Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Michael Abernathy" <mabernathy AT isot.com>]

<Uri
 Only in personal names is there internal linguistic evidence in the HB that 
something new started with the Moses narratives (Alt). . . >
If I correctly understand what you are saying, you are implying a remarkable 
degree of unity within the Hebrew language.  Let me explain my thought.  I 
once saw a study English dialects within 20 miles of London in the same time 
period.  Not only were over a dozen dialects found, but some of those 
dialects were barely recognizable as English.  It is my understanding that 
this kind of conformity is very rare and implies that either a single editor 
or school of editors corrected the entire text of the Hebrew Bible to a 
single standard, or that the earliest  Scriptures were the standard used by 
all later writers, or that the entirety of the Hebrew Bible was written in a 
very short period and in a very small geographical region.  None of these 
explanations seems very satisfactory to me.  I should think that the first 
explanation would anticipate the kind of scribal errors I suggested. The 
second is hard for me to swallow when I look at the Hebrew of the Dead Sea 
Scrolls.  The third seems unlikely because I find it difficult to believe 
that the entire Hebrew race would be fooled into believing that a Bible they 
never heard of was the same one used by their ancestors.  Am I overlooking 
something?
Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy
>From peterkirk AT qaya.org  Sat May 29 10:44:01 2004
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Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 07:43:59 -0700
From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
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To: Michael Abernathy <mabernathy AT isot.com>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] exodus, dating of linguistics
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On 29/05/2004 08:02, Michael Abernathy wrote:

><Uri
> Only in personal names is there internal linguistic evidence in the HB that 
> something new started with the Moses narratives (Alt). . . >
>If I correctly understand what you are saying, you are implying a remarkable 
>degree of unity within the Hebrew language.  Let me explain my thought.  I 
>once saw a study English dialects within 20 miles of London in the same time 
>period.  Not only were over a dozen dialects found, but some of those 
>dialects were barely recognizable as English.  It is my understanding that 
>this kind of conformity is very rare and implies that either a single editor 
>or school of editors corrected the entire text of the Hebrew Bible to a 
>single standard, or that the earliest  Scriptures were the standard used by 
>all later writers, or that the entirety of the Hebrew Bible was written in a 
>very short period and in a very small geographical region.  None of these 
>explanations seems very satisfactory to me.  I should think that the first 
>explanation would anticipate the kind of scribal errors I suggested. The 
>second is hard for me to swallow when I look at the Hebrew of the Dead Sea 
>Scrolls.  The third seems unlikely because I find it difficult to believe 
>that the entire Hebrew race would be fooled into believing that a Bible they 
>never heard of was the same one used by their ancestors.  Am I overlooking 
>something?
>Sincerely,
>Michael Abernathy
>
>  
>
One thing you are overlooking, Michael, is the distinction between 
spoken and written language. If you look at *written* texts produced 
within 20 miles of London, or indeed anywhere in England, you will find 
in the great majority of them a considerable uniformity, and a gradual 
change over time. That is because all educated writers usually used a 
rather standardised form of the language, with only occasional use of 
dialect words and forms. We see the same picture in the Hebrew Bible: 
the unformity of a standardised written language, with occasional 
dialect variation and some gradual long-term changes.

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