Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 06.26 05/06/00 -0700, you wrote:
>NPL,
>>      It is a truism that written literary language is often different
>> from the spoken language. You have it in almost-if not in every place where
>> writing has been introduced. [..]
>
>On the other hand we have the papyri in Greek, which demonstrate 
>that the form of the language used in the New Testament was not 
>the literary form, but the common spoken form.  Within that form 
>we see various styles, some leaning a little toward a literary form 
>(Attic) and some almost idiolectic (e.g. Revelation).  So it seems to 
>me that, while we can suggest that there was a "literary" form of 
>the Hebrew language in antiquity, without more outside evidence 
>I'm not sure we can safely assume that "biblical Hebrew" is (or 
>strongly resembles) that form of the language as opposed to any 
>other.  So as you said later in your post, it's easy to posit such an 
>idea, but actually demonstrating it is, I suspect, pretty much 
>impossible.  The most it can be for now is a working hypothesis.

Do you think, Dave, that the social situations are the same? What we have
regarding Hebrew literature and traditions are products of in or around the
temple, the pro-Zadokite Ezekiel, Ben Sira,... the cultus and its literary
support were written in the priestly context. One can see in Ben Sira the
status of the scribe, ie quite privileged. Christian texts produced in the
Greek world reflect very diverse backgrounds, big differences in education,
subculture, social location or dislocation and the varieties of language
would reflect this. 

Look at what gets produced in Hebrew when more spoken language gets written
down -- and this is what has happened in many of the DSS -- there is for
example more effort in getting the correct pronunciation, so spoken
language seems to be what is represented. In this effort we get a language
that was seen to be quite different from BH and thought to represent a sect
with deviant language -- yet we would expect formalisms in such a situation
rather than efforts to write down what was being said, and this writing
down revealed all the Aramaisms in spoken Hebrew and grammatical
differences both between BH, RH and the Hebrew of the Murabba'at letters.
We get diversity when we get glimpses of Hebrew away from the BH current.


Ian