Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Yitzhak:

Yours is a legitimate question, and I stand by both statements.

For example, was Pharaoh Raameses II the Pharaoh Sesiq who sacked Jerusalem 
after Solomon's death? I tend to agree with those who claim he was. In this 
case, the conventional dating is off by centuries,... or is it? This is what 
I mean with "Corrolating ancient dates to our modern calandar is an inexact 
art..."

However, relative dating is much more exact. For example, the picture given 
of Joseph in Egypt in Genesis is that the pharaoh was a native Egyptian whose 
capital, where Joseph was stationed, was south of the delta. The picture 
given for Moses in Exodus is even stronger, that he dealt with Hyksos 
pharaohs who lived in the delta. The surviving documents in Ugarit are dated, 
according to conventional dating, to the time of Raameses II and/or his son, 
which was, by relative dating, centuries after the Hyksos, hence centuries 
after Moses.

As for the language that the Hebrews spoke, if the internal relative dating 
is accurate (Moses lived 1450 BC give or take a century or more), then the 
documents that he wrote reflect the spoken language that he and Israel spoke, 
i.e. Hebrew. The same with the prophets, the Siloam inscription, and 
writings. And yes, these writings point to a Hebrew that never was almost the 
same as Ugaritic, though a cognate language. It also shows no sign that 
Biblical Hebrew, as contrasted to Mishnaic Hebrew, ever had multiple ayin and 
chet phonemes. That Mishnaic Hebrew had them, can be attributed to adoption 
from Aramaic and other languages when Hebrew was no longer spoken as a mother 
tongue. The LXX reflects this era.

While we are not discussing Torah or its dates, this is where there is a 
linguistic question where dates can provide clues, if not answers.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>

> 
> Karl Randolph wrote:
> > On the Ugaritic, I'll have to double check.  The last source I 
> > read indicated that its surviving texts were from about the same 
> > time as Raamses II the Great or later, which was centuries after 
> > Moses wrote Torah (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugarit ). 
> > Apparently there's some disagreement?
> 
> This has nothing to do with the discussion.   However, in a prior
> discussion you stated, "As for when Moses lived, that is still
> inexactly known. Corrolating ancient dates to our modern calandar
> is an inexact art, true dates may be off by a century or more. From
> different sources, I have seen dates for Nehemiah's rebuilding of
> Jerusalem's walls from 390 - 440 BC, so how close are our guesses
> for Moses' life's dates? We aren't told how much time there was from
> year zero of our calandar to those events. Add to that copyest errors,
> an exact chronology is cannot be made, to say the least."  So now
> you have new evidence that leads you to date Moses prior to
> Ugarit?  Could you elaborate?
> 
> Of course, you'd also have to show that the people in Moses' time,
> whenever that was, spoke Biblical Hebrew, and not, for example,
> a form of Canaanite not unlike Ugaritic.  The Siloam inscription is
> evidence in the sense that it shows that the Biblical Hebrew
> represents a language that was spoken around Hezekiah's time.
> 
> > I already wrote that the only evidence I have is the internal 
> > dates indicated in the documents themselves.
> 
> I think you are getting carried away.  We are not discussing the
> Torah here.  We are discussing linguistics, and the analysis of
> Proto-Semitic.  You have departed from the consensus in saying
> that Hebrew did not derive from a language having additional
> phonemes for Ayin and Het.  What do internal dates in the
> documents have to do with that?  No matter if Moses did or did
> not receive the Torah, and no matter if you date Moses early or
> late, Hebrew could still be a language that originally had
> multiple Het and Ayin phonemes.  Actually, I think it's been
> argued that the LXX transliteration of certain words (such as
> Gaza) reflects the multiple phonemes that the Ayin had.
> 
> Yitzhak Sapir

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