Unburning Fame : Horses, Dragons, Beings of Smoke, and Other Indo-European Motifs in Ugarit and the Hebrew Bible

"In this book, Ola Wikander studies Indo-European influences in the literary world of the Hebrew Bible and the Ugaritic texts, tracing a number of poetic motifs and other concepts originating in the Indo-European linguistic milieux of the greater Ancient Near East (e.g., among Anatolians and in Indo-European traditions transmitted through Mitanni)--and possibly at earlier, reconstructible levels--as they influenced what became Northwest Semitic poetic culture. The methodology used is what Wikander refers to as "etymological poetics": the study of poetic and mythological structures as transmitted through specific lexical material. One of the motifs discussed is that of destroying heat being used as a metaphor for forgetting important cultural memories and, consequently, of the resilience of such memories being expressed as resistance to burning. Thus, bringing these ancient connections between Indo-European and Northwest Semitic culture into the open is, in a sense, showing their "Unburning Fame"--