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  • From: Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>
  • To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Psalm 2:12 and Proverbs 31 ben/bar
  • Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 06:39:59 -0500


>===== Original Message From Peter Kirk <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org> =====
>How often do English language poets use French words (that are otherwise
>in reasonably common use in English as loan words) to alternate with the
>original English words for artistic variation? That's the situation
>here, not an actual switch of language.
>
That's exactly what I had in mind. It often turns out that what qualifies as
poetic language in Hebrew is common vocabulary in other Semitic languages.
That's not to say that the writer is necessarily switching languages for
poetic effect, but words of different origin that make their way into a
language are a common source of synonymy. If you want to vary the words
you're
using, changing linguistic derivation is a good way to do it. I'm reminded
too
of Shakespeare's liberal use of the various English dialects that existed in
his time. It was a convenient way to create rhymes and other effects, because
it gave him so much more material to choose from. So, in this instance, I
don't think we'd be dealing with a complete change of language, but an
already
existing word available in the vocabulary of a Hebrew writer--perhaps an
Aramaic loan, but who really stops and thinks about where all of our words
come from? I'm not trying to say that no other explanation is possible or
that
there aren't good reasons to look for another explanation. My point is that I
don't think it's a serious objection that ben is used in one verse and bar in
another.
>
Liz wrote:

>To have "bar" you'd have to consider the poem
>
>to be late, Persian period probably is when the
>
>Aramaisms crept into the language. Levine dates
>
>P Persian primarily by the Aramaisms in P, such
>
>as degel. Dahood believes the poem is 10th century.

Dahood also tends to date things earlier in general, partly because he thinks
he's found philological evidence to get around the usual arguments. I'm not
trying to say anything about when the poem was written--only to point out
that
I don't think this is a substantive objection to reading bar either. One
interesting question that I think all of this raises is how Aramaic came to
have a different singular form from so many other Semitic languages, while
retaining the same stem in the plural forms. The phenomenon is ubiquitous in
Aramaic dialects, so it has to go back pretty far in the history of that
language. Is it something that could have found its way into other languages
as well? (HALOT notes that there is a questionable appearance of bar in a
Phoenician inscription, for whatever that's worth.) I'm just guessing here,
but at the same time I don't think we can rule out the possibility of an
isolated loanword earlier than the Persian period. I realize so-called
Aramaisms are commonly used as a criterion for dating, but unless we're going
to rule out all interaction between Syria and Palestine, I would hesitate to
date a poem (especially) on the basis of one Aramaic loanword.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics





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