Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Ian, you may not know of any Greek words in the Hebrew of the DSS. But does
Qimron? He appears to be the expert, and I noticed that you quoted him re
Persian but not re Greek. I don't have his book to hand, but apparently you
do. There are certainly Greek texts among the DSS, some of which have Hebrew
words in them (not least the Tetragrammaton). Are there really no Greek loan
words or structures in any of the Hebrew texts? That would be such a
remarkable result as to prompt a major rethink about either dating of the
DSS or about the extent to which Greek had penetrated Judea during the 1st
century CE.

Peter Kirk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Hutchesson [mailto:mc2499 AT mclink.it]
> Sent: 12 October 2001 23:17
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: Re: The Case Against a Hellenistic Primary History
>
>
> >There is perhaps an even better clue on the same lines in the language of
> >the "Primary History" which throws severe doubt on a Hellenistic date for
> >it. If this were its date, one would expect to find in it a significant
> >number of loan words from Greek, and from Persian which
> influenced Hebrew at
> >an earlier stage.
>
> It would be nice if one noted the stock of Greek influenced linguistic
> indications in the DSS: none (that I know of) to indicate that the Jews
> had been immersed in Greek culture for the previous few hundred years.
> Unfortunately, Walter's (and apparently now Peter's) basic position can
> be seen as demonstrably wrong. We know basically when the DSS were
> produced, though perhaps people of Walter's and Peter's opinion would
> now like to redate the scrolls to prior to the Greek period, so as to
> explain why there are no apparent Greek linguistic indications in the
> DSS.
>
> >From what I remember, although there are a few Greek loan
> >words in the Aramaic of Daniel and many Persian loan words in the books
> >relating post-exilic history, there are none at all in the
> Primary History.
> >This would indeed be remarkable if this was a composition from
> Hellenistic
> >times; even if a scribe was careful to avoid Greek loan words, it is
> >unlikely that he would recognise all Persian loan words, which would have
> >been in Hebrew already for several hundred years, especially as
> most likely
> >such scribes would not know any Persian.
>
> Daniel was partially set in Persian times, so one would expect some
> attempt at Persian traits, as there were apparent attempts at Persian
> chancelry Aramaic. What content is there in DSS texts? Qimron (The
> Hebrew of the DSS) lists *six* in total, adding "apparently borrowed
> through Aramaic". One shouldn't expect to see any Persian loan words
> present in texts written in Hebrew, unless there were some good reason.
>
>
> Ian
>