Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jack Kilmon <jkilmon AT historian.net>]

Ian Hutchesson wrote:
> 
> 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.

Ian, most DSS texts were in Hebrew because they were either biblical
texts
or they were "internal" texts and these DSS people used Hebrew.  It only
shows that the DSS people spoke and utilized Hebrew.  You, on the other
hand are ignoring not only the genre of the Aramaic texts but the
influence of Aramaic on Qumran Hebrew.  Those texts designed for a
common audience are in the common language.
Aramaic Apocalypse, 4Q246
Aramaic Levi 1Q21, 4Q 213,214, 4Q541
The Enochian literature:
        4Q201,202,204
        Giants 1Q23, 2Q26, 6Q8, 4Q530,531,532
Genesis Apocryphon 1Q20
Job Targum 11Q10, 4Q157
Leviticus Targum 4Q157
New Jerusalem 1Q32, 2Q24, 4Q554, 5Q15, 11Q18
Pseodo-Daniel 4Q243-245
Visions of Amram 4Q543-547
Zodiac 4Q318

Don't look at the whole corpus and dismiss 20% of the texts...look
at the audience for the texts in Aramaic.  When you do this you
can pursue a more interesting question...why would a "sequestered"
isolated, Hebrew speaking sect produce texts whose audience are
the common folk.  It seems to suggest some form of public liturgy,
a practice not normally assigned to Essenes.

 
> >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.

This is a deceased equine you are flagellating here.  Biblical texts
would be written in Hebrew regardless of what the common language was!
Hebrew Biblical texts are not statistically significant regarding
a common language.  These texts make up 29% of the whole.  The sectarian
texts would be in the sect's working Hebrew dialect. These make up
33% of the texts. Now compare the 20% Aramaic texts to the whole of
non-sectarian texts and the number is extremely significant.
Statistics 101 (first period), common sense 101 (second period).

> 
> >> 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.

We are not just talking about the Targums, Ian, we are talking about
a LARGE percentage of the texts OUTSIDE of the biblical texts...texts
composed for a COPMMON audience, not Bible study or internal discourse.

> 
> >> 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.

And a significant Aramaic influenced Hebrew!  Now just who do you think
were the intended audience for those Aramaic texts?

> 
> >I see 20% of the texts in Aramaic as very significant.
> 
> Well, yes. Perhaps a fifth of the population used Aramaic.

This whole paradigm of corresponding the linguistic distribution
of the texts to the linguistic distribution of the general populace
is specious and unsupported.

> 
> >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?

Those texts define the working language of the sect, not the general
populace.

> 
> >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.

Yet the Aramaic of the time shows little Hebrew influence...and just
why do these two languages meet?

> 
> >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;

It is an appropriate analogy.  We have an Italian-speaking religious
elite who uses Latin in their correspondence and considered it the
ONLY language for the bible and their "sectarian" writings. They used
Latin in their liturgy.  As a child I had to use a "targum" (missal)
to understand what was going on.

> 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.

What "external evidence" would that be?

> 
> >> 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?)

Well, Frank Cross and I had the same teacher.  The C-14 tests seem to
back
him up.


> >> 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.

The coins were in palaeohebrew, Ian.  Do you therefore want to claim
that palaeohebrew was the common script?

> 
> >> >> 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.


And duplicates in Aramaic. MOST of the letters were in Aramaic!

> One doesn't have such documents in a language that is
> unintelligible for them.

Most historians are aware of the attempt to revive Hebrew by Ben Kosiba.
Simeon himself admits he is more at ease in Aramaic.

> 
> >> 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.

Of course not. They, like Josephus, are only contemporary authors.


> 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.

Actually, since the Lukan scribe more accurately translates Aramaic
idiom in Greek it suggests strongly a competence in Aramaic.

> 
> >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.

The Herodian period through which Aramaic was resumed after the forced
hellenization.  The semitic epigraphy of this period is almost
exclusively
Aramaic but for ONE Hebrew inscription, the Beni Hezer tomb.

> 
> >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.

All this shows is that Aramaic was the primary language of many pietists
as well.  You have to come up with more than mere refutation since the
only language considered "the Hebrew language" by 1st century authors
(gospelers and Josephus) is Aramaic.

Jack

-- 
______________________________________________

taybutheh d'maran yeshua masheecha am kulkon

Jack Kilmon
jkilmon AT historian.net

http://www.historian.net