BMH as Body Language : A Lexical and Iconographical Study of the Word BMH When Not a Reference to Cultic Phenomena in Biblical and Post-Biblical Hebrew

It is customarily assumed that the Hebrew word BMH denotes a "high place," first a topographical elevation and derivatively a cult place elevated either by location or construction.

This book offers a fresh, systematic, and comprehensive examination of the word in those biblical and post-biblical passages where it supposedly carries its primary topographical sense.

Although the word is used in this way in only a handful of its attestations, they are sufficiently numerous and contextually diverse to yield sound systematic, rather than ad hoc, conclusions as to its semantic content.

Special attention is paid to its likely Semitic and unlikely Greek cognates, pertinent literary, compositional, and text-critical matters, and the ideological and iconographical ambiance of each occurrence.

This study concludes that the non-cultic word BMH is actually bomet, carrying primarily (if not always) an anatomical sense approximate to English "back," sometimes expanded to the "body" itself.

The phrase bmty-rs (Amos 4:13, Micah 1:3, and CAT 1.4 VII 34; also Deut. 32:13a, Isa. 58:14ab-ba, and Sir.46:9b) derives from the international mythic imagery of the Storm-God: it refers originally to the "mythological mountains," conceptualized anthropomorphically, which the god surmounts in theophany, symbolically expressing his cosmic victory and sovereignty.

There is no instance where this word (even 2 Sam. 1:19a and 1:25b) is unequivocally a topographical reference.

The implications of these findings for identifying the bamah-sanctuary are briefly considered.

Claudia Camp and Andrew Mein are the editors. "Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement" is a book series that features original and creative approaches to the interpretation of Old Testament literature. "The Bible in the 21st Century" series, a part of "JSOTS", seeks to examine contemporary authoritative and cultural meanings of bibles by focusing on the processes of transmission, readership and actualization of biblical texts up to and including the twenty-first century.

The series explores issues related to contemporary culture and the place of the bible and religion within it.

Copenhagen International Seminar is also part of "JSOTS".