Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== Original Message From "Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca> =====
>1. How do you distinguish between LBH and MH? (This is not a rhetorical
>question; I do want to know the method.) You listed as
>LBH: DSS (including Copper Scroll and 4QMMT), Ben Sira, 1Macc, Formal
>written materials and virtually all literary
>Texts.
>And MH: Cave of Letters, Cave of Horrors, Murabba'at, ABBA.

I suspect the idea is that LBH continues to emulate the CBH literary 
standard. 
I'm not expert in making this kind of distinction, but I guess you would look 
more at the grammatical features that tend to distinguish MH from BH in 
general. There is some encroachment of these features in LBH, but it would 
probably be a better indicator than vocabulary.
>
>3. Why do you say Pharisees used Hebrew for their oral traditions? How could
>one know this?

Probably the Mishna is in view here. The assumption is that their teachings 
were recorded in the language in which they were given. (I realize perhaps 
not 
everyone agrees that the Pharisees and the Tannaim were the same or 
continuous.)
>
>4. I am hesitant to think of Targumim as simply "repositories of exegetical
>traditions" rather than primarily translations. Too much of them read as
>very direct translation, with very little exegesis.

Well, yes and no. I'm most familiar with Onqelos & Jonathan, which are 
probably the most susceptible to this charge of being "very direct 
translation, with very little exegesis," so my remarks should not be taken as 
applicable to the others. But the translation method in these early targums 
seems to have some distinctive features. One is that every word in the Hebrew 
text has to be represented somehow. This is not quite the same as 
word-for-word, since a word can be represented by more than one word in 
Aramaic. In fact, there are places, particularly in poetic material, where 
whole sentences or paragraphs are used to amplify the understood meaning of 
one word. But even in the non-poetic sections, an interpretive trend can be 
seen. Distinctions are introduced that are not apparent in the language of 
the 
Hebrew text. Two different words will be used on various occasions to 
translate an individual Hebrew word, with a significant distinction made 
between their meanings. I'm not saying I can substantiate the claim that was 
made about what Targums are and what they aren't. But I think these are some 
issues to take into consideration before assuming they are just direct 
translation.
>
>The "Second Temple" period is very long, and I would shy away from saying
>"virtually all" Judean literature was Hebrew in this period. Where do you
>fit the (Aramaic) Enochic literature and the New Jerusalem texts? Enoch at
>least seems hugely popular, and NJ was found in surprisingly large numbers
>in most Qumran caves. Are these exceptional because of provenance (Galilee,
>perhaps?)?

For that matter, they could be from Babylon. We simply don't know where most 
of the Aramaic material at Qumran comes from. But they do make up a rather 
small portion of the texts discovered.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics