Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Point taken about changes in English. So let's look at a different 
example which you just brought up when you wrote: "Compare the Latin 
of Ovid with that of Suetonius and tell me how much difference there 
actually is."

If I've got my facts right, Latin was the common language of the 
people of Rome in Ovid's time (late 1st century BCE) and in Suetonius' 
time (early 2nd century CE). The actual language didn't change much. 
So we conclude that Latin was the common language in Rome throughout 
the 1st century CE? Wrong! Latin was, I understand, largely displaced 
by Greek duing the early 1st century, but then revived (as a matter of 
public policy) towards the end of the century. If that left an effect 
on Latin, it was not apparently a profound one; on the contrary, 
perhaps Latin changed relatively little precisely because it was not 
in active use.

I think that you, Jack and others on this subject need to do a proper 
study of sociolinguistics before trying to come to conclusions on 
language use in Palestine or elsewhere in any past centuries. You have 
a good understanding of loan words etc, but there is a lot more than 
that to the subject.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re: targums (Peter)
Author:  mc2499 AT mclink.it at internet
Date:    17/05/1999 16:13


Dear Peter,

At 18.08 17/05/99 -0400, peter_kirk AT sil.org wrote:
>You wrote: "If we are dealing with texts from both periods, why can't 
>one generalise over the time between them?" Precisely because you 
>don't know what happened in between. Suppose you had documents in 
>English from Edward the Confessor and documents in English from 
>Richard II, but nothing in between.

You should know of course that there was an enormous difference between the 
English of the time of Edward the Confessor and that of Richard II: 
something must have happened. However between the DSS varieties and that of 
Murabba'at we don't have anything dramatic in the way of change between the 
"Mishnaic Hebrew" of the Copper scroll and MMT and that of the ben Kosebah 
texts.

>By your method, you would assume
>that English was used for the whole of the intervening period. But it 
>wasn't. Similarly, if the language situation in Maccabean and late 
>Roman times was similar, it doesn't mean that the time in between was 
>uniform.

This is the nice thing about linguistic continuity. If something happens 
linguistically at one time it's effects will remain in some way in a later 
time. You can look at English and identify the Old Norse influences on the 
language, the Norman French influences and the later French influences. You 
can say that words ending with "-age" that finish like village came in with 
the Norman French, but words like barrage came in much later. The effects 
of linguistic events can be seen despite not having them on record.

Despite small changes in time, I don't think such changes are visible 
between the two series of texts (perhaps I should say between the few 
exemplars of the Mishnaic dialect line and Murabba'at), so I think we can 
say that there have been no noticeable new influences.


Ian