Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Fw: Aramaic to them?

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • Cc: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Fw: Aramaic to them?
  • Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 04:02:33 -0800

On 07/03/2004 21:18, Karl Randolph wrote:

... And that the verbal forms gradually shifted away from the Biblical forms to parallel the usages in the writers' mother tongues is again indicative that Hebrew was a language used well only by an elite, and even they were not always very well versed in the language.

Trevor has answered the first part of this well. As for this second part, the verb forms in dead languages e.g. Latin are usually slavishly copied from those of the classical form, and not shifted (at least in form, maybe in function) to those of the writers' mother tongues. Your suggestion that the writers were not well versed in the language is an interesting one, although unlikely given the devotion of the scribes to the Hebrew scriptures and the extent to which these scriptures were copied. But if this idea is undermined by the fact that the verb form most thoroughly lost in Mishnaic Hebrew and I think in QH was the one which is most common and therefore most likely to be mastered first in BH, that is the WAYYIQTOL form.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page