Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Walter, thank you for this summary.

I have one request, which is in fact on the point here most relevant to this
list. Please can you give more details, references etc. to justify your
statement that "Scholars noted that the few examples of Hebrew existing on
objects from the Pre-Exilic period exhibited archaic features not found in
the Primary History which suggested the Primary History was written after
the Pre-Exilic period." This is not a notion I have seen before, unless you
are talking only about purely orthographic features such as vowels written
with mater lectiones, which could well have been introduced into pre-exilic
texts by post-exilic copyists.

Peter Kirk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Walter Mattfeld [mailto:mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com]
> Sent: 04 August 2001 08:50
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: The Case For & Against a Hasmonean Bible
>
<snip>

> I am not a linguist, but in reading scholarly articles in
> scholarly Journals
> about this subject I came to realize that the Hebrew language
> does exhibit a
> change in word forms and tenses which have been dated over long periods of
> time (just as Medieval English, Shakespearean English and 20th century
> English exhibit changes). I came to realize that the Hebrew in the
> "non-biblical" texts found amongst the Dead Sea scrolls was a
> later form of
> Hebrew than the Primary History, some scholars noting that the Dead Sea
> scribes struggled to duplicate the archaic Hebrew and made
> errors, betraying
> they were more familiar and comfortable with Aramaic. Scholars noted that
> the few examples of Hebrew existing on objects from the Pre-Exilic period
> exhibited archaic features not found in the Primary History which
> suggested
> the Primary History was written after the Pre-Exilic period.
>
<snip>