Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 23.09 16/07/99 -0400, peter_kirk AT sil.org wrote:
>I'm not talking about bilingualism in isolated villages, but about 
>bilingualism in a multicultural city, Jerusalem, which actually had a 
>remarkably high level of education at least for the Jewish males among 
>its population. 

Dear Peter,

You can talk about whatever you like, but so far I only see speculation.
"Remarkably high level of education"? What, university degrees? Formal
education is something basically of this century. America even today has a
functional illiteracy rate of about 20%. Literacy and linguistic competence
are closely linked. Without formal education, literacy and general
linguistic competence drop radically. Education before the inception of
universal education was strictly class priviledged affair. Those who could
pay, either privately or as part of some organisation, became literate.
Linguistic competence, if it really is linked with literacy and priviledge
as is the case for the last two hundred years, then two thousand years ago
we have very little hope for either literacy or linguistic competence.

At the same time one needs reasonable stability to provide any sort of
education, yet Jerusalem had suffered continual wars from the time of
Pompey (when so many Hebrews were taken away for slavery that there was a
glut throughout the Mediterranean which dropped the bottom out of the slave
market and provided Rome with an enormous Jewish population), and
instability continued down to early Herodian times and restarted after is
death. Things got so bad politically under Archelaus that the Romans
occupied the country. Throughout this according to you Jewish males were
able to maintain a "remarkably high level of education" -- especially while
the whole population was being so heavily taxed. Jeremias says about the
time of Herod's death, he "left behind him an impoverished country and a
demoralized populace with weakened morality, resigned to misfortune."
("Jerusalem in the time of Jesus", p125) I see very little hope over the
hundred years after Pompey for a climate that would stimulate that
"remarkably high level of education".

>Your suggestion that the average people of Jerusalem, 
>or any other city, did not have full control of any language (I 
>suppose you suggest they used signs and grunts and perhaps a few 
>concrete nouns?) is not only scientifically indefensible but also 
>offensive. 

You have no evidence to justify your stuff, Peter. You are just being wishful.

Offensive, why? The good possibility doesn't appeal to you?

>Linguists studying the languages of remote tribes in modern 
>times, tribes who don't even know what it means to read and write, 
>have revealed that these supposedly primitive tribes speak fully 
>formed and highly complex languages. 

Wonderfully complex linguistic structures, yes. I think Djyrbal has seven
genders or something like that.

>How much more the people of 
>Jerusalem could properly speak their own particular dialects of Hebrew 
>and/or Aramaic.

Oh, Peter, stop repeating what you've got no evidence for.

>Actually in the city where I live there are many people who are barely 
>literate in their own mother tongue as they have received all of their 
>education in another language. Here the minority (but formerly 
>dominant) community has steadfastly refused to learn the language of 
>the majority, but the majority community have learned the language of 
>the minority, in some cases to a higher level than the language they 
>first learned as children. Now that the political climate has changed, 
>those who learned the minority language only are put at a 
>disadvantage. The situation may not be as different from Jerusalem as 
>you think.

Uh-huh.

>But, as Henry says, enough of anecdotal evidence. Look at the 
>literature.

All you have to do Peter, is provide some support for your romancing about
bilingualism. If you want to support the idea, then I gather you've looked
at the literature and I am just waiting for you to spill the beans.

I think you've got no evidence and that you are projecting your desires
back 2000 years. Just show me wrong. That's all you have to do. Till then,
all this talk about bilingualism is a non-productive waste of time.


Cheers,


Ian