Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

  No, Jim, we cannot make such a persumption. For starters, familiarize 
yourself with the work of Avi Hurvitz, and by all means also with those who, 
like Young, take a different position. I would assume this would require 
familiarity, above the basic level, of BH.
 
  And for fun, check what happenned to the spelling of the PN David when it 
occurs in Chronicles, (and even on the way there!) before  reaching the hasty 
conclusion bellow.
 
 BTW, the Hebrew DSS were the HB, again with a few minor (some would say a 
few thousand )  variations.
 
  Uri

Jim West <jwest AT highland.net> wrote:
  So we can presume that if it isn't normalized now it wasn't when the dss 
were written- or the HB. And hence the effort to date texts by 
"spelling" seems a flawed methodology.

Best

Jim

-- 
Jim West

Biblical Studies Resources - http://web.infoave.net/~jwest
Biblical Theology Weblog - http://biblical-studies.blogspot.com

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Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:15:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel AT exc.com>
Subject: Re: Hebrew spelling [was: Re: [b-hebrew] karu or ka'ari (Ps 22:16) ?]
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>So we can presume that if it isn't normalized now it wasn't when the dss 
>were written- or the HB.  And hence the effort to date texts by 
>"spelling" seems a flawed methodology.

Yes and no.

Yes, Hebrew has always enjoyed un-normalized spelling, so variant
spellings were common throughout all periods of Hebrew.

But no, that doesn't mean we cannot date texts based on spelling.
Some spelling patterns were in use only during certain periods of
Hebrew.  For example, spelling the 2nd-person-m-sng pronominal suffix
KAF-HEH instead of just KAF is clearly a late invention.  We almost
never see it in Biblical Hebrew, but constantly see it in DSS Hebrew.
Biblical Hebrew tends not to double YUD's and VAV's to demonstrate
that they are consonants, whereas this practice is very common in
Rabbinic Hebrew (and Modern Hebrew).  Using a YUD between the first
two letters of a segolate noun is a late invention.  Omitting a VAV in
a fem. plural is rare in later Hebrew, common in older Hebrew.
(Notice my modern bias: I suppose I should say that including a VAV is
common in later Hebrew, less common in older Hebrew.)  Biblical Hebrew
tends to eschew two identical matres lectiones in a single word (so
OTOT, "signs" gets spelled with exactly one VAV, but either the first
one or the second one); this restriction is less important in later
dialects of Hebrew.

A larger problem, however, is that except for the DSS and some
fragments, we only have redacted mss.  We have no way of knowing the
extent to which the spelling of today's mss. reflects the spelling of
the original authors or of the redactors.

Particularly interesting in this regard are the passages of the OT
that appear twice, with variant spellings (and variant grammar and
lexical choices), as in I Kings 8:12-15 and II Chronicles 6:1-4.  It
is commonly assumed that Chronicles was written after Kings, and that
the changes in Chronicles are changes made by the Chronicler to the
original text in Kifngs.  But the evidence is equivocal.  On the one
hand, we have to assume that the Masoretes would not purposely
introduce spelling variations, but on the other hand, we do not see so
consistent a pattern as some people would claim.

I go through all of this in great detail in my book.  Saenz Badillos
(_A History of the Hebrew Language,_ Cambridge Univ Press) presents
similar data.

Also, a p.s. to your request for books about Hebrew spelling.  I
should have mentioned Glinert's book _Modern Hebrew: An Essential
Grammar_ (Routledge), which discusses modern Hebrew spelling.  ("For
students writing Hebrew or using any kind of dictionary, the habits of
Israeli spelling are a severe headache," is what he says.)

-Joel