Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Walter,

I'm not sure what particular position you are trying to argue with, red
herring to catch or windmill to tilt at. But at least within the Christian
world I doubt if you will find anyone seriously trying to argue that the
Hebrew text of Genesis preserves the exact words of Abraham, without
translation or modernisation. After all, educated Christians know that the
words of Jesus preserved in the gospels, in Greek, are not his actual words,
which would have been in Aramaic or Hebrew. What is good enough for Jesus is
good enough for Abraham. Jeremias has tried to find traces of Aramaic in the
Greek record of Jesus' words; but it would be much harder to find Aramaic
traces in the Hebrew record of Abraham's words, because the languages are
much more similar, and because we don't know exactly what language we are
looking for.

Yes, it is fairly obvious that much of the Hebrew Bible has undergone
various processes of updating, and perhaps translation, and that is why its
style is fairly uniform. It is perhaps analogous to one of those renderings
of Chaucer in modern English which you can find - which are not evidence
that Chaucer's works were written in the 20th century! Some Biblical
passages, especially older poems such as Judges 6 have largely escaped
modernisation, and so exhibit a style which differs from the bulk of the
Hebrew text as would be expected as the result of several hundred years'
language change, perhaps analogous to the difference between Shakespeare and
modern English. Is there anyone out there who would seriously disagree with
this analysis?

Peter Kirk


----- Original Message -----
From: Walter Mattfeld <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2000 7:47 AM
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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