Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 9/22/05, Karl Randolph wrote:
>
> While there is evidence (with which not everyone agrees)
> that Hebrew ceased to be a natively spoken language
> during the Babylonian Captivity or at the latest a
> generation of two thereafter, there is no question that
> Daniel, writing during the Captivity or very shortly
> thereafter, and later Ezra, expected Jews to know and
> understand Aramaic. Right there there is a pattern
> (Aramaic influence) on a non-natively spoken language
> (or one where native speakers formed a minority among
> the total population), a situation ripe for a pronunciation
> change that mimics base pair changes without the base
> pairs being present in the originating language.

Daniel is not evidence as you require various assumptions in
order to date it that early.  And those are assumptions are not
necessary because there is sufficient evidence for Aramaic
prior to Daniel and as little as it is, it is at least comparable
to Biblical Aramaic.  But while you can point to "confitions"
that would be "ripe" for your change, you haven't demonstrated
it.  You are assuming it.  Stop assuming and see what the
evidence proves instead.

> > What does it matter what you have seen when you choose
> > to selectively look at the evidence?
> >
> For years I have been interested in what are the earliest
> examples of alphabetic writing that can be connected to
> recognizably Hebrew writing. The oldest, and then only a
> possible hit, was from a news article a few months back. I
> don't consider that being selective. Rather I look at it as
> being the opposite, not enough data. Data from centuries,
> even millennia later, I view as inconclusive. Possibly
> misleading.

That is being selective because you are not looking at the full
body of data that was published.  A news article is not
publishing data but an excerpt from the publication.  But I was
referring to your not agreeing to learn Ugaritic and Aramaic by
yourself.

> > > Alphabetic use could have been in existence for
> > > centuries, or was new. Do we have indications from that
> > > period as to how many letters it had at that time?
> >
> > Epigraphic South Arabic uses 29 letters that are an
> > independent and earlier divergence from Proto-Canaanite
> > than the Hebrew/Phoenician/Aramaic one.  Some of the
> > additional Proto-Canaanite alphabet letters can be clearly
> > related to the ones in ESA.   So yes.
> >
> Doesn't answer my question for Hebrew.

You said "alphabetic use."  Alphabets were in use for centuries
prior to its use to write Hebrew.  By the way, what do you mean
by alphabet?  Does your definition include Ugaritic?  (Why or why
not?)

> > > How many extensive writings from that period remain that
> > > are recognizably Aramaic or Hebrew?
> >
> > If you could prove to me that the Torah is written in Hebrew,
> > and not in Aramaic or Phoenician, then we can discuss this.
> >
> In other words, none.

I want to be sure you won't suggest that a text I bring up is not
Hebrew.  So to make sure you don't, I want you to define what you
mean by Hebrew.  How do you know that the entire Torah and Bible
is not written in a dialect of Aramaic?  How do you know that two
texts are written in Aramaic and not in two different Aramaic-like
dialects, but different languages.  For example, Daniel's Aramaic
sections and Ezra's.  How do you know that two separate texts
are written in Hebrew and not closely related but different
Hebrew dialects.  For example, Samuel and Leviticus?

> > > Can we build a time
> > > line from that period to the Biblical usage from that era?
> >
> > Generally, yes.  It really depends on what you mean by time
> > line and what you mean by Biblical usage.
> >
> In other words, no.

Please don't reinterpret what I say.  If you define the above, I
can properly answer you.

> > Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with evidence before
> > firing questions at random.  Various evidence at different
> > times generally allows us to place in relative context when
> > various phonemes merged.
> >
> How about phonemes diverging or being introduced? By
> considering only merged is rather selective.

I consider also divergences.  The evidence shows that phonemes
merged.

Since this discussion is centering on evidence, I'll concentrate
on these issues.

> You have yet to show any evidence other than that based
> on theory.

I showed you Ugaritic and Aramaic.  Again, a lesson in Ugaritic:

http://www.theology.edu/onlinecourses.html#Ugaritic%20Grammar

Texts in Ugaritic:

http://www.labherm.filol.csic.es/sapanu2003/UDBTEXTS.pdf

A concordance of Ugaritic:

http://www.labherm.filol.csic.es/sapanu2003/CUW.zip

And a literal Aramaic translation of the Torah that makes it
easy to learn Aramaic:

http://mechon-mamre.org/i/t/u/u0.htm

Basically, I ask you to read a reasonable sized section to the
point you can pick up words you didn't know previously without a
dictionary.

> > Also, Are you calling the inscription from Tell Fekherye a
> > "grafitti"? It is both a legal and religious document.
> >
> I could give a long answer, but it ain't worth it.

Why not?  You are consistently ignoring the specific examples
I put forward.  Tell Fekherye, $kl/&kl, Execration Texts.  Not to
mention the whole corpus of Ugaritic and Onkelos.

> > Don't the above examples regarding place names in the
> > Execration Texts prove this?  Would place names in
> > Thutmose III's list be sufficient? He's usually dated to the
> > early 15th century.  What would prove it to you?
> >
> Nope. Translation from another though cognate language
> into a third, unrelated language, does not tell how Hebrew
> pronounced these names.

If I write a foreign place name that has the consonant ch (tsh),
I use a "c'" to transliterate it, rather thana "c", by convention.  I
recognize the additional phoneme even though it is not part of
the Hebrew array of phonemes.  By your logic, the Hebrews,
coming to Canaan, would have encountered the cognate
language place names Athterot, Bet-Shemesh, etc, but used
an inadequate alphabet to represent them, without inventing new
phonemes to represent the place names.  Thus, the alphabet
used in the time of Joshua and Moses was inadequate to
represent the body of words they were writing even though
they were already writing large bodies of legal and religious
texts.  By your logic, they should have added graphemes at this
point.  They did not.  Besides, how do you know that it is a
cognate language?  Or are you assuming again?

> > The reason that Arabic today is not North Semitic is because
> > Arabic is classified as South Semitic.  That classification is
> > not a result of migration of people.  It's a result of the relations
> > between the languages.  Migration of people is a suggestion
> > that comes after the classification is made and which may be
> > independently supported.
> >
> So classification alone is sufficient reason to ignore
> history?

What history is being ignored.  Arabic does not become "North
Semitic" just because it is spoken by "North Semitic" people.
And don't trust the Wikipedia on that, anyway.

> To me that sounds like saying that English is an American
> language as the United States is the largest English
> speaking country in the world and most influential today in
> spreading English usage in the rest of the world; ignoring
> history that shows that a small island off Europe deserves
> the blame instead.

It sounds like that to you because you don't know what you're
talking about.  You can't classify a language without studying
the language and the languages of related classifications in
depth.  And you only studied Hebrew, and far from in depth.

> I almost hate to say this, but a "lexeme", as defined by the
> Oxford American Dictionary included with Mac OS X 10.4
> has the same definition as was given in the linguistics
> classes I studied in college, as a lexical unit of a
> language, consisting of one word or several words,
> considered as an abstract unit. There is nothing in that
> definition about graphemes, nor in my use of the term.
>
> There is nothing in that definition that claims that the
> vocalization of "too" in English is anything other than three
> different lexemes, which, if English were written
> phonetically, would have the same grapheme. As it is, that
> vocalization has three graphemes to indicate the at least
> three lexemes that it represents.

According to your own definition above, a lexeme is at least
a "word."  What three words or phrases (lexemes) do the three
graphemes of "too" represent, and why does the presence of
three graphemes indicate at least three words or phrases?

> > Again, so long as you refuse to look at vocalization evidence which
> > native speakers did provide, you are in no place to look at non-
> > vocalization information that native speakers provided as well.
> >
> There is no vocalization evidence from native speakers in
> the Masoretic text.

There is no consonantal evidence from native speakers in the MT,
either.

> > > > So are the Massoretic consonants.  If you want to go earlier
> > > > than the Massoretic consonants you must involve yourself
> > > > in the entire body of studies around the DSS, the Hexapla,
> > > > and early Hebrew inscriptions.  So long as you are unable to
> > > > fully compare the Massoretic Text to the results of such
> > > > study yourself, you're stuck with the Massoretic Text, for all
> > > > that it contains.
> > > >
> > > Wrong.
> >
> > Which part is wrong?
> >
> That I need to go to all the DSS.
>
> For one, much in the DSS are irrelevant to a study of
> Biblical Hebrew, as they are dealing with contemporary and
> other topics not directly related to Biblical Hebrew.
>
> Secondly, others have already done the work, why
> reinvent the wheel when I can stand on the shoulders of
> those who have gone before?

Because you're doubting and negating the assumptions of those
who have gone before you.  You can't rely on conclusions that
are based on premises you don't accept.  If you want to rely on
the conclusions and deny the premises, you must reconstruct
the conclusions from your own premises.  You must reinvent the
wheel, if you are persistent in reinventing it for your basic
premises.

The DSS contain the earliest extant Biblical manuscripts.  How
could that be irrelevant for the study of Biblical Hebrew?

> But I would love to see more of early Hebrew inscriptions
> and ostraca, and this is one area where my isolation
> really frustrates me, where I can often access only a
> scholar's interpretation with, if I am lucky, a low resolution
> image that cannot be used for independent analysis. I
> have seen very few high resolution images, and one was
> of a forgery.

How do you know Ugaritic was not Hebrew?  Are you
defining Hebrew to be a language that does not contain
extra phonemes, by assumption alone?

> Finally, I am not "stuck with the Massoretic Text, for all that
> it contains.", for I am not constrained to accepting the
> Masoretic points. I can ignore them as new invention.

How do you know they weren't copied down from earlier and
the evidence simply didn't survive?  You believe in Mosaic
authorship of the Torah, after all.

> What I am looking for is recognizable and extensive
> documentary evidence from the second millennium BC in
> both Aramaic and Hebrew. Obviously you have nothing
> on the Aramaic side.

If you can tell me how to tell apart Aramaic from other
Semitic languages, I can help you there.

> You selectively rule out extant
> Hebrew documents as copies of relevant Hebrew
> examples, and for no historical reasons.

What do you mean by the above?  What do I rule out as
evidence?

> While I admit that your theory could be right, the lack of
> evidence on your part as to why I should accept your
> model in the first place, contradicted by other evidence,
> leads me to put it in the doubtful file.

You don't have contradictory evidence.  You can't.  You
don't know Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic, or Akkadian, the
major known Semitic languages besides Hebrew.  If you
knew them you might have been able to support yourself
with contradictory evidence, assuming such evidence
exists.  Right now all you have are assumptions of
"what if" that you could answer if you just learned some
of those languages.

> It is not that I refuse to
> look at the data, as others previously in different contexts
> explained it to me in greater detail than you did in this
> exchange,

Others have provided you before with the corpus of Ugaritic?
Have you examined Ugaritic before?

> rather I need to see a good reason to accept
> your model as to why I should accept your statistical
> analysis in the first place, backed up by historical data
> which you, by your own admission, do not have.

How about you provide me one specific way of the change in
the various phonemes appearing in those languages, backed
up by specific evidence from those languages?  (Evidently,
you first need to learn the languages)

Yitzhak Sapir