Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Alviero Niccacci <sbfnet AT netvision.net.il>]

On  30/12/99 (RE: historiography) Niels Peter Lemche wrote:


        <...>
> There is plenty of linguistic similafrity and plenty of difference. Take
> e.g. the consecutive forms, so characteristic of HV prose and see where you
> find it in the Mesha inscription. It also has some other archaic traits like
> feminimun forms.

        <...>

Dear list-members,

I will not enter into a discussion that in some points seems to 
reflect more ideology than sound scholarship and knowledge of Ancient 
Near Eastern literatures.
	Let me make one small point regarding the language of the 
Mesha inscription and early / late BH. From the the quotation above 
it appears that it is taken for granted that the so-called 
consecutive forms constitute a point of difference between old and 
late language, or between Biblical and extrabiblical language.
	I think that the Mesha inscription does not show any 
difference from BH with regard to the so-called consecutive forms. 
Wayyiqtol forms are found in the Mesha inscriptions in the place 
where they are expected to be, indeed not where they should not 
appear. The same is valid of other Semitic nonbiblical 
inscriptions--pace I. Young, _Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew_.
	The Mesha inscription, as other nonbiblical materials, are 
memorial inscriptions, or letters, or documents of the 
administration. They are not historical narrative--I speak of genre, 
not of historical value of the information they give. Memorial 
inscriptions, letters and administrative documents belong to the 
genre of direct speech, where one finds a larger variety of verbforms 
than in historical narrative proper. Understandably, wayyiqtol is 
only used when one narrates a past event, not otherwise.
	One could refer to my paper, *The Stele of Mesha and the 
Bible: Verbal System and Narrativity*, _Orientalia_ 63 (1994) 226-248.
	So one should be careful when addressing such an argument to 
date texts.
	Besides, as far as my knowledge goes, there is NO DIFFERENCE 
between early BH text such as Samuel-Kings and their late rewriting 
in Chronicles. The verb system used is the same. The scribes could 
perfectly write in classical language also when the spoken language 
had changed. Even in the DSS scrolls and in Ben Sira NO DIFFERENCE 
appears in the use of wayyiqtol and other verbforms and constructions.
	Differences certainly exist, however. But basically they lay 
in the realm of morphology and lexicography rather than in the realm 
of verb syntax.
        A blessed New Year 2000 to all the listmembers.

Alviero Niccacci




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