Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Dear Paul,

Thank you for the Philippines analogy, even if Ian doesn't think much 
of it (he might prefer the following as I am tending to support his 
general hypothesis). But which language is like English and which like 
Tagalog and the others? The situation may be more like here in 
Azerbaijan, where the common people speak Azerbaijani (but with 
significant Russian influence after 200 years of close contact) and 
the elite tend to speak Russian (with relatively little Azerbaijani 
influence as this is a standardised international language - for that 
reason we do not see the analogy of Jack's 'If Hebrew was the "Lingua 
Franca" of Palestine and Aramaic an "official" language, there would 
be Hebrew influence on 1st century Aramaic as a course of natural 
linguistic drift.') However, after a political change, official 
documents are now in Azerbaijani and Russian is on the wane.

On this analogy, Hebrew is like Azerbaijani, the continuing language 
of the common people (or at least of a significant part of them), and 
Aramaic is like Russian, the language which the elite came to use 
while they were part of an empire but which is losing ground in a 
newly independent state with an ideological commitment to the "mother 
tongue" of the ethnic group. Here we get situations like the rabbi who 
asked his maid for help with Hebrew: he, from the elite, was trying to 
write in Hebrew to be "politically correct" but actually didn't know 
it as well as his maid from the "common people". This is of course 
another guess, but one that looks more plausible to me than the 
opposite one that the common people spoke Aramaic and the elite 
Hebrew. The languages of common peoples tend to be much more stable 
than those of elites, which can shift according to political winds.

But then I think this whole rather childish argument (excepting your 
contribution) is flawed by trying to generalise over a period of more 
than 200 years (from the Maccabees to Josephus) of political flux, in 
which the fates of different languages at least among elite groups 
may have changed very rapidly. The participants ahve started writing 
of "the first century" without defining which of the two first 
centuries they are writing about and quoting authors from both. If 
you tried to generalise about the language situation here over the 
last 200 years, you would be wasting your time!

Peter Kirk

PS: Jack wrote "ALL biblical texts were in Hebrew. LXX aside." but 
earlier in the same posting "TJob and TLev are LITERAL translations in 
the COMMON tongue." This is a clear contradiction. Either define 
"biblical texts" as "biblical texts in the original", which does not 
help to answer the question, or accept translations into Greek and 
Aramaic equally, in which case the initial statement is incorrect.


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________ Subject: Re: targums
Author:  zellmer AT cag.pworld.net.ph at internet 
Date:    15/05/1999 16:35


Ian Hutchesson wrote:

> At 11.17 15/05/99 -0500, Jack Kilmon wrote: 
>
> >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.

Ian,

IMHO, it is *you* that has the faulty logic here.  You are taking a body of 
evidence
from a single community and generalizing it for the entire "nation".  While 
it m
ay
be
(and quite likely is) the case that the Qumran community used Hebrew 
extensively
,
maybe even almost exclusively, that in no way demands that the community was 
a 
representative of the populus as a whole.  And, were the Qumran community 
primarily
Hebrew, the presence of 20% Aramaic *is very* significant.

You're going to say that I'm guessing, but you keep failing to acknowledge 
that 
you,
too, are guessing and generalizing without specific evidences.  In fact, you 
are
ignoring the fact that the targums were indeed written, and written for some 
purpose.
If Hebrew was so predominant in the populus in general, then please explain 
the 
need
for Aramaic targums?

As far as Jack's Latin illustration, that pattern has the support of holding 
tru
e
in
other cultures that had an "elitist" language.  For example, if one were to 
look
at
the legal and educational texts of the Philippines, one would conclude that 
English is
by far the predominate language.  The fact of the matter is that, while 
almost a
ll
the
people know some English, few are comfortable with it, and even fewer speak 
it a
s
their primary language.  Both of you are guessing, but Jack is the only one 
of 
you
that at least admits it.

Paul
--
Paul and Dee Zellmer, Jimmy Guingab, Geoffrey Beltran 
Ibanag Translation Project
Cabagan, Isabela, Rep. of Philippines

zellmer AT cag.pworld.net.ph




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