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  • From: "Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>
  • To: 'Trevor Peterson' <speederson AT erols.com>, Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: SV: SV: SV: QohSV: Qoheleth
  • Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 08:31:30 +0200


All good questions, which I share. Only the answers cause problems. There
unfortunately were many exiles.
Thomas

> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Trevor Peterson [SMTP:speederson AT erols.com]
> Sendt: 22. maj 2001 17:46
> Til: Biblical Hebrew
> Emne: Re: SV: SV: QohSV: Qoheleth
>
> > [Thomas L. Thompson]
> > I am not at all sure I can identify a very specific CBH. On the
> > other hand LBH seems to have a string of characteristics that Hurvitz
> and
> > others have convinced me exist as a particular form of the language and
> > which do not exist in Iron Age inscriptions.
>
> That's interesting, because I've usually seen them described the other way
> around (by establishing the continuity of CBH first, then addressing how
> LBH differs). I'm not as familiar with inscriptions, though. Are there
> ways in which LBH differs from the inscriptions but is similar to supposed
> CBH texts?
>
> > However, CBH has not been shown
> > to be "not-late" and thus to be chronologically datable on the basis of
> > forms alone.
>
> Hmm . . . how would one go about showing that it is "not-late?" I would
> think, especially since you question the suggestion of Aramaisms as
> evidence of LBH, that you must rely on characteristics that are internal
> to Hebrew. How would you show that LBH is late, if you can't show that
> CBH is "not-late?"
>
> > I do not find the use of explanatory metaphors or scenarios
> > such as schools or pubs useful, before we can first establish the
> > classification of CBH. The distinction has to be clearly established
> before
> > it can be adequately explained. If we could show that CBH is never late,
> we
> > would be a lot farther in our effort to assert a useful chronology.
>
> So what would you do with the possibility of a "classicist" trend at
> various literary stages? We've seen it with other languages--that writers
> attempt to write in an archaic style. What if we avoid concluding that
> CBH is earlier because some Hebrew Classicists at Qumran were being
> eccentric?
>
> [snipped]
> >
> > Here, humility needs to take over. My problem is that I doubt we
> > have either chronological development in our biblical texts or the
> ability
> > to observe such development within the biblical corpus were such to
> exist.
>
> Then, when you say that you believe the traditions are much more ancient,
> are you saying that they would have been oral, or that the writers would
> have used them in their own words, or that they would intentionally update
> the wording when they incorporated them, or am I missing something?
>
> > We have more than a millennium of text production by the shortest
> > calculations and only 2 (or perhaps 2 1/2) chronological steps clearly
> > identified.
>
> I think I see your point. So, if we hypothesize that the pre-exilic
> material was brought into some degree of linguistic uniformity by its
> writers, we would have to wonder why the same thing did not happen in a
> later period. But if the distinction between CBH and LBH could be
> established, wouldn't at least one plausible model be that someone
> somewhere along the line chose to massage the texts into uniformity, but
> that the same thing did not happen again in a later period? Another
> possibility I could see is that the language actually did remain fairly
> stable (at least literarily) over centuries until something major happened
> to upset that stability (possibly an "exile" of sorts, possibly something
> else).
>
> > I can not silence my own quandery that if we could finally
> > distinguish sharply between CBH and LBH so that CBH were always earlier
> than
> > LBH, why would one need to date that transition sometime in the 7/6th
> > century rather than in the 6/5th, 5/4th or 4th/3rd or 3rd/2nd or later.
>
> Another good point. Perhaps we'd need to look for a historical event that
> would have shaken things up enough to cause such significant changes in
> the literary forms of the language. But I would guess that most of the
> reason for picking that time is an acceptance of *the* Exile as the
> pivotal event that the Hebrew Bible makes of it.
>
> Trevor Peterson
> CUA/Semitics
>
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