Biblical Hebrew Forum

[<tfsimpson AT comcast.net>]

And thank you fro the kind words!  

On another topic, did you used to do interim ministry training with Bob
Anderson?

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Today's Topics:

   1. 1Kings 3:19  )$r  a relative?  (C. Stirling Bartholomew)
   2. Re: GDD (was not: Self-mutilation) (Dave Washburn)
   3. Re: GDD (was not: Self-mutilation) (Harold R. Holmyard III)
   4. Re: GDD (was not: Self-mutilation) (Karl Randolph)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 11:48:08 -0700
From: "C. Stirling Bartholomew" <jacksonpollock AT earthlink.net>
Subject: [b-hebrew] 1Kings 3:19  )$r  a relative? 
To: hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <BD8ED1F8.49%jacksonpollock AT earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"

R. Holmstedt's paper on the Headlessness [Relative] and Extraposition*
can
be read without knowing the details of minimalism. Looking the paper
over
again, it seems that the central thesis: that causal, final, results ...
clauses introduced by )$r could also be understood as headless relative
clauses, some of which are separated from their fictitious antecedent
"e" by
other constituents --  It seems that this proposal could be successfully
presented while eschewing the rebarbative obfuscations of minimalism.

Can we discuss Holmstedt's proposal and ignore the infelicities of the
analytical model? I think we can. We have already identified a sample
text
where )$r does not introduce a headless relative clause.

> R. Holmstedt* argues that )$r does not introduce final/result clauses
contra
> Waltke/O'Conner #38.3b.1. How would you read the function of )$r in:
> 
> Deut. 4:10  w)$m(M )t-dbry )$r ylmdwN lyr)h )ty

Holmstedt tells us this is one of about 10 exceptions. O.K. lets ignore
Deut. 4:10 and move on to one of his strong examples.

1Kings 3:19 wymt bN-h)$h hz)t lylh )$r $kbh (lyw

So what do you think? Is  )$r introducing a relative clause in 1Kings
3:19?

For Holmstedt's treatment see page 13 of his paper*.

greetings,
Clay Bartholomew 
 

* 2001. " Headlessness and Extraposition: Another Look at the   Syntax
of
[asher]."  Journal   of Northwest Semitic Languages 27(1):1-16.

Holmstedt papers are available here:
 http://www.uwm.edu/%7Erdholmst/CV.htm



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 16:35:14 -0600
From: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] GDD (was not: Self-mutilation)
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <200410101635.14709.dwashbur AT nyx.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="utf-8"

On Sunday 10 October 2004 14:02, you wrote:
> Dear Dave,
>
> >  > HH: My first guess would be that there were three languages in
use. A
> >>
> >>  good number of scholars say that.
> >
> >Definitely they were.  The question is, which was used for what
purposes?
> >That's where we differ.
>
> HH: Here's an interesting quote from apparent experts in the Hebrew
> language and linguistics, Bernard Spolsky and Elana Shohamy:
> http://www.biu.ac.il/hu/lprc/Hebrew_after_a_century_of_RLS_efforts.htm
>
>   The process of shifting from the use of Hebrew as a spoken
> vernacular may have started as early as the sixth century BCE, and
> certainly was well along for many living in ancient Israel by the
> beginning of the common era (Chomsky 1957; Rabin 1973).  How long
> Hebrew continued to be spoken among Jews is a matter of some debate
> but it is now generally believed that there were still monolingual
> speakers of Hebrew in villages of Judaea at the time of the Bar
> Kochba Revolt,  in the second century of the Common Era, and native
> speakers even later.

It's a tantalizing quote, to be sure, but upon reading the article I
don't see 
any evidence given, and statements like "it is now generally believed"
really 
don't do anything for me.  What does "generally" mean?  "Believed" by
whom?  
They don't say, and give no backing for such a statement.  Simply citing

"apparent experts" isn't going to get us very far.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"No good.  Hit on head."   -Gronk


------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 18:41:29 -0500
From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] GDD (was not: Self-mutilation)
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <a06020404bd8f767a9886@[205.242.61.113]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed"

Dear Dave,

I'm sorry that i sent that last post to you 
instead of b-hebrew. Thanks for relaying it to 
b-hebrew in your reply.

>  > >  > HH: My first guess would be that there were three languages in
use. A
>>  >>
>>  >>  good number of scholars say that.
>>  >
>>  >Definitely they were.  The question is, which was used for what
purposes?
>>  >That's where we differ.
>>
>>  HH: Here's an interesting quote from apparent experts in the Hebrew
>>  language and linguistics, Bernard Spolsky and Elana Shohamy:
>>
http://www.biu.ac.il/hu/lprc/Hebrew_after_a_century_of_RLS_efforts.htm
>>
>>    The process of shifting from the use of Hebrew as a spoken
>>  vernacular may have started as early as the sixth century BCE, and
>>  certainly was well along for many living in ancient Israel by the
>>  beginning of the common era (Chomsky 1957; Rabin 1973).  How long
>>  Hebrew continued to be spoken among Jews is a matter of some debate
>>  but it is now generally believed that there were still monolingual
>>  speakers of Hebrew in villages of Judaea at the time of the Bar
>>  Kochba Revolt,  in the second century of the Common Era, and native
>>  speakers even later.
>
>It's a tantalizing quote, to be sure, but upon reading the article I
don't see
>any evidence given, and statements like "it is now generally believed"
really
>don't do anything for me.  What does "generally" mean?  "Believed" by
whom? 
>They don't say, and give no backing for such a statement.  Simply
citing
>"apparent experts" isn't going to get us very far.


HH: Here's a quote from David Steinberg with 
names. I give some introductory material to show 
your side of things, too. The second to last 
paragraph makes my point:
http://www.adath-shalom.ca/history_of_hebrew.htm#biblicalheb

With the destruction of the First Temple (587 
BCE) the scribal schools and royal patronage of 
writers ended, Jerusalem was depopulated, the 
country was ruined and much of the population was 
exiled to Babylonia where the common language was 
Aramaic.  Later, a small number of Babylonian 
Jews, probably mainly Aramaic speaking, returned 
to Judah where they provided the leadership, 
under Persian imperial patronage, for a slow 
restoration of Jerusalem and a much reduced Judah 
known as the province of Yahud.

When written sources again give us a look in, the 
linguistic situation of the country was:

·                       Greek was widely spoken 
in (see map of Hellenistic and Herodian Cities):
o       Coastal plain;
o       Decapolis (Jordan Valley north of the 
main Jewish area in Trans-Jordan);
o       Greek cities within Jewish areas in Galilee;
o       Greek cities within Samaritan populated 
areas of central and northern Samaria;
o       Greek cities within Idumean areas in the 
northern Negev i.e. what was formerly the 
southern section of the territory of the tribe of 
Judah.

·                       Aramaic was the majority 
language of the country.  Probably it was the 
only language, other than Greek, spoken 
throughout the country except for some areas of 
Judea between Lod and Jericho.  It seems to have 
been the language of the upper classes in 
Jerusalem; and,

·                       A proto-Mishnaic form of 
Hebrew was probably spoken, along with Aramaic in 
some areas of Judea between Lod and Jericho;, and

·                       Late Biblical Hebrew 
which was a literary language, along side Greek 
and Aramaic for the Jewish population.  There 
were no speakers of this artificial tongue.  This 
is not dissimilar to the situation of Modern 
Literary Arabic today or Church Latin in the 
middle ages.


Spoken Hebrew underwent great changes of three kinds:

·                       Natural developments 
internal to the language (see Segal, Kutscher, 
Bendavid);

·                       A mixing of dialects due 
to the political upheavals, exile etc.; and

·                       The profound influence of 
Aramaic in vocabulary, semantics and grammar 
including inflection.


Christian scholars have, at times, claimed that 
Hebrew was completely replaced by Aramaic during 
this period.  However, Segal,  Greenfield and 
Levine have demonstrated that this was not the 
case.  Modern linguistic study, research on 
contemporary sources, the Bar Kochba letters in a 
popular spoken Hebrew all show that Hebrew was a 
spoken language of southern Palestine until at 
least 135 CE when, in the wake of the Bar Kochba 
rebellion,  the Romans evicted or killed the 
Jewish population in the areas in which Hebrew 
was still spoken.  At that point, Aramaic and 
Greek became virtually the only spoken languages 
of the whole of what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, 
Jordan and Israel.  An early form of Arabic was 
already spoken on the desert fringes of this area.

T he Roman suppression of the first Jewish revolt 
against Rome (67-70 CE), including the 
destruction of Jerusalem led to a 
social-cultural-religious collapse.  This 
included the disappearance of the priestly 
aristocracy and Jewish groups such as the 
Sadducees and Essenes.  The earliest Rabbinic 
literature dates from the period 70-200 CE and it 
is written in the spoken Hebrew of the time, 
called, after the most famous literary product of 
the time, Mishnaic Hebrew.

HH: Here are the sources he gives:

Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew by M. H. Segal, Oxford 1958, Paperback 1980

The Languages of Palestine, 200 B.C.E.-200 C.E. 
by Jonas C. Greenfield in Al Kanfei Yonah: 
Collected Studies of Jonas C. Greenfield on 
Semitic Philology, ed. Shalom M.

Languages of Jerusalem in Levine, Lee I. Judaism 
and Hellenism in antiquity : conflict or 
confluence?, Hendrickson Publishers, 1998. Paul, 
Michael E. Stone, and Avital Pinnick. Jerusalem: 
Magnes Press, 2001.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 10:32:55 -0500
From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] GDD (was not: Self-mutilation)
To: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <20041011153255.D8AFD164005 AT ws1-4.us4.outblaze.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Harold:

I am not going to argue this point again, but unless there is radical
new evidence to the contrary, all the evidence, both historical and
linguistic, points to the fact that Aramaic was the main language of the
Jews who returned from Babylon and afterwards until Greek displaced it
(at least in the West). In fact, the more I look at it, the stonger the
evidence appears.

We have a clear example in the use of Latin: until a few centuries ago,
it was the main language of the educated, and often not so educated,
people, though not their mother tongues. They not only read and wrote in
it, but they even spoke it. High literature, diplomatic, government and
business documents, and even love letters, were written in Latin long
after Latin had ceased to be used in the markets and at a mother's knee.
It was, and in some obscure corners still is, a living, breathing
language. And as a living, breathing language, it has continued to
develop and adjust to changing circumstances, so that the Latin of today
is not the same as the Latin of 1500, which was not the same as 1000,
and so forth. Modern Latin is a development of the spoken Latin of
almost two millennia ago, it is not an invention.

I have no problem viewing post-Esilic Hebrew as post-Exilic Jewish
Latin. As such, one cannot rule out the possibility that GDD in the
Damascus Document as an Aramaic loan word or backwards development from
a noun.

GDD is a Biblical Hebrew word. Except for one disputed use, it was
always used for incising or cutting out. As a noun in the military, it
was used for a division (note: even the English term has the root
meaning of cutting out). Even in the disputed use, GDD referring to
incising or cutting out (scarification) makes perfect sense as an
example of metaphoric, indirect speech, fitting both the immediate
context as well as a common, prophetic image. Therefore, there is no
reason to assume a different definition in Biblical Hebrew for GDD other
than that one. A second therefore, GDD in the Damascus Document is most
likely either an Aramaic loan word (the same way as GZR in Esther 2:1)
or a backwards development from a noun.

As I stated before, when I research the definition of a lexeme and find
that the majority of uses, like 90% or thereabouts, clearly have one
definition but a few seem to have a different one, I then look at those
outlyers and ask "Have I understood all the other terms in the context
correctly?" "Is this an example of metaphoric or indirect speech?", only
after ruling out misunderstanding or metaphoric use do I look at having
a different definition.

I don’t understand why you put so much effort to defend a dictionary
definition when the evidence for it is weak, at best.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>

> Dear Karl,
> 
> >  In other words, at a time when the people on the street spoke 
> >Aramaic and only the scholars spoke Hebrew more or less fluently 
> >(much like the medieval monks spoke Latin). Thus it is very likely 
> >that GDD in the Damascus Document is either an Aramaic loan word or 
> >a late development of GDWD into a verb.
> 
> HH> These ideas that GDD in the Damascus Document is an Aramaic 
> loanword or a back development from a noun are arbitrary assumptions. 
> The Damascus Document is a Hebrew document, and GDD is a biblical 
> word.  We don't know that the authors didn't know Hebrew. Quite a lot 
> of the Dead Sea Scrolls, even the non-biblical material such as 
> letters, are in Hebrew. Here is a quote about the Dead Sea Scroll 
> period from _Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation_, by Michael Wise, 
> Martin Abegg, and Edward Cook:
> 
> Hebrew was manifestly the principal literary language for the Jews of 
> this period. The new discoveries underlined the still living, 
> breathing, even supple character of that language. A few texts 
> pointed to the use of Hebrew for speech as well as writing. . . . 
> Rabbinic Hebrew was shown to be no invention, but simply a 
> development from the ordinary spoken Hebrew of biblical times.
> 
>
> 
>                               Yours,
>                               Harold Holmyard
-- 
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