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  • From: Alviero Niccacci <sbfnet AT netvision.net.il>
  • To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: historiography--Language
  • Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2000 11:21:27 +0200


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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  • RE: historiography--Language, Alviero Niccacci, 01/01/2000

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