Cyrus H. Gordon

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Cyrus Herzl Gordon (born June 29, 1908 in Philadelphia , † March 30, 2001 in Brookline , Massachusetts ) was an American Semitic and Orientalist .

Life

Cyrus Gordon earned his BA, MA, and Ph. D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania . During the Second World War he worked in cryptanalysis .

As a Semitist, Gordon was best known for his work on Ugaritic . In 1968 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

As a supporter of diffusionism and the idea of pre-Columbian , transatlantic contacts between the “ old ” and the “ new world ”, Gordon took the view that proto-Semites, Phoenicians and other Afro-European peoples reached North and South America by sea as early as ancient times Left traces. This opinion - sharply criticized by supporters of the "isolationist" position, which is dominant in ethnology and ancient American studies - was based u. a. on his work on highly controversial finds, such as the " Bat Creek Stone " discovered in Tennessee , the inscription from Parahyba in Brazil and the "Los Lunas Decalogue Stone".

See also

Bibliography (selection)

Book publications on Ugaritic:

  • Ugaritic Grammar. The Present Status of Linguistic Study of the Semitic Alphabetic Texts from Ras Shamra (= Analecta Orientalia. 20, ZDB -ID 417948-1 ). Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, Rome 1940.
  • Ugaritic Handbook. Revised Grammar, Paradigms, Texts in Transliteration, Comprehensive Glossary (= Analecta Orientalia. 25, 1–3). 3 parts. Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, Rome 1947.
  • Ugaritic Literature. A Comprehensive Translation of the Poetic and Prose Texts (= Scripta Pontificii Instituti Biblici. 98, ZDB -ID 581310-4 ). Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, Rome 1949.
  • Ugaritic Manual. Newly Revised Grammar, Texts in Transliteration, Cuneiform Selections. Paradigms, Glossary, Indices (= Analecta Orientalia. 35, 1-3). 3 parts. Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, Rome 1955.
  • Ugaritic Textbook. Grammar, Texts in Transliteration, Cuneiform Selections, Glossary, Indices (= Analecta Orientalia. 38, 1–3). 3 parts. Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, Rome 1965.

Other:

  • Introduction to Old Testament Times. Ventnor Publishers, Ventnor NJ 1953, (in German: Historical Foundations of the Old Testament. Benziger, Einsiedeln et al. 1956; 2nd, revised German edition. Ibid. 1961).
  • Adventures in the Nearest East. Phoenix House, London 1957.
  • Evidence for the Minoan Language. Ventnor Publishers, Ventnor NJ 1966.
  • Forgotten scripts. The Story of their Decipherment. Thames and Hudson, London 1968.
  • A Scholar's Odyssey (= Biblical Scholarship in North America. 20). Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta GA 2000, ISBN 0-88414-016-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cornelia Giesing: Pre-Columbian America from a Circum-Pacific perspective. In: Wolfgang Stein (Ed.): Columbus or who discovered America? Hirmer, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7774-6060-5 , pp. 38-67, ( digital version (PDF; 4.88 MB) ).
  2. ^ J. Huston McCulloch: The Bat Creek Stone. September 2010, ( online ).
    Marshall McKusick: Canaanites in America: A New Scripture in Stone? In: The Biblical Archaeologist. Vol. 42, No. 3, 1979, ISSN  0006-0895 , pp. 137-140, JSTOR 3209381 .
    Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., Mary L. Kvass: The Bat Creek Stone: Judeans in Tennessee? In: Tennessee Anthropologist. Vol. 16, No. 1, 1991, ISSN  0892-7979 , pp. 1-19, http://ramtops.co.uk/bat1.html ( Memento of June 28, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) .
    Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., Mary L. Kwas: The Bat Creek Fraud: A Final Statement. In: Tennessee Anthropologist. Vol. 18, No. 2, 1993, pp. 87-93, http://ramtops.co.uk/bat2.html ( Memento of March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) .
  3. ^ Eugene J. Fisher, Marshall McKusick: East and West. In: The Biblical Archaeologist. Vol. 43, No. 2, 1980, pp. 71-73, JSTOR 3209623 .
  4. ^ Cyrus H. Gordon: Diffusion of Near East Culture in Antiquity and in Byzantine Times. In: Orient. Vol. 30/31, 1995, ISSN  0473-3851 , pp. 69-81, doi : 10.5356 / orient1960.30and31.69 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gordon, Cyrus H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gordon, Cyrus Herzl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Semitic and Orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 2001
Place of death Brookline (Massachusetts)