claims are denied by Jehovah's Witnesses and some have also been disputed by courts and religious scholars.
Elohim, the plural of אֱלוֹהַּ, is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is grammatically plural, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly the God of Israel. In other verses it refers to the singular gods of other nations or to deities in the plural.
There are various names of God, many of which enumerate the various qualities of a Supreme Being. The English word god is used by multiple religions as a noun to refer to different deities, or specifically to the Supreme Being, as denoted in English by the capitalized and uncapitalized terms God and god. Ancient cognate equivalents for the biblical Hebrew Elohim, one of the most common names of God in the Bible, include proto-Semitic El, biblical Aramaic Elah, and Arabic ilah. The personal or proper name for God in many of these languages may either be distinguished from such attributes, or homonymic. For example, in Judaism the tetragrammaton is sometimes related to the ancient Hebrew ehyeh. It is connected to the passage in Exodus 3:14 in which God gives his name as אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, where the verb, translated most basically as "I am that I am" or "I shall be what I shall be", "I shall be what I am" In the Hebrew Bible, YHWH, the personal name of God, is revealed directly to Moses. Correlation between various theories and interpretation of the name of "the one God", used to signify a monotheistic or ultimate Supreme Being from which all other divine attributes derive, has been a subject of ecumenical discourse between Eastern and Western scholars for over two centuries. In Christian theology the word is considered a personal and a proper name of God. On the other hand, the names of God in a different tradition are sometimes referred to by symbols. The question whether divine names used by different religions are equivalent has been raised and analyzed.
Biblical Hebrew, also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea. The term "Hebrew" (ivrit) was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible, which was referred to as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַן or יְהוּדִית, but the name was used in Ancient Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts.
Ancient Semitic religion encompasses the polytheistic religions of the Semitic peoples from the ancient Near East and Northeast Africa. Since the term Semitic itself represents a rough category when referring to cultures, as opposed to languages, the definitive bounds of the term "ancient Semitic religion" are only approximate, but exclude the religions of "non-Semitic" speakers of the region such as Egyptians, Elamites, Hittites, Hurrians, Mitanni, Urartians, Luwians, Minoans, Greeks, Phrygians, Lydians, Persians, Medes, Philistines and Parthians.
Nethinim, or Nathinites or Nathineans, was the name given to the Temple assistants in ancient Jerusalem. The term was applied originally in the Book of Joshua to the Gibeonites. Later, in the Book of Ezra, they are counted alongside the Avdei Shlomo. It is likely that the Nethinim descended from non-Israelites. Opinion is divided as to whether the Gibeonites in Joshua are to be connected to the Nethinim of later texts. Others theorize that they were the descendants of Midianite war captives, as described in Numbers 31.
Frederick William Franz was a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1977 he was appointed president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, a legal entity used to administer the work of Jehovah's Witnesses. He had previously served as vice-president of the same corporation from 1945 until 1977 when he replaced Nathan H. Knorr as president. His position as president was administrative, as the Governing Body assumed over-all control of all Jehovah's Witness corporations in 1976. He remained president until his death in 1992.
The eschatology of Jehovah's Witnesses is central to their religious beliefs. They believe that Jesus Christ has been ruling in heaven as king since 1914, a date they believe was prophesied in Scripture, and that after that time a period of cleansing occurred, resulting in God's selection of the Bible Students associated with Charles Taze Russell to be his people in 1919. They believe the destruction of those who reject their message and thus willfully refuse to obey God will shortly take place at Armageddon, ensuring that the beginning of the new earthly society will be composed of willing subjects of that kingdom.
Jehovah is a Latinization of the Hebrew יְהֹוָהYəhōwā, one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton יהוה (YHWH), the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The Tetragrammaton יהוה is considered one of the seven names of God in Judaism and a form of God's name in Christianity.
The Omride dynasty, Omrides or House of Omri were the ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Samaria founded by King Omri. The dynasty's rule ended with the conquest of Samaria by the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Shalmaneser V, who annexed the territory as the Assyrian province of Samerina.
Eber-Nari or Ebir-Nari (Akkadian), also Abar-Nahara (Aramaic) or Aber Nahra (Syriac), was a region of the ancient Near East. Translated as "Beyond the River" or "Across the River" in both the Akkadian and Aramaic languages, it referred to the land on the opposite side of the Euphrates from the perspective of Mesopotamia and Persia. In this context, the region is further known to modern scholars as Transeuphratia. Functioning as a satrapy, it was originally administered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire before being absorbed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and then by the Achaemenid Empire. During the Greek conquest of Persia, Eber-Nari was, like the rest of the Achaemenid Empire, annexed by the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great. It was later dissolved by the Seleucid Empire, which incorporated it into Syria, along with Assyria.
The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (1951) is a reconstruction of the chronology of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah by Edwin R. Thiele. The book was originally his doctoral dissertation and is widely regarded as the definitive work on the chronology of Hebrew Kings. The book is considered the classic and comprehensive work in reckoning the accession of kings, calendars, and co-regencies, based on biblical and extra-biblical sources.
Yehud Medinata, also called Yehud Medinta or simply Yehud, was an autonomous administrative division of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. It constituted a part of Eber-Nari and was bounded by Arabia to the south, lying along the frontier of the two satrapies. Spanning most of Judea—from the Shephelah in the west to the Dead Sea in the east—it was one of several Persian provinces in Palestine, together with Moab, Ammon, Gilead, Samaria, Ashdod, and Idumea, among others. It existed for just over two centuries before the Greek conquest of Persia resulted in it being incorporated into the Hellenistic empires.
As a member of the hospital liaison committee in Oslo, Norway for the last ten years the question about medical ethics and the use of blood is very important for me.