Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>]

We are speaking abour language within the same family, North-West semitic,
or Amorite, which is probably just as well because this is the name given to
the people living to the west of the Eupharates by the Babylonians and
Assyrians. It has long roots back, into the 3rd millennium and might have
been the peripheral language in contrast to e.g. Eblaite. It is well
attested in the Mari letters (Huffmon wrote a nice volume on Amorite names
in the Mari archive), but its presence in Mespotamia is clear since UR III
(another nice book about that, by Buccellati). In the 2nd millennium it
seems to have been the language of most of Syria, and all along the coast
from in the North at least Ugarit, to in the south Ta'anakh (where letters
in Ugaritic script have been found). There is definitely a number of local
varieties of this language, few of them as marked as the variety between
HQEnglish and the idiom some people call American (not to speak about
Australian). The funny thing about Phoenicia is that this is probably the
best candidate for an old Canaan--as far as we stay we this term (I do not,
cf my the Canaanites, now in 2nd ed 1999). So to distinguish between
Phoenician Amorite and Canaanite Amorite would be strange indeed. The Gezer
calender is very early. It shows--so Garbini says--a certain similarity to
inscriptions from Samaria in the 9th century. It may be a bit different from
the language of Judean inscriptions pupping up in the 8th century. Again, we
are confronted by a language group alreadty diversified at the beginning of
its career (or rather when we first have written evidence), still just as
diversified in the 2nd mill. and no less in the 1st. 

Now, for once, let's forget about ethnical tags to this language. If the
Gezer calender shows similarity t, say the language of Ahiram, this does not
mean that the writer of the Gezer calender was a Phoenician. It only says
that his dialect had something in common with mainstream Phoenician. The
inscription is much too short and particular to say more. If the language in
inscriptions from, say Samaria show traits related to Phoinician and the
Gezer text, this may say that the language of the northern part of the
central hill land in Palestine and in the Ayyalon valley had something in
common, and maybe the dialect was not exactly the same as in the
Jerusalem-Hebron area.

Basically, however, there is little that separates these dialects. We cannot
say much about the pronouncation but we can at least imagine that it would
not have been too difficult from a persons from, say Megiddo, to understand
a person from Rabbath Amman or from Jerusalem, Sidon, etc. 

It would of course be nice if it could be proven that Garbini was right
about Hebrew but our knowledge of the development of the language in the
southern part and southwerstern part of Palestine is shallow, meaning we
have not very much evidence of such a development.

NPL


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Hutchesson [SMTP:mc2499 AT mclink.it]
> Sent: Thursday, 24 February, 2000 16:36
> To:   Biblical Hebrew
> Subject:      RE: Accuracy of the Biblical text??
> 
> At 10.06 24/02/00 -0500, Liz Fried wrote:
> 
> I wrote:
> >> The basic assumption is unproven. If Hebrew as a West Semitic language
> >> emerged say not much earlier than the first confirmed epigraphic
> evidence,
> >> then it is improbable that a Moses got the law in Hebrew. If the
> evidence
> >> points that way, can you conclude otherwise?
> 
> Liz responded:
> >What does this mean?
> >Why would a language only emerge  "not much earlier"
> >than its epigraphic evidence?
> >Do you mean we wouldn't have evidence for it's emergence much earlier?
> 
> My reading of the Garbini work on Semitic languages is that he argues that
> when we actually get Hebrew texts, the Lachish letters, Hebrew is shown to
> be a development of a language very similar to Phoenician -- if Phoenician
> wasn't the source. He thinks that the "Gezer calendar" is an example of
> the
> most southerly Phoenician dialect found yet. Others argue that the Gezer
> artifact is indeed Hebrew. Let's assume Garbini is wrong. He is unable to
> discern that the Gezer thingy is in Hebrew because of a number of factors
> -- well, others can. Garbini's therefore wrong, but shows that the
> difference between Phoenician and Hebrew is so minimal. He goes on to
> describe Hebrew fundamentally as Phoenician with Aramaic infusions.
> Where's
> the few hundred years of Egyptian influence? It isn't there. What we have
> is a language that developed in Canaan, if not from Phoenician, from
> something very close. If he can't see much difference at all between
> Phoenician and Hebrew then the time of separation between the two is
> probably not long.
> 
> This is mainly my crapping on, working from the indications in Garbini's
> analysis. It would be interesting to here what NPL has to say on the
> matter, given the fact that he has been known to teach Ugaritic up their
> in
> the cold north.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 
> Ian
> 
> 
> 
> >or do you mean it actually didn't emerge much earlier?
> >and if the latter, how would we know that?
> 
> 
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