Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 11.17 15/05/99 -0500, Jack Kilmon wrote:
>
>
>Ian Hutchesson wrote:
>> 
>> At 07.43 15/05/99 -0500, Jack Kilmon wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >Ian Hutchesson wrote:
>> >>
>> >> At 23.42 14/05/99 -0500, Jack Kilmon wrote:
>> >> >Targums are very Jewish, Dan.  They can be a paraphrase or a direct
>> >> >translation of a Hebrew text in the common language...Aramaic.
>> >>
>> >> Understand of course that this is only Jack's point of view
>> >
>> >And the view of the majority of ANE historians and linguists.
>> 
>> That's somewhat what the following phrase indicated, though I would not
>> want to be as precise as you have here.
>> 
>> >> -- and that of
>> >> many -- who want to believe that Hebrew was not a working language of
the
>> >> day, despite the fact that there were three dialects of Hebrew
evidenced at
>> >> Qumran, and a literature showing that Hebrew was seen as a spoken
language,
>> >> ie phonetic decisions were being made by the scribes. (A perusal of
>> >> Qimron's book on DSS Hebrew should show the living nature of the
>> >> phonological decisions of the scribes.)
>> >
>> >The view that Hebrew was not a working language of the day is
>> >no longer held by "many."  Hebrew was indeed a living language,
>> >developing dialects, among certain social pockets, including
>> >the religious elite and certainly the DSS people, whether the
>> >scrolls were from a sequestered group at Qumran, Jerusalem or
>> >perhaps even the temple itself.  It was not the evry day
>> >language of the common folk.
>> >
>> >If Hebrew was the common tongue of the common folk, there
>> >would be no Targums, would there?
>> 
>> Stop guessing, Jack.
>
>I did not "guess" the Leviticus and Job Targums in the DSS, Ian.

You are simply guessing that because there were two whole -- well, not
whole (there was so little of the Leviticus targum) -- targums found at
Qumran then there must have been need for almost every Jew to use Aramaic.
This is absurd, Jack. You have been clinging to these two targums (which
mean zippo as evidence for a common language) for too long and overlooking
what is just beyond your nose: most DSS were in fact in Hebrew.

>explain them.  I did not "guess" the large body of Aramaic epigraphic
>evidence from this period with only ONE in Hebrew.

Here we go again. Ever thought about Statistics 101, Jack? You know the
sample you are attempting to use is so small that it is meaningless for
your purposes. Look at the full body of DSS texts. Hebrew represents most
text types, while Aramaic is quite restricted. There are -- to repeat --
four Hebrew texts to every one Aramaic text.

>> The logic gets nowhere and is simply tendentious.
>
>Only to you, my friend.

Try and spell it out for yourself, Jack. There are two targums. Therefore
one can say... ummm... well, there was need for two targums, and... ummm...
therefore Aramaic must have been the common language for why else are there
targums?... ummm... You have actually never fleshed out this stuff so that
it made sense in itself. You have had to assume that everyone basically
agrees with you for you to not even examine the lack of coherence to the
argument.

>> You
>> saw how much Aramaic was around in the DSS corpus and as you have no other
>> window into the period you can't make any claims about the
>> representativeness of that collection. It is the only one we've got and it
>> shows Hebrew texts at a majority of 4 to 1.
>
>This is too simplistic an analysis of the language usage of the DSS. 

Yes, a thousand texts and less than two hundred Aramaic ones. That's pretty
simple. Three dialects of Hebrew. Two of Aramaic.

>I see 20% of the texts in Aramaic as very significant.  

Well, yes. Perhaps a fifth of the population used Aramaic.

>I view the targums
>in the collection as significant.  

We keep coming back to this. Why are the targums so significant, Jack, when
the War Rules, Community Rules, Halakhic documents, Zadokite Fragments,
Sabbath Songs, all the major texts in the corpus aren't as a means of
identifying a working language of the common Jewish folk?

>I see a Qumran Hebrew laced with
>Aramaic influence and judge that significant.  

You mean you want to say that the dialects of Hebrew being used in the DSS
showed more similarities with Aramaic than the majority of biblical Hebrew
texts? Anything more I think will be going beyond the information
available. Where two languages meet there is often an exchange of
linguistic materials.

>Your analysis could be used for the texts of the Vatican Library to claim 
>that the common language of medieval Europe was Latin.

1) the Vatican Library part of the analogy needs to be shown to be
appropriate and you *can't* do so; 2) we have enough external evidence to
say that your proposal regarding Latin is simply not true. You don't have
the knowledge to state part 2, and you are only hoping that the blatant
error in the analysis regarding Latin would rub off on your interpretation
of the situation. You just don't know, Jack. Admit it.
 
>> One angle you have never contemplated was that Hebrew was the working
>> language of Jerusalem and with the conquest of Samaria under John Hyrcanus
>> and the "forced conversion" of the Samaritans there was a need for Aramaic
>> translations.
>
>Both Qumran Targums post date this period.  Job is Herodian.

That would mean that one should expect some Aramaic texts in circulation at
least to satisfy the needs of the Samaritan converts from the time of JH,
right?

(And are you using the too accurate to be serious palaeographic sequences
proposed by the cavalier F.M.Cross who has set up sequences that are more
accurate than any other period seriously dealt with by palaeography with
far fewer exemplars?)

>> We have at least three situations to contemplate in the few centuries
>> before the turn of the era rather than your guessing. 1) Aramaic was the
>> common language; 2) Hebrew was the common language; and 3) the language use
>> was heterogeneous. I tend toward the second (at least for Jerusalem), but
>> then I'm biased by the DSS, though you will note that the Hasmoneans tended
>> to issue coins that had both Hebrew and Greek inscriptions, to the basic
>> exclusion of Aramaic.
>
>C'mon.  These numismatic inscriptions were in Palaeohebrew...a symbol
>of nationalistic fervor following the Maccabaean revolt.  Ben Kosiba
>did the same.

STOP GUESSING, Jack. You are saying things that sooth the conscience and
have no evidence to back them up. This may have been fine when we didn't
have the overwhelming evidence of the DSS to totally undermine this sort of
unsupported hypothesizing, but it's not justifiable now.
 
>> >> So it is unlikely that there was a simplistic situation in which one
could
>> >> describe Aramaic as the "common language".
>> >
>> >Well, we have been down this road before.
>> 
>> And you haven't added anything to the argument this time either.
>> 
>> Jack, you persist in this belief of yours that actually has no evidence to
>> support it. You've seen that both Aramaic and Hebrew were used during the
>> time of Shimeon ben Kosebah -- as well as Greek -- so you can't draw any
>> conclusions from that information, as the texts were of all text types.
>
>Ben Kosiba in one of his Aramaic letters found at Nahal Hever states
>that he is writing it in Aramaic because he is not comfortable with Hebrew
>yet. You call that "no evidence?"

This is overlooking the land contracts and other common people's documents
in Hebrew. One doesn't have such documents in a language that is
unintelligible for them.

>> Josephus used Hebrew, though you try the redefinition of "language of our
>> fathers" to mean Aramaic, which doesn't really make sense as the "language
>> of our fathers". You might also contemplate the fact that the writer of
>> 2Macc (15:36) talks of Aramaic as the Syrian language, ie clearly not that
>> of Jerusalem.
>
>Josephus consistently refers to Aramaic words as "the Hebrew Language"
>as does Luke. 
>I don't think that Luke can make it any clearer that Aramaic was the
>spoken language.  In Acts 1:19, he says:  "And it was known to all the
>dwellers at Jerusalem, insomuch as that field is called, TH IDIA
>DIALEKTW AUTWN,
>*IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE* Haceldama, that is to say, the field of blood."
>Haceldama...haqel dema...is unambiguously ARAMAIC!  

Escaping into NT stuff is no use at all. You have no idea of what the Lucan
source was for the information. But you would probably be right to assume
that the writer(s) had little or no knowledge of the original languages
involved.

>You continue to ignore the Epigraphic evidence of this period,
>overwhelmingly Aramaic, with but *one* Hebrew tomb inscription.  

This seems to be misrepresenting the situation. Please define the period
your statistic refers to.

>You also ignore the genre of the DSS texts in so far as which texts are 
>in Hebrew (Biblical and "sectarian") 

Songs, psalter, rules and regulations (you know, Jack, things to govern
everyday life), horoscopes, commentaries, a letter, prayers, poetry -- just
about every sort of text you could imagine.

>and those texts that are directed 
>to an Aramaic speaking audience...like Genesis Apocryphon, the Targums, etc.

What is the "etc." exactly, Jack? Your list otherwise is pretty thin. New
Jerusalem? TLevi? TNaphtali? TQahat? All pretty much elitist stuff,
wouldn't you think, Jack? I would have thought that the range of text types
in Aramaic was quite narrow, not really representative of a full-blown
literature at all.


Ian