Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 9/26/05, Karl Randolph wrote:

> I start with the theological position that God exists, that he
> communicated with his creation, man, and that God
> caused a record of his communication to be written down
> in the volume we now call the Bible. Because God is not a
> capricious individual, but is consistent in his word and
> deed, the record that he caused to be written was exactly
> as he wanted it to be, in its original autographs.

The above is a list of theological beliefs.  None of them have
any bearing on the questions at hand, however.

> Just as in a modern computer, when one changes a
> document that was originally written with Shelley Andante
> font to Palatino, which looks very different but the
> underlying coding remains unchanged, so when the DSS
> copiers changed from archaic Hebrew font to square
> Aramaic font, it did not change the underlying coding nor
> meaning. The same 22 letters were used. That there is
> evidence that Hebrew went through an earlier font change
> is not evidence that there was an alphabet change
> connected with it. There is no evidence of Biblical Hebrew
> use of an alphabet with more than 22 letters.

Since all we have are epigraphic inscriptions in "Biblical
Hebrew" from the Second Temple period and in very similar
Hebrew, perhaps even Biblical Hebrew but with more archaic
spelling, from the First Temple period, we cannot say what
alphabet Hebrew would have used prior to the 10th century.
Even the Gezer calendar's language is not necessarily
"Hebrew."  Only if you hold that the Torah was written during
or after the First Temple period, can you say that most likely
it would have been written in an alphabet containing only 22
letters.  Prior to that we don't know.  Anything you assume is
on pure faith.  Something on the order of: "I believe the Torah
was written in the 15th century, and I believe the Torah at that
time was written in an alphabet of no more than 22 letters, and I
believe that any copies that were made at that time simply did
not survive archaeologically because they were written on
perishable materials."  All of that is "I believe."  All pure
beliefs.  I am not saying they are necessarily false.  Some of
them, notably the last, is liable to change with discovery of
new evidence.  But right now, all of the above are beliefs.  The
above can be countered for example by arguing that since
early alphabetic inscriptions included more than 22 letters,
inscriptions in the 15th century of the Torah, if they existed,
would have used more than 22 letters.  You argue that this
isn't an argument since all those inscriptions are not Hebrew.
But that is 1) assuming that they are not Hebrew because of
the belief that Hebrew existed at the 15th century, 2) is
misrepresenting the fact that these inscriptions are simply
all the evidence, not simply the "non-Hebrew" evidence.  This
is why I asked you to tell me how I may classify an earlier
stage of Hebrew.  So I could tell if Ugaritic was "Hebrew" or
not.  You refused to provide me with objective criteria, any
criteria in fact, that I may use to test the proposition that
Ugaritic was "Hebrew" or an earlier form of the language that
developed into Hebrew and therefore that between the 15th
century and the first millenium inscriptions where we find
Hebrew attested, Hebrew was originally written in more than
22 letters.  In sum, you assume as a matter of belief that
Hebrew was written in 22 letters prior to the 10th century.
This appears to be by definition -- "If it has more than 22
letters, it is not Hebrew."

> When we look at the internal dating listed in the Bible, we
> reckon that Moses wrote in the 15th century BC. He wrote
> the Torah, all but possibly the final chapter. Because it
> was not an issue in ancient times, there was no polemic
> needed to assert this claim, hence none given.

This is based on the belief that the internal dating of the
Torah is the 15th century.  As I pointed out, both tradition
and the "internal dating" of Onkelos point towards the same
date for Onkelos as for the Torah.  You further refuse to
investigate the "internal dating" of the Ugaritic texts, such
as the "Keret epic," which necessarily refers to an Ugaritic
king prior to any of the Ugaritic kings we know.  In other
words, while you appeal to "internal dating", you base this
(apparently) on a belief that "internal dating" is only proper
for the Bible and not for other texts.

> This is not mere tradition, but conclusions based on a set
> of philosophical presuppositions. It is this set of
> philosophical presuppositions that is used to evaluate
> various claims made by tradition, and finds many wanting.

Am I to understand that you mean your "philosophical
presuppositions" are what I read as "theological beliefs" or
"beliefs that are at least partly theological"?  If so, you
evaluate traditional claims based on your beliefs, which
would find many wanting only if you held different beliefs
than that of tradition, which is another set of beliefs.

> What about Ugaritic? Depending on whose dating you
> accept, the oldest texts were written one to three centuries
> later, most texts three to five centuries later. That means
> that Ugaritic had absolutely no influence in the original
> development of Hebrew.

So long as you believe that "internal dating" is valid for the
Bible and not for Ugaritic texts.

> Aramaic? The oldest text listed was from six centuries
> later. Again, no documented influence of Aramaic in the
> development of Biblical Hebrew.

Like I said, some Jews accept the Targum Onkelos as
deriving back from the time of Moses, having been given
to Moses.  This may be due, in my opinion, to the fact
that it was used as an authoritative "canonical" translation
of the Torah during liturgical service.  How would you date
Targum Onkeos, based on "internal dating"?

> Like the two examples above, all your conjectures
> concerning cognate language influence on Biblical
> Hebrew is no more than "What if ...?" games.

The difference between my evidence and your evidence
is that your evidence requires accepting your beliefs.  My
evidence is hard facts.  Tablets of stone with Ugaritic
alphabetic cuneiform or the Massoretic Text of the Torah
as written in the Ben Asher Codex, or the text of the
book of Isaiah as in the DSS scroll.   It is up to you to
interpret the text, based on whatever beliefs you choose.
The text is there, the beliefs are yours.  Your evidence,
however, requires me to accept your beliefs about the
evidence.  It is perhaps because of this that when I
dispute the interpretation of your evidence, you claim I
am proselytizing.  Effectively, you are saying, this is the
evidence and what I believe the evidence to mean, but
you cannot dispute it.  Hence, the "evidence" points both
ways, because you have not disputed my evidence
legitimately.

The above can be seen especially in light of comments
such as: "Do you not rule out that Moses in the 15th
century BC wrote Torah in basically the consonantal text
form we have today apart from relatively few copiest errors?
If so, you selectively rule out evidence I think is important."
You require me to accept your beliefs, assumptions, and your
interpretation of the evidence (Massoretic Text).  When I say
that Shin and Sin are ancient, you say we don't have any
native Biblical Hebrew speakers to ask.  But even though
we don't have any "original" 15th century BCE Torah from
which we can see that it was indeed written then or that it
was written with only "relatively few" copiest errors, I must
consider this as "evidence" and must debate your religious
assumptions if I want to dispute the "evidence", but then
say I'm proselytizing.  I'm not going there, however, and
am simply continuously pointing out that it is irrelevant.

> There is
> historical evidence that Aramaic influenced post-Exilic
> Hebrew, starting from stylistic clues from within Biblical
> literature to the development of Mishnaic Hebrew, but
> there is no proof of pre-Exilic influence.

I don't consider you an authority of how much Aramaic
influenced Hebrew, so long as you do not know Aramaic.

> Again, because of philosophic presuppositions which
> value history over philosophic reconstruction, I'm not
> satisfied with "What if ...?" games in the absence of
> documentary evidence.

If Ugaritic was an early form of Hebrew, or its ancestor,
and even if you refused to apply your "internal dating" to
Ugaritic, then that would show that "Hebrew", or its
ancestor, 300 years after your date of Moses, was
written in more than 22 letters.  It would also imply back
to the date of Moses.  However, you apparently
claim Ugaritic isn't "Hebrew," or a form of its ancestor,
because by definition for you, Hebrew was only written in
22 letters.  Essentially, for you, if data contradicts your
beliefs, it is the data that is wrong or not appropriately
interpreted.  This might have been fine if it was only
beliefs such as "Moses received the Torah on Sinai", but
here we are talking about specifically linguistic beliefs
(such as "Hebrew only ever had 22 letters/graphemes/
phonemes").

> That does not mean that the study of cognate languages
> is useless in the study of Biblical Hebrew, rather that such
> studies have only very limited usefulness. Just because a
> cognate language has a certain feature does not mean
> that Hebrew ever had that feature, and that includes
> phonemes.

That is not my statement.  I am asking you to stand by your
statement that there is another explanation for how that
phoneme developed.  To do that, you must show clearly
how the different words in many many roots exactly matched
up on those "disputed phonemes" in Hebrew, Ugaritic, Aramaic
and Arabic.  I offered a pretty simple and comprehensive solution
to the issue, the one accepted by all linguists.  You offered no
alternative solution.  Only a "maybe it was something else"
statement that is very generalized and does not explain the
specifics.  You even ignored my request to explain how the
specifics in your solution work out for the example you gave,
of various roots that linguists believed merged in Hebrew into
the letters Shin-Mem, ie to show how there was Aramaic
influence in the issue.

> From your previous statements, I'd be very surprised if you
> have the same set of philosophic presuppositions as
> listed above. It is your different set of presuppositions that
> makes you value cognate language study and diss the
> Biblical record.

I don't diss the Biblical record.  If anyone "diss"es the Biblical
record, it is you, because you don't accept the Massoretic
vocalization.  You also accept what some linguists claim
about Massoretic vocalization (ie, that it isn't original) but don't
accept what they claim about the &/$ phonetics (that it is
extremely ancient).  Again, this is apparently based on your
belief, that Sin and Shin can't be different phonemes
because Hebrew only had 22 phonemes.

> I believe that your repeated misrepresentations of my
> position is based on a narrow set of religious beliefs that
> you have, a fundamentalism that I and others do not
> share.

The only person here who is fundamentalistic is you
because you refuse to even look at the evidence.  Every
point of evidence you suggested, I looked at and explained
my outlook on it.  You refuse to explain your view of the
specifics of the Ugaritic and Aramaic languages.

> Again, as I said in my last message, the above is not an
> attempt to proselytize you, rather it is to show where we
> differ, and that that difference is based first and foremost
> on philosophical grounds.

> No amount of data is going to
> change either mind as long as the philosophical
> differences remain,

That again is a belief.  But unlike other beliefs mentioned that
can either probably never be determined true or false, or may
be determined one way only in case future evidence is found,
this belief can be tested.  You simply have to look at the data.

> which is why I have now twice
> mentioned that we ought to stop this exchange. I am not
> trying to shut you up, it is just that we need to bridge the
> philosophical divide before the data has the same
> meaning to the both of us.

I don't need it to have the same meaning to you.  I need to
know how your theory works out in specifics.  How you
explain the widespread changes that seem to point almost
entirely in one direction.

> Have a good trip.

As it appears I will be away for two weeks but able to respond
off an on, I will just say now that I will respond when able.  But
thank you.

I have mentioned various beliefs of yours that I perceive in this
exchange.  Let me quote again myself from a couple messages
ago: No belief of faith is ridiculous, so long as you remember it
is a belief of faith and not evidence in and of itself.  So there's
no problem with your beliefs.  Rather, the problem is that you
require I accept them in order to debate your linguistic theory.
And then when you perceive I claim they're wrong in order to
show you where your linguistic theory errs, you claim I
proselytize.

Furthermore, let me quote you: "Therefore, unless you can prove
that the early Hebrews were using an ill fitting alphabet when
Moses wrote Torah in the 15th century BC, you cannot
rule out the historically attested to pattern from other
languages indicating that the 22 graphemes represented
the 22 consonantal lexemes recognized by the ancient
Hebrews."  But later, you wrote "Modern languages usually
mangle foreign words and place names to make them fit within
their phonetic structure, there is no reason that Biblical Hebrew
did not do the same."  From my point of view the above is the
most direct example where you gave a challenge, I met it, but it
just wasn't enough for you.

Yitzhak Sapir