Richard C. Steiner


Richard C. Steiner is a Semitist and a scholar of Northwest Semitic languages, Jewish Studies, and Near Eastern texts. His work has focused on texts from as early as the Egyptian Pyramid Texts to as late as medieval biblical interpretation. He is now retired from his position as professor of Semitics at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University in New York City.

Life and career

Steiner received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Biblical, Semitic, and Jewish Studies and linguistics. He collaborated with Labov on an important study of sound changes in spoken languages.
Steiner's early work focused on the phonology of Semitic languages, especially Hebrew. In one book he argued that the letter known as Hebrew sin was pronounced as a fricative-lateral and in another he argued that the pronunciation of the letter tsade as an affricate, /ts/, is very old and widespread, against others who had doubted this. These books have convinced most specialists.
In 2007 Steiner gave a lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in which he announced that he had deciphered linguistically Semitic spells in Egyptian hieroglyphic texts from the mid-third millennium BC. This discovery was reported on by National Geographic, Science Daily, and others. In July 2010 he was invited to give the plenary address at the annual conference of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew. However, other scholars question these findings due to phonological inconsistencies, orthographic anomalies, and methodological flaws and a few Egyptologists have even rejected Steiner's claims.
His brother was Mark Steiner, Professor of Philosophy at Hebrew University, who died from COVID-19 in 2020.

Books

A Quantitative Study of Sound Change in Progress. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1972.The Case for Fricative-Laterals in Proto-Semitic, New Haven, 1977.Affricated Sade in the Semitic Languages, New York, 1982.Stockmen from Tekoa, Sycomores from Sheba: A Study of Amos’ Occupations, Washington DC, 2003.A Biblical Translation in the Making: The Evolution and Impact of Saadia Gaon’s Tafsīr
  • ''Early Northwest Semitic Serpent Spells in the Pyramid Texts''

Articles

  • “On the Origin of the חֶדֶר-חֲדַר Alternation in Hebrew,” Afroasiatic Linguistics 3 85-102.
  • “From Proto-Hebrew to Mishnaic Hebrew: The History of כְָ- and הָּ-,” Hebrew Annual Review 3 157–174.
  • “Yuqat.t.il, Yaqat.t.il, Yiqat.t.il: D-Stem Prefix-Vowels and a Constraint on Reduction in Hebrew and Aramaic,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 100 513–518.
  • “A Paganized Version of Ps 20:2-6 from the Aramaic Text in Demotic Script,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 261-74.
  • “You Can’t Offer Your Sacrifice and Eat It Too: A Polemical Poem from the Aramaic Text in Demotic Script,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 43 89-114.
  • “Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin: A Tale of Two Brothers from the Aramaic Text in Demotic Script,” Revue Biblique 92 60-81.
  • “*Lulav versus *lu/law: A Note on the Conditioning of *aw > *ū in Hebrew and Aramaic,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 107 121–122.
  • “New Light on the Biblical Millo from Hatran Inscriptions,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 276 15–23.
  • “A Syriac Church Inscription from 504 CE,” Journal of Semitic Studies 35 99-108.
  • “The Aramaic Text in Demotic Script: The Liturgy of a New Year’s Festival Imported from Bethel to Syene by Exiles from Rash,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 111 362–363.
  • “The Mountains of Ararat, Mount Lubar and הר הקדם,” Journal of Jewish Studies 42 247-249
  • "Does the Biblical Hebrew Conjunction -ו Have Many Meanings, One Meaning, or No Meaning At All?," Journal of Biblical Literature 119/2, 249–267.
  • "On the Dating of Hebrew Sound Changes and Greek Translations ", JBL, 229-267
  • "Bishlam's archival search report in Nehemiah's archive: Multiple introductions and reverse chronological order as clues to the origin of the Aramaic letters in Ezra 4-6", JBL, 641-685
  • "Phonemic Spelling and Scriptio Continua for Sandhi Phenomena and Glottal Stop Deletion: Proto-Sinaitic vs. Hebrew", JNES, 311-334
  • "The Practice of the Land of Egypt : Incest, 'Anat, and Israel in the Egypt of Ramesses the Great" in "Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt?": Biblical, Archaeological, and Egyptological Perspectives on the Exodus Narratives, BBR Supplements, 2017, pp. 79–92
  • "He Said, He Said”: Repetition of the Quotation Formula in the Joseph Story and Other Biblical Narratives", JBL, 473-495
  • "Contradictions, Culture Gaps, and Narrative Gaps in the Joseph Story", JBL, 439-458
  • "The Book of the Wars of the Lord : Philology and Hydrology, Geography and Ethnography", JAOS, 563-591