Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

You are making unwarranted assumptions here that BH text is dated at the
same general time period as the DSS. The BH narratives certainly purport to
be several centuries earlier, and there is no proof that they are not what
they appear to be. So we may be talking about a time gap of several
centuries rather than, or in addition to, a shift in social situations.

Peter Kirk

----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2000 11:44 PM
Subject: RE: Hebrew language, antiquity of ?


<snip>
>
> 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