Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Michael Hildenbrand <hildenbr AT Haas.Berkeley.EDU>]

Walter,
        I will reply to some of this below.  This could open up a large
can of worms, so I will stick to the linguistic questions you have below.

On Fri, 2 Jun 2000, Walter Mattfeld wrote:
[snip]
> 
> I believe Dr. Fred Cryer (of Copenhagen, Denmark) did an article a few years
> ago comparing a thousand years of the German language and its manifested
> evolution in word forms and tenses, comparing and contrasting it with the
> alleged thousand year history of the Hebrew Bible's "Primary History"
> (Genesis to 2 Kings) and his findings led him to believe that the evidence
> did support the notion of layer after layer of various archaic word forms
> from the world of Moses ( the Pentateuch of 15th century BCE) to that of the
> Exilic period (2 Kings 25:27) ca. 560 BCE.
> 
> Would anyone care to make any observations about the validity or invalidity
> of this work, or differing conclusions ?

I have not read Cryer's article, (what does he mean by "layer after layer
of various archaic word forms"?) but on the face of it, there is certainly
more change evident in modern languages than in the ancient languages
(especially Hebrew).  Added to that is the difficulty of having a
*control* for the ancient languages.  The only real witness we have for
Hebrew is the Hebrew Bible.  There are examples of change in meaning (and
especially the use) of some words, but I don't have my notes handy.  The
difficulty is that there is a sort of "leveling" done in the Hebrew Bible
that makes it difficult to trace changes in vocabulary.  Or is it actually
the case that the literature we have is so limited that there is not
enough evidence to trace semantic change?  Or is it the case that there
really *was* little semantic change over the years?  Morphology can be
traced and there is some movement there, but the issue regarding tenses is
nearly impossible to trace, since scholarship is still trying to get a
handle on Hebrew tenses.  [Does anyone know of more recent studies that
can help in this area? Are there diachronic studies out there?] My feel
for the language is that there was much more linguistic change for Hebrew
during the change to Rabbinic, and especially to Modern than at any time
within the biblical period.

 [snip]
> 
> Another question I have is that in the Genesis narratives, Abraham's dialogs
> are in Hebrew (correct me if I am wrong). If he is from Harran, why isn't he
> speaking in Aramaic ? If he is from Lower Mesopotamia, why isn't he speaking
> in Akkadian ?  If these dialogs are really "his preserved words", and if one
> wants to argue later generations rendered his words into Hebrew, then
> wouldn't word studies reveal an Aramaic or Akkadian language underlying the
> Hebrew translation ? 

Studies trying to demonstrate "translation" of one language into another
are difficult to prove.  One would have thought that Abraham would have
spoken either Aramaic or some dialect of Akkadian (perhaps Sumerian?).  
But that doesn't mean he could *not* speak excellent Hebrew.  I know many
individuals that can speak more than two or three languages perfectly
well.  On the other hand, just because his words are preserved in Hebrew,
that does not prove his original words were spoken in Hebrew.

Regarding "translation" of one language to another, one need only read the
LXX (Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) to see how some translations
were done.  This does not mean that someone else could not have done a
better job of translation in more ancient times, like translating Akkadian
to Hebrew.  We simply do not have too many examples of translation from
Akkadian to Hebrew (AFAIK none).

I have read that the Book of Daniel is partly Hebrew,
> partly Aramaic. Some scholars have argued that Aramaic was the original
> composition, and that the Hebrew is a translation or later reworking, or,
> whoever wrote Daniel was more comfortable in Aramaic than Hebrew. Any
> thoughts, yea or nay ?

The discussion on this topic has gone on for a considerable while and what
I have to say will not end it.  My feel for both the Hebrew and Aramaic
sections of Daniel is that the first is perfectly good Hebrew and the
second is perfectly good Aramaic.  Since we do not have any examples of
translational Hebrew or Aramaic, it would be difficult to *prove* either
is a translation.  On the other hand, we do not have examples of extended
Hebrew of the time of Daniel (from his geographical location, assuming an
early date) outside of the Bible to show what normal Hebrew would look
like (Is Daniel "normal" Hebrew-what ever that may be?).  How can you
prove that an anomaly in the Hebrew is the result of translation or the
dialect of Hebrew that the writer used normally?  Did Daniel use Hebrew
that carried Aramaic syntax, or vice-versa?

I believe it was Kaufman who wrote on the Aramaic influence on Akkadian
(quite) a few years ago, which was quite good.  The difference here is
that there are vast differences between Akkadian and Aramaic (making the
differences, and thus the influence easy to spot) and we have a
considerable amount of evidence for Akkadian at *many* stages, and a
number of things in Aramaic outside the Bible, both of which can be dated
as contemporary in the historical sense.  Can we say that the Hebrew of
Daniel influenced his Aramaic, or vice versa?  The Aramaic is perfectly
fine Aramic, and the Hebrew is perfectly fine for its time (depending on
your dating of the book).  Adding to that, Hebrew and Aramaic have a
considerable number of similarities, much more so than Akkadian and
Aramaic.  But there is no external control for the Hebrew and the external
Aramaic lacks vowel points.

There is quite a bit more to write on this, but you could check the
commentaries and/or the grammars on both Hebrew and especially Aramaic.

Michael Hildenbrand