Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

I am sure that Jonathan remembers the argument from last winter about the
consecutive forms. Not the singular occurrences but the intricate system
running through most of the prose literature in standard biblical Hebrew,
which is by the way the way I 'translate' Hurwitz 'early biblical Hebrew'.

Again, if you can dig out the mails from last winter, you may remember one
from me counting the occurrences of these consecutive forms in inscriptions.
Here Mesha provided-I believe five examples-a few more inscriptions some
more, but never the system we find in Gen-2 Kgs. What I cannot say, and
nobody can say is whether or not this system was in use in the Iron Age,
among a special group of people. The decision depends on the dating of
biblical literature, which brings us forward to the issue that linguistics
cannot be used to date linguistic developments in time, if no definite
anchor for dating texts is present.

NPL


        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Jonathan D. Safren [SMTP:yonsaf AT beitberl.ac.il]
        Sent:   Tuesday, July 18, 2000 09:38
        To:     Biblical Hebrew
        Cc:     Biblical Hebrew
        Subject:        Re: "Is Biblical Hebrew a language?", etc.

        After having studied the Siloam Inscription, the Lachish Letters and
        various other examples of First Temple Judaean epigraphy, I didn't
        exactly get the impression that Biblical Hebrew was a "learned" or
        "artificial" dialect. Is the English you read in the New York Times
or
        in history textbooks a "learned" or "artificial" dialect as compared
to,
        say, the English of TV talk shows? (BTW, is someone trying to claim
that
        the language of Deuteronomy, the language of Job and the language of
        Esther all represent the same stages or the same strata of the
language?
        Pardon my ignorance).
        Sincerely,

        --
        Jonathan D. Safren
        Dept. of Biblical Studies
        Beit Berl College
        Beit Berl Post Office 44905
        Israel



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