Rolf Furuli

Rolf Johan Furuli (born 19 December 1942) is a Norwegian linguist who was a lecturer in Semitic languages at the University of Oslo; he retired in 2011. Furuli has taught courses of Akkadian, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, Phoenician, Syriac, and Ugaritic at the University of Oslo and at The Norwegian Institute of Paleography and Historical Philology.

Life

Education

Furuli started his studies of New Babylonian chronology in 1984. In 1995 he graduated from the University of Oslo with a Master of Arts degree, with a thesis on the system of verbs in classical Hebrew. In 2005 he received his Doctor of Arts with a thesis on definite and indefinite verbs in the Hebrew Bible. In 2005, Furuli defended his doctoral thesis suggesting a new understanding of verbal system of Classical Hebrew.

In a review of the thesis, professor Elisabeth R. Hayes of Wolfson College, Oxford, wrote: "While not all will agree with Furuli's conclusions regarding the status of the ''wayyiqtol'' as an imperfective form, his well-argued thesis contributes towards advancing methodology in Hebrew scholarship." Old Testament lecturer David Kummerow stated that Furuli's research "has gone astray in that his methodology has assumed too much", adding that "the value of Furuli's research is not to be found in his 'new understanding' but rather in the helpful extended cataloguing of non-prototypical and construction-dependent functions of the verbal conjugations of iblical Hebrew. Professor John A. Kaltner said:

Teaching

From 1999 Furuli held a position as assistant professor at the University of Oslo, before retiring in 2011.

Religious affiliation

Furuli was a Jehovah's Witness and served as an elder for 56 years, also holding positions as a circuit overseer and a district overseer. In 2020, Furuli published a book entitled ''My Beloved Religion—and the Governing Body'' in which he maintains that the denomination's core doctrines and interpretations of biblical chronology are correct, but challenges the authority of the Jehovah's Witnesses' leadership. Subsequently, on 17 June 2020 he was disfellowshipped from the denomination.

Religious views

Furuli has defended the religious views of Jehovah's Witnesses, including their view that Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 607 BC rather than the broadly recognised dating of its destruction in 587 BC. In response, in a 2004 issue of ''Journal for the Study of the Old Testament'', Lester L. Grabbe, professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull, said of Furuli's study: "Once again we have an amateur who wants to rewrite scholarship. ... F. shows little evidence of having put his theories to the test with specialists in Mesopotamian astronomy and Persian history."

Works

Furuli has written works about Bible translation and biblical issues. He has translated a number of documents from Semitic languages and Sumerian into Norwegian.

Theses

* (362 pages).
* (504 pages).

Books

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* (334 pages).
* (201 pages).
* (251 pages)
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* (370 pages).
* (376 pages).
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* (475 pages).
* (413 pages).
* (502 pages).
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* (250 pages).
* (1550 pages).
* (363 pages).
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* (233 pages).

Articles

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Translations

* (translated from Akkadian into Norwegian).
* (translated from Ge'ez into Norwegian)
* (translated from Hebrew and Aramaic into Norwegian)
* (translated from Sumerian into Norwegian)
* (translated from Ge'ez into Norwegian)
* (translated from Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew into Norwegian)

See also

* Atra-Hasis
* Bible chronology
* ''Book of Enoch''
* Dead Sea scrolls
* Egyptian chronology
* Gilgamesh
* Hebrew verb conjugation
* ''New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures''
* Waw-consecutive

References

Sources

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Furuli, Rolf
1942 births
Living people
Linguists from Norway
Norwegian translators
Semiticists
Academic staff of the University of Oslo
Norwegian Christians
Former Jehovah's Witnesses
People disfellowshipped by the Jehovah's Witnesses