Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

I read the various answers to this mail but will not make any comments as to
the historicity of thepatriarchs and such items that have nothing to do with
the question of language.

Hebrew in its various attested forms is a late development of Amorite that
has been around since the 3rd millennium BCE. From the early phase it is
attested in many personal names from the time of the UR III dynasty and
probably earlier than that through the Mari letters and right down to the
end of the LB Period. We see from the Amarna letters from Syria and
Palestine that the native language was Amorite (if in doubt consult Rainey's
four volumes of Canaanite in the Amarna Letters), and of course we have
extensive documentation from Ugarit and from other places like Ta'anach
using the Ugaritic system of writing. The big difference between LBA Amorite
and the various dialects of the 1st millennium BCE - Phoenician, Moabite,
Palestinian Hebrew (i.e. inscriptions) - is the disappearance of cases (the
-u, -a, -i endings attested in Ugaritic but also in Amarna Amorite). Several
other changes took place. The place of biblical Hebrew within the history of
this language-and I still think until I am convinced of the opposite that
Aramaic was originally a spin off from Amorite-is contested. We have
diferent dialects within the Hebrew Bible, 1) what I will prefer to call
standard biblical Hebrew, and 2) non-standard biblical Hebrew. In contrast
to Avi Hurwitz I do not believe that it is on the basis of the biblical
literature possible to say what is early and what is late within this
textual corpus. 

Hope this will clarify matters.

NPL

By the way, Fred based his article on Knauf's article in Zeitschrift für
Hebräistik (Vol. 3 [1990], 11-23, 'War "biblisch Hebräisch" eine Sprache'..
Fred's contribution will be 'The Problem of Dating Biblical Hebrew and the
Hebrew of Daniel' in Knud Jeppesen, Kirsten Nielsen and Bent Rosendal, In
the Last Days. On Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic and its Period (Aaarhus:
Aarhus University Press. 1994), 185-198.

        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Walter Mattfeld [SMTP:mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com]
        Sent:   Friday, June 02, 2000 08:48
        To:     Biblical Hebrew
        Subject:        Hebrew language, antiquity of ?

        The recent posts between Ian and Jonathan on "Ur of the Kasdim,"
called to
        mind several questions. If they have been reviewed before in the
archives,
        please let me know.

        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 ?

        For example, when one reads Chaucer, the archaic English is obvious
when
        compared to Shakespeare (1500/1600's), or Dickens (19th century) or
modern
        authors of the 20th century. Dr. Cryer's study suggested that this
great
        range of  various archaic levels of expression did not appear to be
present
        in the texts, suggesting for him, the text was a more recent
creation,
        composed within a much shorter interval of time, certainly not
accretions of
        a thousand years. If I am drawing the wrong conclusions, or
attributing
        incorrect ideas to Dr. Cryer, please so advise. This is all from
memory from
        an article I read several years ago.

        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 ? 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 ?

        All the best,

        Walter

        Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
        Walldorf by Heidelberg
        Baden-Wurttemburg
        Germany



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