Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

I suppose that 'language'-'not language' is the wrong alternative here. the
question is whether biblical Hebrew is a kind of learned dialect, i.e. a
special developed form of Hebrew. I suppose that is also the opinion of, say
Knauf, knowing as he very well the at least two thousand years of
development of Amorite dialects that preceded biblical Hebrew whether a
language or not. Exaggerations that claim that somehow biblical Hebrew is
not a language is muddling up the issue of a probably should I say 'learned
language'. WE had an extended discussion about this half a year ago. It
ended up in a discussion about some of the special parts of standard
biblical Hebrew, i.e. the system of consecutive forms.

Of course 'Hebrew' is also a scientific term. When did that term come into
use? We have no examples of 'Hebrew' outside the HB, only specimens of
NW-semitic dialects from many places, including of course the language
spoken in (and I try for once to be political correct) in Israel/Palestine,
the dialects of the present state of Jordan like 'Moabite' and 'Amonite'.
Phoinician is another part of this, whereas Ugaritic is an earlier form of
the language spoken in NW Syria, and maybe also further to the south. Anson
Rainey's study of the 'Canaanite' dialects behind the so-called Akkadian of
the Amarna letters also shows dialectical difference within the same
language group. So what is 'Hebrew' really within that family-a dialect
among many other dialects or so distinct that it should carry its own name?
Is the language restricted to the areas traditionally reckoned to make up
the biblical states of Israel and Juda, or did they also use
'Israelite/Palestinian Hebrew', in say Ekron (think of the new inscription
from Ekron)?

NPL


        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Henry Churchyard [SMTP:churchh AT usa.net]
        Sent:   Monday, July 17, 2000 17:34
        To:     Biblical Hebrew
        Subject:        Re: "Is Biblical Hebrew a language?", etc.

        Ullendorf is of course correct in his assertion that only a
restricted
        vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew has come down to us, but this has
almost
        nothing whatever to do with the hypothesis that Biblical Hebrew
        "didn't yet exist" in the 1st. half of the 1st millennium B.C.  This
        latter hypothesis is meaningless in one sense, since (unless it is
        claimed that Biblical Hebrew is some kind of made-up Esperanto)
there
        must be an ancestor of Biblical Hebrew existing at every
chronological
        period from attested Biblical Hebrew back to proto-Semitic.  If it's
        claimed that there is nothing in Biblical Hebrew which is
incompatible
        with mid-1st.-millennium B.C.E Phoenician, then I don't think this
is
        entirely true either; a number of innovations occurred in Phoenician
        which did not occur in Hebrew, as you can see by looking up Harris's
        Zellig S. Harris's book _Development of the Canaanite Dialects: An
        Investigation in Linguistic History (American Oriental Series,
Volume
        16)_, including a change of the root _h-l-k_ to _y-l-k_ in
Phoenician
        (I seem to remember), raising of Canaanite long _o_ to _u_, etc.
etc.

        Of course, Hebrew and Phoenician (along with Moabite, Ammonite,
        northern Hebrew etc.) were members of a "dialect continuum" -- a
        sequence of fairly closely related languages spoken in adjacent
        regions, through which "waves" of innovations and linguistic
        influences can pass back and forth (note that Phoenician and Judean
        Hebrew were not actually geographically adjacent in the
        dialect-chain).

        The effects of such a persisting dialect continuum (along with
Sapir's
        mysterious "drift") can make related languages seem more similar
than
        one would expect, if the only information you were given was the
time
        at which they originally diverged -- and therefore can also make it
        extremely difficult to estimate the original time of divergence by
        means of comparing the overall similarity between the attested
        languages.  So it seems to me that blanket statements that Hebrew
was
        just Phoenician until 400 B.C., or whatever, are rather more
        categorical and dogmatic than can be justified by the available
facts
        and evidence, and are also contridicted to some degree by the
        evidence.

        --
        Henry Churchyard   churchh AT usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/

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