Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Henry,

I get the idea that you are arguing for the sake of arguing and will never
support what you are saying with anything one would call facts. All you
need to do is give evidence from the epoch that indicates bilingualism. It
won't help to attempt to refute my indications of the use of Hebrew as an
active language. You actually need to make a case. You haven't done so in
all these posts.

[Peter says:]
>> I would suppose that Pilate spoke in Greek

[Henry responds:]
>Thanks for nicely summarizing (it would be a little safer to say that
>"many" in the audience would have understood the basics, instead of
>"most").

It negates your quibble about no interpreters. I have already granted that
there would almost certainly have been a few people who through active
needs had some bilingual skills. Yet the situation itself of Pilate talking
directly to a Jerusalem crowd is a literary event, not a realistic one: it
doesn't go like this...

* Crowd seeks someone to speak to Pilate in some language he would
  understand and that person asks Pilate to release a prisoner
* Pilate responds eloquently to the crowd, who gather around the
  interpreter who explains the significance.
* The chief priests speak to the crowd reminding them of Barabbas
* The crowd gets their interpreter to ask for Barabbas's release
* Pilate again responds eloquently, "not Jesus"
* The crowd's interpreter tells them Pilate's question
* The crowd (etc)

Obviously this doesn't makemoving reading. You should forget the argument
about interpreters.

>>> Just look at the numerals from one to three -- the number "two"
>>> would be totally incomprehensible between Hebrew and Aramaic
>>> speakers unless it had been specifically learned (i.e. unless
>>> bilingualism was acquired with respect to that word), while the
>>> number "three" could only be understood in the light of a working
>>> knowledge of corrrespondences between Hebrew and Aramaic (i.e.,
>>> that Hebrew [sh] often corresponds to Aramaic [t]).  Consider 2
>>> Kings 19:26ff.
>
>(I notice you didn't address, much less refute, the point about the
>rather limited mutual comprehensibility of even the numerals 1 to 3.)

The only things I can remember saying in Arabic, Finnish, Turkish,
Hungarian, Spanish, French, German and Greek are the first few numbers.
This seems to be desperation on your part.

>>> It may not be obvious from the abridged translation, but the
>>> Shahnameh, if I remember correctly, is actually supposed to be a
>>> history from the creation to the Arab conquest according to native
>>> Persian sources (written up by a court poet, not an epic folk
>>> bard), and the Khosrows are historical monarchs of the Sassanid
>>> dynasty.
>
>> I see now more the logic of your comparison. I don't however see it
>> as too helpful in the general discourse.
>
>Well, by and large the Shahnameh is what you claim the Bible to be, 

Manifestations of folk traditions can be very different, but usually very
interesting in themselves.

>so
>I find it interesting to compare the two; however, I agree that this
>doesn't directly prove anything about the Bible in any strict sense.
>
>> And Josephus constantly referred to where he got the information,
>> indicating that he was quoting Polybius of Megalopolos or Nicholaus of
>> Damascus or any of the several other historians he had available.
>
>The Bible simply doesn't contain much writing that was ever intended
>to be historical in the Greek sense; 

But historical in any sense?

>usually the Biblical authors and
>editors are more interested in the effects of events on the material
>and spiritual wellbeing of the Jews, rather than in chronicling
>political-military history for its own sake.  

This is your hypothesis, but does it reflect the writers' realities? How do
you test it? Are the events written about the events that the writers
experienced or historical parallels?

>If you find this
>attitude to be uncongenial and irritating, then there are plenty of
>texts to study that were written in a proper historical frame of mind.

Perhaps you should try to justify your musings, rather than present them
unsupported.

>>> But anyway, inscriptions mentioning Pontius Pilate and Nazareth
>>> have turned up in the past few decades.
>
>> what date are you referring to regarding Nazareth?  There are no
>> such indications from the first century to my knowledge.
>
>I really can't tell you anything about it (briefly saw a mention of it
>when flipping through BAR or something), but a quick web-search turned
>up a reference at http://qumran.com/qumran/_qumrandisc/00000180.htm 
>Maybe someone on the list knows more.
>
>> Legal documents need to be clearly understood by the participants.
>> They are more important than the hagglings in a market.
>
>But less important in establishing that Hebrew was commonly used in a
>wide range of contexts in everyday life.

Have you got anything more important to use in establishing that Aramaic
was commonly used in a wide range of contexts in everyday life?

The problem is you haven't supplied anything. *You make no case at all for
Aramaic.* You merely say Hebrew can't have been a productive language. You
consistently refuse to produce any *evidence* for your hypotheses.

>>>> I guess Pontius Pilate was supposed to have been speaking either
>>>> Hebrew or Aramaic -- or was the crowd able to understand Latin?
>
>>> Actually, Pontius Pilate would most probably know Greek (as Roman
>>> gentleman generally did),
>
>> (Is there anything Roman gentlemanly about Pilate?)
>
>Actually, I think I would keep one hand on my money-purse and the
>other hand hovering above the hilt of my dagger when dealing with most
>Romans of the political/office-holding classes.  But you knew
>perfectly well what I meant (and chose to pointlessly quibble about
>tangential terminology anyway).

That was the virtue of parentheses. You should use them more often.

>> Henry was arguing that because there was no mention of interpreters,
>> there probably weren't.
>
>My point was that there doesn't seem to be strikingly more explicit
>mention of interpreters than of bilingualism, so no particular
>conclusions can be drawn from an "argument from silence".

We have written documents from the period, copied by scribes this is the
closest we have ever been to the linguistic community we would like to deal
with. Yet there is nothing in those documents to suggest bilingualism. Non
hai capito? There are no bilingual exercises, no student copies of second
language texts, no bilingual documents, no comments in another language on
a document. 

There is just a strong presence of an until recently unknown dialect of
Hebrew that cannot be understood as a liturgical language (remember, the
biblical texts were written in biblical Hebrew). At least one long biblical
text has been translated into that dialect. Rules for everyday life and
conduct are written in that dialect, rules that deal with men, women and
children in various situations. There is nothing of the kind for Aramaic.

>> You are shifting the significance of bilingualism here.  Passive
>> reception of the significance of a language does not reflect
>> bilingualism.
>
>It's hard to acquire facility in understanding a foreign language
>without also improving your ability to make yourself understood in
>that language, to some degree.  

Rubbish, Henry. Productivity in another language is the last skill learnt.
Ask any of the non-native speakers on this list.

>Also, the ancient world did not have television, 

<grin>

>and there were few situations similar to that of Estonians
>watching Finnish television while only rarely coming into contact with
>Finns.

It seems that the specific notion of passive reception is totally
irrelevant here. That Spaniards I spoke to in Italian who (passively)
understood what I said is irrelevant. That one can understand the content
of a communication in another language without speaking that language is
irrelevant.

There are various phases in learning a language, of which productivity is
one of the last. I don't think you've produced any evidence that there was
such productivity amongst a large section of the population in a second
language.

I have granted, because it was a multi-lingual society, that there would
have been a few bilingual (even trilingual) speakers. I have shown that
there ae linguistic situations in which one can understand the gist of the
communication without understanding the language. If the speech communities
were not by necessity overlapping then there is no need to learn the other
language. (I don't know the current situation with the Amish, but how long
did they live in Pennsylvania without the majority ever learning English?)

All this indicates that there is no need at all for widespread
bilingualism. It's up to you to make a tangible case. 

It's probably best if I don't respond to you on this subject until you do.


Cheers,


Ian