Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Henry,

You write:

>The general sociolinguistic situation of 1st century B.C. Palestine
>was such as would be expected to produce rather numerous bilinguals,
>trilinguals, and even quadrilingual speakers (at a functional level,
>though not necessarily at a native-speaker level).  

You have *no* evidence for bilingualism?

>The most obvious
>languages, knowledge of which might some bring benefits, were Aramaic
>Greek, and Latin; Hebrew can be added in for Jews.  And then there
>were other languages in a lesser degree of contact with the
>Palestinian population, but which a few might have found it to their
>benefit to know, such as languages spoken by visitors to Palestine --
>some of whom (such as non-Aramaic speaking inhabitants of the Parthian
>empire) might not know either Greek or Aramaic.  I'll leave aside such
>exotica as Galatian Celtic ;-)  But seriously, just open your Bible to
>Acts 2:8-11 for a capsule summary.

There is an enormous number of different language speakers who arrive at
the Vatican (and have arrived over the last 1500 years), but how many
Romans speak any of those languages?

>>> If most Jews were fluent in Hebrew, why did targums even exist in
>>> the first place?
> 
>> I don't deny that there were Aramaic communities. The Idumeans and
>> the numerous other peoples were brought under the Judaic yoke by
>> people like John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannaeus.
>
>>>> [...] so it would seem that the Hebrew and Aramaic communities
>>>> were quite distinct.
>
>So on the theory of little bilingualism, would there be a strong
>language barrier between say Galilean Jews and those of Judea proper?

Is there a strong language barrier between the speakers of Nynorsk and
Riksmal even though the one won't speak the language of the other? I've
already given the example of the person speaking Italian to the Spaniard
and being understood. (This is what I understand happened in England in the
centuries after the arrival of the Angles, Saxons, Friesians, and Jutes,
all speaking their own languages: in that case the final result was the
confusion of grammatical forms leading to the loss of most case endings and
gender markers.)

>I don't get that idea from the texts...

What idea do you get from the texts and which texts exactly would you like
to refer to?

>> 3) the use of theophoric references in Ezra indicates that it
>>    is secondary to 1 Esdras;
>
>>> the basic non-historicity of Ezra, and its derivation through two
>>> processes of first folklorization and then de-folklorization, is
>>> something which needs to be proven, not assumed.
>
>> There was no "process" of "folklorization": this is only your theory
>> and based on what, I don't know.  1 Esdras was simply written as it
>> was in a genre in which parts of Daniel, Esther, Judith, Tobit,
>
>But when you say that, you're basically assuming that there's _no real
>history at all_ in Ezra; if there is actually some historical content
>in Ezra (despite the obvious problems that people are familiar with),
>then your hypothesis would require first the folklorization of that
>history (writing in the wine, kings, and women), and then the
>defolklorization (writing out the wine, kings, and women).  I'm not
>saying it's impossible, just somewhat uneconomical.

How do you imagine any of the "folkloristic" texts was written? Perhaps
they weren't. The plain fact is we have 1 Esdras supported by Josephus and
Ezra supported by no-one before the second or third century. We also have
examples in literature of long and short versions of texts, some of which
scholars claim that the short version depends on the long one.

>> The assumption that Ezra has any historical value needs to proven,
>> not assumed
>
>Both the assertions "Ezra has no historical value whatsoever" and
>"Ezra has some solid historical underpinnings" need to be proved, not
>assumed.

That's why I'm content to work on the notion that 1 Esdras has priority
over Ezra.

>>> Anyway, here's a challenge -- compare 2 Samuel with the account of
>>> early Persian monarchs in the Shah-Nameh (both of these writings
>>> are attested in written form roughly about 800 years after the
>>> events they purport to describe), and tell me which one reads more
>>> like history?
>
>> (I don't have access to works such as the one you cite. Is it
>> available on the net?)
>
>Yes, at least the most famous parts are (Sohrab and Rustam and all
>that).  I haven't looked at it for a while (and then not
>"professionally"), but if I remember correctly, the Shahnameh's
>knowledge of the Arsacid dynasty is extremely hazy to almost
>nonexistent -- to say nothing of the Achaemenid.  

Is this an exercise in relativity? Why not do a comparison between Polybius
as a representative of historical writing and any Hebrew historical work in
the OT/HB?

>(I'll probably go to
>library soon and look it up, because now that my memory is jogged, I'm
>kind of intrigued on the subject, independent of this discussion.)  An
>e-text of a partial translation is on-line at various URLs, including
>http://www.persian.com/ferdowsi/home.html , but this must be rather
>condensed, considering that the original is said to be 60,000 verses
>of poetry.

Thanks for the link! I'll give it a good look when I have time. It's
definitely not aimed at being a work of history though.

>[Aramaic snippets in NT:]
>
>> They had no value in the discourse of the text. They could be
>> gibberish that tend to authenticate the "veracity" of the events by
>> impressing the reader.
>
>1) They can't be "gibberish"  because they're actual Aramaic words.

You miss the point. The listeners were Greek speakers and the average Greek
speaker in the Mediterranean knew nothing about Aramaic.

>2) Aramaic was not particularly a language identified as Jewish, and
>Greek readers would be even less likely to know Hebrew than Aramaic,

(They were both gibberish to the average Greek speaker.)

>so if the idea is to add impressively mysterious pseudo-verisimilitude
>(rather than an attempt to preserve the actual verbal form of a few of
>Jesus' utterances), why wasn't Hebrew used instead?

Ask the writers. (Sorry, but that's all I can say to that sort of question.)

>>> P.S. There's actually a large literature on language contact,
>>> bilingualism, and "code switching" which people could look up,
>>> rather than abstractly speculating and generalizing from anecdotes.
>
>> Please feel free to quote some of this literature relevantly for our
>> situation
>
>Actually, this isn't my main area at all, and I've only read a few of
>the classics in the field, a few introductory works, and a few odd
>papers here and there that happened to intersect other research
>interests -- so I could only really direct you to the aforesaid few
>classics and introductions.  But I know enough to realize that
>bilingual speakers and bilingual texts are distinct phenomena, and I
>would advise you to look into such matters if you intend to present
>your arguments in a serious academic paper.

Bilingualism seems to be something that interests both you and Peter. I was
interested in the relationship between the texts of 1 Esdras and Ezra. The
argument moved around to Hebrew and Aramaic, for which there are a
hellovalot of unsupportable stuff in the literature that should be
rewritten given the data from the DSS, but old habits die hard.


Yours,


Ian