Shibboleth

A really interesting observation of Ibn Qutaybah (d. 276/889) in his ʾadab al-kātib. Commenting on why balā, matā and ʾannā are spelled with yāʾ he said: "because the ʾimālah (i.e. balē, matē, ʾannē) for these is better and more eloquent than tafḫīm (balā, matā, ʾannā)"

B. Herin and E. Al-Wer, A Grammar of Jordanian Arabic, 2025 (Open Access). www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

PhD Scholarship in Theology, Religious Studies or Slavic Studies at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of KU Leuven: www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...

Me submitting a paper to an editor vs. that same paper coming back to haunt me after a couple months

'sit' is, I believe, the only English word to preserve all of its original IE ablaut grades: 0: nest e: set long e: seat o: sat long o: soot

Hybrid meeting: Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Biblical Hebrew, 7 November 2025, 9:30–17:00 (CET), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/online. Register here: networkinstitute.org/2025/10/03/e...

Peak Halloween Classicist accessory! (Thank you Poundland 😱)

This chapter has now been out for more than six months and thus magically becomes #OpenAccess:

Overheard German productivity advice: "So you're doing a PhD?" -"Yes." -"Have you started writing?" -"No." -"So what are you doing here?" -"I like the atmosphere." -"Atmosphere seems like a waste of time."

Chat, what do we think about Versteegh's account of Arabic's verb stem types? For stem X, I find "requestive and estimative" pretty ad hoc, and for modern dialects I think stems V, VII, and VIII can just be called "passive" sometimes ...

Uh oh

Met een draagbaar maak je iemand draagbaar

This council could have been an ostracon

6 years POSTOC in Biblical Studies - Wissenschaftliche*r Mitarbeiter*in (m/w/d) at Humboldt University Berlin More details here: haushalt-und-personal.hu-berlin.de/de/personal/...

Learning to say 'two (f.)' in Levantine Arabic, or, as I like to call it,

Domestic dispute about whether the singular of magazine is migzane or igazine

Antiquity-ass headline

Leiden's greatest happening today. In remembrance of the lifting of the Spanish siege, all inhabitants can have free herring and white bread. This was the waiting line around 8:30

Two ways to make passive verbs in Ruus Al Jibal: 1. Stem VII (yɨnCɨCɨC) yōkɨl 'he eats' ➡️ yɨnwɨkɨl 'it gets eaten' √w-k-l 2. "Internal passive" yōkɨl 'he eats' ➡️ yūkal 'it is eaten'

Hot take: this was not actually a name of Jerusalem. It's only used in two passages, both times to highlight Jerusalem's non-Israelite, Jebusite inhabitants. Other Biblical and ancient sources just always call it Jerusalem, also long before David.

Leiden 1 – 0 Alesia

Unintentional rhyme, piyyut overdose

Does anyone know why Chabad pronounces #Hebrew with what seem like the YIVO-Yiddish vowels? /i ej ɛ a ɔ oj u/. I thought this was a kind of koine mixed system they created for the standard language?

not to scare the right, but we’re gonna talk about some rabbinic Hebrew FUCKIN PRONOUNS!!!!

2355 years ago, on the 1st of October 331 BCE, the Army of Macedon under Alexander the Great defeated the Persian Army under King Darius III in the Battle of Gaugamela. It is seen as the final blow to the Persian Empire. #otd #history #persia #alexanderthegreat 🗃️

September 30 October 1

“On the tenth day is the fast, which is carefully observed not only by the zealous for piety and holiness 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲. For all stand in awe, overcome by the sanctity of the day, and for the moment the worse vie with the better... 🧵1/5

וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה מַעֲבִירִין אֶת רֹעַ הַגְּזֵרָה

bro i wrote a thread on the western neoaramaic village names and i forgot to hit post 😵‍💫 well the gist was the names are odd, someone i know noticed that maaloula's arabic AND aramaic names look mixed: maʕlūlā (arabic name): v arabic passive ptcpl maCCūC, but aramaic absolute -ā and √ʕll "to enter"

What the typesetter did next will shock you

This is my regular reminder to everyone that jstor is open to the general public now; a free account there will give you access to 100 papers a year.

we got grammar of japhug 2 announcement before gta 6

Ah, beautiful Leiden!

In a new project I am working on together with Asaf Timor, a scholar and professional ritual scribe (סופר סת"ם), we are preparing a set of tefillin using exclusively ancient methods and materials. The work is based on research we’ve conducted in recent years on the Judean Desert tefillin... 🧵1/3

Job opening: An academic in Exegesis of Biblical and Extra-Biblical Texts, UCLouvain jobs.uclouvain.be/PersonnelAca...

African language puzzle escape room, happening right now in Leiden! 🤩

Trying to unpack this for the non-specialists (like me, @maartenkossmann.bsky.social please correct if wrong): this is cool because it shows influence on (Songhay, not Berber) Tadaksahak from (Berber, now socially marginalized) Tetserrét and not a (Berber, now socially dominant) Tuareg variety.

people of bluesky, I enjoy hearing from you, and bridgy has started sending me links when people who are not bridged @ me from bluesky so that I can notice them. However, keep in mind that I can't reply unless you're also bridged! https://fed.brid.gy/docs#bluesky-get-started

By @koutchoukalimar.bsky.social

Euro coins from all countries are worth the same but each country gets to decide how they decorate their coins. Love that Slovenia is very diverse with what they put on their Euro coins. As a geographer I love that Estonia just features their own geography.

Stalker behaviour

It's one week until the release of my book 'Why Q Needs U'! geni.us/WhyQNeedsU To do something with my nervous energy, I'm doing a countdown – not with numbers, but letters, from G to A! Chapter G looks at G's Roman origins and uses, and the influence that specific people have had on the alphabet.

Just saw #Deuteronomy 1:7 and 1:19-20 right after each other in someone's draft and man, that whole second part of verse 7 looks super sus.

Baalei tekiah who borrowed someone else's shofar be like "not to toot my own horn..."

Another nice example of *aCy > eCy, like Abiathar/Evyatar.

annals of wiktionary's hummus page

Archaeologists at Pompeii uncovered a fresco depicting a meal of a flat bread round covered in herbed cheese (called 'moretum'). That's right, a PROTO-PIZZA. But modern pizza, as served from Tokyo to Rome itself, was probably invented in New York. Let's talk about the "Pizza Effect".

Migrating from academia edu to hcommons.org is time-consuming! Or is there an automagic way I don’t know about? How did you all convert your publications? Manually? And what is the trick needed to be able to create a group? I don't see that function in any of the browsers I use.

Vibrant colour projected onto a 2,600 year-old wall panel offers a glimpse of the past lived in glorious technicolour! From the North Palace at Nineveh (present day Iraq), where the walls were decorated with brightly painted reliefs. 🎥 by me #ReliefWednesday #Archaeology