Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

Interesting, Niels Peter.
If I remember correctly, my teacher Charles Krahmolkov has
argued for vestiges of case endings occasionally in the Hebrew Bible similar
to those you mention for Ugaritic. I'm sorry I don't recall where these
are -- perhaps in the psalms. Even if one were to say it was "deliberate
archaizing," it testifies to an earlier archaic language the writer knew
about.
Liz

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Niels Peter Lemche [mailto:npl AT teol.ku.dk]
> Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2000 6:32 AM
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: RE: Hebrew language, antiquity of ?
>
>
> 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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