Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Karl,

> 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.

HH: But you are depending on that idea for your 
position, and the odds seems against it. And did 
you see the posts to Dave showing that scholars 
have concluded that Hebrew remained a spoken 
language into the second century A.D. at least?

> 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.

HH: I wanted to make sure you had all the 
information I could give you so that you could 
make an informed decision. You reject lexicons, 
but the translations also see a GDD meaning "band 
together."

NASB Jer 5:7: "Why should I pardon you? Your sons 
have forsaken Me And sworn by those who are not 
R235 gods. When I had fed them to the full, They 
committed adultery And trooped to the harlot's 
house.

NRSV Jer 5:7: How can I pardon you? Your children 
have forsaken me, and have sworn by those who are 
no gods. When I fed them to the full, they 
committed adultery and trooped to the houses of 
prostitutes.

NIV Jer 5:7: "Why should I forgive you? Your 
children have forsaken me and sworn by gods that 
are not gods. I supplied all their needs, yet 
they committed adultery and thronged to the 
houses of prostitutes.

NLT: "How can I pardon you? For even your 
children have turned from me. They have sworn by 
gods that are not gods at all! I fed my people 
until they were fully satisfied. But they thanked 
me by committing adultery and lining up at the 
city's brothels.

NKJV: "How shall I pardon you for this? Your 
children have forsaken Me And sworn by those that 
are not gods. When I had fed them to the full, 
Then they committed adultery And assembled 
themselves by troops in the harlots' houses.

KJV: Jer. 5:7 How shall I pardon thee for this? 
thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them 
that are no gods: when I had fed them to the 
full, they then committed adultery, and assembled 
themselves by troops in the harlots' houses.

Good News: The Lord asked, "Why should I forgive 
the sins of my people? They have abandoned me and 
have worshiped gods that are not real. I fed my 
people until they were full, but they committed 
adultery and spent their time with prostitutes.

NAB: Why should I pardon you these things? Your 
sons have forsaken me, they swear by gods that 
are not. I fed them, but they committed adultery; 
to the harlot's house they throng.

Douay-Rheims: How can I be merciful to thee? thy 
children have forsaken me, and swear by them that 
are not gods: I fed them to the full, and they 
committed adultery, and rioted in the harlot's 
house.

HH: The HCSB takes a position with the idea of 
"gash themselves," but I think they're wrong:

7   Why should I forgive you? Your children have 
abandoned Me and sworn by those who are not 
gods.[1]  I satisfied their needs, yet they 
committed adultery; they gashed themselves[2] at 
the prostitute's house.

HH: The outstanding commentator Keil in the 
1800's understood the verb to imply that they 
"crowd into the house of the harlot, i.e. go 
thither in crowds." He takes it as "carnal 
uncleanness" according to 5:8b:

Jer. 5:8 They were as fed horses in the morning: 
every one neighed after his neighbour's wife.

                                        Yours,
                                        Harold Holmyard
> From dwashbur AT nyx.net  Mon Oct 11 16:19:31 2004
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From: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] GDD (was not: Self-mutilation)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 14:19:27 -0600
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Harold,
I am not interested in lists of scholar names, I thought I already mentioned 
that.  The question, once again, is WHY were certain of the BK letters in 
Hebrew, WHY were some in Aramaic and some in Greek, etc.?  I have already 
answered all of this and shown the religious nature of his occasional use of 
Hebrew, and all you are doing is throwing more "experts" at me.  I really 
don't care what this or that expert says, I'm interested in the primary 
sources, the raw data.  At this point, I see a movement within Hebrew 
scholarship, one that actually seems to have peaked about 20 years ago and 
then declined, that sought to show that Hebrew was a street language 
alongside Aramaic and Greek, and proceeded to grab onto any and every source 
that had an occasional Hebrew paragraph or clause in it, and say "See?  That 
proves it."  But all of the evidence so used is religious in nature: DSS, 
ossuaries, coins, certain letters from the failed rebellion of the second 
century; this rebellion, as one of your own experts already said, sought a 
return to the good ol' days when people spoke Hebrew and tried to force it 
onto the populace.  It didn't work.  The rebellion itself didn't work, the 
linguistic push didn't work.  The whole idea that Hebrew was a 
commonly-spoken language and not the "Latin" of the time (thank you, Karl, 
that's a great analogy!) doesn't work.  It requires too much manipulation of 
certain evidence and exclusion of other evidence.  You can rattle off names 
and scholar citations all you want, but it's really not going to get you 
anywhere.  If you want to press this issue, I suggest you pull out a couple 
of those letters and cite them and let's talk about the evidence, not some 
general statement by this or that "expert."

On Sunday 10 October 2004 17:41, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:
> 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
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--
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"No good.  Hit on head."   -Gronk