Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Bailey <jonathan.bailey AT gmx.de>]

I am indeed talking about something else. When vocalizing Epigraphic Hebrew, 
my
professor readily doubles gutterals, let's schwas stand together, doesn't 
shorten
vowels in open unaccented syllables, etc. He is taking the 'later' traits out 
of the
tiberian vocalization. He also readily makes up non-biblical word forms as he 
thinks
those biblical word forms are later and not original to the true Hebrew.

Now when I vocalize the consonantal inscriptions according to the Tiberian 
system, I
come up with good biblical Hebrew, or Hebrew that could only be separated from
Biblical Hebrew by being a dialect or a different literary level than BH even 
an individual
person's use of language.

It seems like my professor is taking great pains to make epigraphic Hebrew 
out to be
another language altogether. I want to know where all this is coming from.

I am also planning to get into "archaic" biblical poetry next semester, and 
want to
know what I should do with all this with my basically conservative world 
view. So I was
inviting anyone, conservative or liberal, to give their thoughts on the 
matter.

Incidentally, Søren, I got your postcard in the mail yesterday. I will read 
it today and
respond when I have the chance.

Also to Baruch, I got you letter Jan 7, have read the letter, but not your 
article. I will
respond upon reading the article.





"If there are many wisemen in a city, this means that the city will soon 
fall."
Babylonian proverb

Jonathan Bailey
Hochschule für Jüdische Studien
Heidelberg
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Column/9707/index.html

---------- Original Message ----------

>Well, the actual inscriptional *writing* in a lot of cases can certainly be
>dated to considerably before the oldest biblical *manuscripts*, so at least
>the orthography of epigraphic Hebrew demonstrably predates the biblical
>variety. That of course doesn't rule out the widespread presupposition that
>certain biblical passages were originally *composed* a lot earlier, but then
>we're dealing with unverifiable theories of literary source criticism rather
>than tangible linguistic data.
>       (I think I'm telling you stuff you already know. Were you asking
>something else?)

>kind regards
>Soren Holst
>University of Copenhagen

>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>> Fra: Jonathan Bailey [SMTP:jonathan.bailey AT gmx.de]
>> Sendt:       21. januar 2000 11:19
>> Til: Biblical Hebrew
>> Emne:        Biblical and Epigraphic Hebrew
>>
>> Where does the idea that most Epigraphic Hebrew is older than Biblical
>> Hebrew come
>> from?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> "If there are many wisemen in a city, this means that the city will soon
>> fall."
>> Babylonian proverb
>>
>> Jonathan Bailey
>> Hochschule für Jüdische Studien
>> Heidelberg
>> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Column/9707/index.html
>>
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