medicine in the biblical background

North Robert “Analecta Biblica” 142 2000 pp. 196 The author, in view of the coverage of Medicine in his annual bibliography (Elenchus of Biblica 1980-95), was invited to this survey at a Madrid-AIcalà summer institute. It is here updated from a 612 item bibliography. Its most notable discovery is that there is no word for "brain" in the Bible, and the very frequent term generally rendered "heart" means rather "internai organs of cognition and control", largely the functions of the brain, though located vaguely in the stomach-area. The author was then led by the absence of words like brain and (real) heart, also lung, comb, spoon, to a further critical survey of six entirely different approaches to the audacious question, "Was biblical Hebrew a language?" - all concluding that it was never a "used" language, but was a scriba) combination of elements from languages really used in the environs. In this it wouid have resembied the Esperanto of many centuries later, except in being probably intended to make less rather than more accessible the contente for which it wouid have been used. More recently it has been proposed that Ezra's promulgating of his Torah was a maneuver of Persian overlordshìp. At any rate the intense scribal activity of this period remains the likeliest background for a Bible-language innovation. But silence about Ezra in Sirach 49,13 leaves open also the period after 130 b.c., at least for insertion of the later books. Robert North was born in lowa City ia U.S.A. on March 25, 1916. From 1951 to 1984 he was professor chiefly of archeology at the Biblica Institute and conducted a hundred of its study tours to Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria; also occasionally Turkey, Greece, Iraq, and Iran. He has published 200 articles on thè wider geographical area of thè Bible; also several books and 400 book-reviews.