Chapter 10 - THE VOCABULARY AND NEUROLOGY OF ORIENTATION: THE UGARITIC AND HEBREW EVIDENCE

Summary

So engrossed do we become in arcane and highly metaphysical questions in our analysis of ancient traditions that we may easily remain blind to the obvious, and fail to see features which may be of some significance, are staring us in the face, and yet remain unseen by their very familiarity. The present discussion may appear to treat matters of no importance at all, and yet they not only determine all that we may say in consequence, but also root the culture we are examining into its very foundations in the structure of the human mind and body.

I shall discuss here four Ugaritic words and their semantic fields: between them they encompass the entire experience of time and space as evidenced in the surviving texts in the Ugaritic language, and thus serve to locate all cultural experience and activity within an orderly framework, such as we understand in speaking of a culture's ‘cosmology’. Their cognates also occur in Hebrew, at the same time allowing a window into interesting aspects of Hebrew cosmology and religious psychology, and providing a useful control upon our understanding of the Ugaritic evidence.

The broad principles of our concern have been examined by E. Lyle (1990), who suggested a useful term to identify our topic: ‘canonical orientation’. The term is the more useful in recognizing that different orientations may obtain for different practical purposes; we are dealing here, if you will, with what may also be called ‘ritual orientation’, as observed in cultic contexts, which are concerned with the location of the worshipper (priestly officiant) with reference to cardinal points, celestial loci, the home of the gods, and so forth. Other terminologies will also be noted below.