On Rereading the “Kid in Milk” Inscription

Jacob Milgrom has presented an excellent overall evaluation of the problems posed by the passage in the Ugaritic text (see “You Shall Not Boil a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk”), commonly called “The Birth of the Gracious and Beautiful Gods.” This text has so often been connected to the biblical prohibition against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. We would like to add a different viewpoint—not the perspective of the philologist, who must try to determine what a text says, that is, how the words and phrases are to be understood; nor of the higher critic who must try to figure out what a text means, that is, how the text as a whole fits into the larger religious, cultural and literary milieu; but rather an interpretation from the standpoint of the lowly epigrapher.