Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Peter and Ian,

None of you can make these assumptions. We do not know when the biblical
literature was composed. We may guess when, and our guesses vary a lot.
Personally I am more in favor of Ian's position than of Peter's, but this
does not change the situation at all. We have different styles of Hebrew,
and the Qumran language may be closer to the language of Daniel than to the
language of Genesis, but this does not necessarily say that the language of
Genesis is older (or for that matter younger). 

We can compare the language of the Siloam inscription to the language of the
Qumran documents-given that the Siloam inscription is from the 8th century
and not the Hashmonean period as some scholars claimed a few years ago. We
have other inscription to put in like the Lachish letters and more. It is a
very small sample but the only thing we have, and then it is possible to
compare this corpus to the Qumran literature. It might be helpful, or it
might not. It would especially be interesting to see whether or not it is
possible to place standard biblical Hebrew within this framework.

NPL


        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Peter Kirk [SMTP:Peter_Kirk AT sil.org]
        Sent:   Wednesday, June 07, 2000 20:06
        To:     Biblical Hebrew
        Subject:        Re: Hebrew language, antiquity of ?

        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



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