Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>]

This is an interesting question, but one which I think can be dealt 
with in a slightly different way.

The implicit point which I see behind Garbini's claim and Ian's 
posting of it is that there is some tension between the fact that the 
Israelites spoke (or at least wrote) a southern Amorite dialect and 
the biblical historical account. But is there actually anything 
strange here?

Let us suppose for the moment that the biblical account is at least in 
its broad details correct: the Israelites were Semites who moved from 
Canaan into Egypt, spent several hundred years (perhaps) there, and 
then moved back to Canaan and (in part) supplanted the existing 
Semitic population. Is this picture incompatible with the linguistic 
picture? I think not.

I think we can reasonably assume that the Israelites who lived in 
Canaan before moving to Egypt were speakers of southern Amorite, as 
spoken by their neighbours. According to the biblical account, 
although their origin was in Mesopotamia they lived in Canaan for 
several generations, long enough for their dialect to converge with 
that of their neighbours.

So a group of southern Amorite speakers moved to Egypt. No doubt their 
language picked up some Egyptian features while they were there. But 
there was a lot of coming and going between Egypt and Canaan, during 
the Hyksos period and before and after it. The Israelites would 
probably have come to speak an Egyptian dialect of Amorite which would 
have remained quite close to the Amorite of southern Canaan. 
Incidentally, are there Semitic texts from Egypt to confirm or deny 
this supposition?

Then when the Israelites moved back to Canaan and started living 
amongst the local population (as the biblical account states and 
condemns), their dialects would quickly have converged - soon there 
would have been no significant difference between proto-Hebrew and 
proto-southern Phoenician or whatever one might call it.

For a similar situation, consider British and American English, or the 
similar situation with Spanish, Portuguese and French (in Canada). 
(The last three may be better examples because there is less 
complication caused by continuing migration, but I am of course less 
familiar with the details.) The Americans have lived for several 
centuries separated from Europe by a wide ocean, which during the 
first part of that period was far more of a barrier than the overland 
distance from Canaan to Egypt ever was. But the divergence between the 
European and American language varieties was small, in part because of 
continuing though limited transatlantic contact and migration. The 
divergence even went into reverse in the 20th century as the 
populations were brought into closer contact because of modern 
technology and travel. One would hardly expect an American community 
returning to Europe to maintain a significantly distinctive dialect 
for more than one or two generations.

So I don't think that this language issue helps in any way to 
discredit, or confirm, the biblical picture of the migrations of the 
Israelites. So let's not try to get into a historical debate on this 
issue.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re: Perspective on Phoenician and Hebrew
Author:  <mc2499 AT mclink.it> at Internet
Date:    16/02/2000 01:40


At 08.51 14/02/00 +0100, Niels Peter Lemche wrote:
>Only one problem: Why archaizing? Why not (and maybe Garbini also think 
>so--it seems so) simply say that the West-Semitic dialect of this 
>inscription is showing an archaic form of Hebrew/Amorite...

I have just browsed another Garbini book which was a diachronic survey on 
the Semitic languages written in 1972 ("Le lingue semitiche", Napoli), in 
which he said the following about the relationship between Phoenician and 
Hebrew.

"It isn't easy to establish the historical origin of Hebrew, which, while 
it fits comfortably within the Amorite dialects of the southern sedentary 
dwellers, nevertheless remains the linguistic expression of a semi-nomadic 
population located in the region relatively late. Even without adding that 
the Israelites abandoned their languages to adopt that of Canaan, it seems 
obvious to admit that they modelled on the latter their own literary 
language, which is that which we know."

<snip>