Rolf Furuli

Rolf Furuli
Born	Rolf Johan Furuli
Education	Doctor of Arts
Alma mater	University of Oslo
Occupation	University teacher, writer
Employer	University of Oslo
Position held	Emeritus (University of Oslo)

Rolf Johan Furuli (born 19 December 1942) is a professor emeritus^[1][2] in Semitic languages at the University of Oslo;^[3] 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.^[4]

Education[]

Furuli started his studies of New Babylonian chronology in 1984.^{[citation needed]} He became a magister artium in 1995 and doctor artium in 2005.^[5] 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."^[6] 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 [biblical Hebrew]".^[7]

Religious views[]

Furuli has defended the religious views of Jehovah's Witnesses while a member of the denomination,^[8][9] 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.^[10] 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."^[11] 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.^[12] Subsequently, he was disfellowshipped from the denomination.^[13]

Writings[]

Furuli has written works about Bible translation and biblical issues. He has translated a number of documents from Semitic languages and Sumerian into Norwegian.^[14]

• 1995 – Imperfect consecutive and the Verbal system of Biblical Hebrew (thesis, magister artium, University of Oslo).
• 1997 – The Problem of Induction and the Hebrew verb in Elie Wardini (ed.) Built on solid Rock. ISBN 82-7099-283-6
• 1999 – The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation with a Special Look at the New World Translation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. ISBN 0-9659814-4-4
• 2000 – Modern models and the study of dead languages Motskrift NTNU, Trondheim pp. 83–86. (in Norwegian)
• 2001 – The study of new religious movements with a stress on the mental health of Jehovah's Witnesses (with Leon Groenewald and Johan Nerdrum) Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening, 2, pp. 123–128. (in Norwegian)
• 2001 – Gilgamesh and Atrahasis two Babylonian Heroes (with and Tor Åge Bringsværd)
• 2002 – Science and Bible translation—"Christianizing" and "mythologizing" of the Hebrew text of the Bible. ISBN 82-994633-1-9 (in Norwegian and Danish)
• 2003 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 1: Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews. ISBN 82-994633-3-5^[15]
• 2003 – The book of Enoch. ISBN 82-525-5177-7 (translated from Ge'ez to Norwegian)
• 2004 – The Dead Sea Scrolls. ISBN 82-525-5199-8 (translated from Hebrew and Aramaic)
• 2004 – The NWT's translation of the Hebrew verbal system with particular stress on the waw consecutive in Anthony Byatt and Hal Flemings (eds.) 'Your Word is Truth': Essays in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (1950, 1953), pp. 221-241. ISBN 0-9506212-6-9
• 2005 – The verbal System of Classical Hebrew An Attempt to Distinguish Between Semantic and Pragmatic Factors in L. Ezard and J. Retsø (eds.) Current Issues in the Analysis of Semitic Grammar and Lexicon I, pp. 205–31. ISBN 3-447-05268-6
• 2006 – A New Understanding of the Verbal System of Classical Hebrew—An attempt to distinguish between pragmatic and semantic factors. ISBN 82-994633-4-3
• 2006 – Sumerian Writings. ISBN 82-525-6213-2 (translated from Sumerian into Norwegian)
• 2007 – The Neo-Babylonian Chronology and the Cuneiform Tablet VAT 4956 in Forschung – Bibel – Artefakte, pp. XIV-XVIII. ISBN 978-3-9811529-2-0
• 2007 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 2: Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian Chronology. ISBN 978-82-994633-6-2
• 2008 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 1: Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews, revised edition. ISBN 82-994633-5-1
• 2008 – Kebra Nagast. ISBN 978-82-525-6704-5 (translated from Ge´ez into Norwegian)
• 2008 – Baal the King of the Gods in Ugarit. ISBN 978-82-525-6590-4 (translated from Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew into Norwegian)
• 2009 – How do Jehovah's Witnesses think? A Witness describes the faith in H. K. Ringnes and H. K. Sødal (eds.) Jehovah's Witnesses An interdisciplinary Study. ISBN 978-82-15-01453-1 (in Norwegian)
• 2011 – The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation with a Special Look at the New World Translation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Second edition, Stavern, Norway: Awatu Publishers. ISBN 978-82-92978-02-3
• 2012 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 1: Persian Chronology and the Length of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews, Second edition. ISBN 978-82-92978-03-0
• 2012 – Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian Chronology Compared with the Chronology of the Bible, Volume 2: Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian Chronology, Second edition. ISBN 978-82-92978-04-7
• 2017 – When Was the Book of Daniel Written? A Philological, Linguistic, and Historical approach (331 pages)^[16]
• 2018 – The Tetragram—Its history, Its use in the new Testament, and its pronunciation, Part One (250 pages). ISBN 978-82-92978-09-2
• 2018 – Foreword in William Kelly (ed.) Are Jehovah's Witnesses False Prophets? A Thorough Investigation with Rebuttal, pp. 8-11. ISBN 978-15-48806-50-7
• 2019 – Can We Trust the Bible? With Focus on the Creation Account, the Worldwide Flood, and the Prophecies (1550 pages).^[17]
• 2020 – The Fallacy of Prophetic Perfect – With Translation of Verses From the Prophets (363 pages). ISBN 978-82-92978-10-8
• 2020 – My Beloved Religion – and the Governing Body.^[12] ISBN 978-82-92978-12-2

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

Sources[]