good evening getting a whopper very much a conversations where i'm pleased to welcome to the program to our people that are involved in a unique and interesting emerging new institution in american culture and that being the institute for semitic studies and i'd like to introduce the guests and get right into the conversation on this christmas eve with some discussion of this because it does have relevancy to that root of western civilization that we're celebrating on this christmas eve and if i may have my immediate right introduce the director of the institute that being  is the region out of which the religious traditions that were celebrating his christmas evolved it's important we have an understanding of that because it's a rich tradition that we all need to understand better you share a little bit about the incident as your idea and when did you get started with and so  spend some time together to exchange ideas to study together and to learn from each other prompts during the time when they are on sabbatical or maybe branch became egyptian and then another brand he says became part of semitic and broke off and went into the asian side and western asia and there it developed into whether they came from africa moved into asia they came back into africa all these things are hypothetical but it's more than apparent it's virtually certain that they are a language family and really should be studied all the way up to the east and so the alphabet is really saw fundamental and you cannot really appreciate western civilization without understanding books and writing transmission of information through writing yeah and all this writing is based on the alphabet and all language of the kingdom that is the jewish people who spoke hebrew language and growth in the hebrew language from the time of maybe even before the time of king david all the way to about five hundred eighty seven when the first temple was destroyed element in western civilization yeah right quite a contrary you know i was going to say that these developments are all going on at the core areas of the mediterranean and meanwhile there would have been a whole cultural linguistic determined by religious politics by that i mean it was determined by they need to study the hebrew bible and therefore those who studied the semitic languages were only interested in that dimension of semitic languages the  much romanticism too much internecine fighting between the different scholarly groups and too much desire on the part of some groups have nothing to do with other groups or serial or just saying look we're not biblical scholars we're going to go off in our own department that's already there so it's not the whole thing became fragmented and now it's got to be brought back together and had religious political with me is perhaps one or two of the most important side by books from the late second temple period many people do not know that outside the bible let's say between cultures cultures are are really what we're trying to get at although many scholars who work for us will stop with the languages that's that's the be all and end all of their interest but my vision for this institute certainly extends beyond that to making a scientific reconstruction ancient history by means of language and other tools that we will have archaeological what an incredibly interesting story and what the proto lie the reason why we're emphasizing language so much to begin with e who is the founding director of the institute as well princeton new jersey i want to thank you were very very much pedro some of this rich culture tradition which might help illuminate this christmas hanukkah season and the season of holiday in this in new york city happy to been able