Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Proto-Semitic, was WAYYIQTOL

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Proto-Semitic, was WAYYIQTOL
  • Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 19:34:25 -0500

Peter:

Our differences in philosophical outlook affect how we perceive the development of Hebrew as a spoken language.

To use an 18th century metaphor, the creation of a watch uses different principles (laws of physics) than the operation thereof. The picture that the Bible gives is that when God created the universe, he did something different than what we see going on today. Then after the creation, God acted into creation only to communicate with mankind and to make some actions to advance his goals, in a similar manner as a watch maker, after he has made a watch, touches it only to wind the spring and occasionally to make an adjustment for more accurate operation. Likewise, God’s actions into history are rare. Where there is an alleged action from God into history, the answer to its veracity will be found not in science, but in historical analysis.

One of God’s actions into history is to tell about things that haven’t occurred yet. He did so to glorify himself, e.g. Isaiah 48:5.

As a result, I have no problem with Isaiah naming Cyrus a century and a half early, and that Daniel wrote while living and working in the courts of Nebuchadnezzar to Cyrus.

As a result, I see linguistic patterns that you can’t see.

Daniel was a native speaker, having learned his Hebrew before the Galut Babel, yet by the time he sat down to write his memoirs, he was more at home in Aramaic than Hebrew. (A modern example is Chinese who came to the U.S. many years ago as students: they still speak, read and write Chinese, but their work is all in English.)

Ezra, Nehemiah some of the post exilic prophets remind me of immigrants’ children, whose parents speak no English and insisted that their children can read and write the parents’ language. The children have also made an effort to keep up the language. Though the children are fluent, their rendition of the parental language is simpler and more bookish.

Esther is like the children whose immigrant parents speak English and the children have made an effort to maintain their parents’ language. They are actually more at home in English. That would describe how my grandparents spoke Norwegian: fluently, but not as well as English.

Seeing this pattern, and how it worked out through the generations among immigrant children, indicates to me that Hebrew had ceased being the language on the street in all but the most remote farming villages by the time of the Maccabees, if not earlier. Yet because it was the language of religion, government and high literature, it continued to be spoken by an educated elite, much like Latin in Europe.

But if you believe in naturalism and that the present is the key to the past, you must posit that at least some of Isaiah was written post exile, that Daniel probably was late Hellenistic and so forth, completely messing up the pattern that I outlined above.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>

I accept that I am working by this principle. I hypothesise, with the positivists, that the laws of physics have held ever since the Big Bang
--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/


--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page