Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Yitzhak:

You're just like Vadim, impossible!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
> 
> On 10/3/05, Karl Randolph wrote:
> 
> ...
> > The Bible makes certain history claims, which you so airily
> > dismiss, that puts the Torah in 15th century BC. Ugaritic,
> > according to the oldest dating which is contested, was first
> > written a century later if not three centuries.
> 
> No, Ugaritic was first written in the archaeological record some
> century to three centuries later than the 15th century.

Did you read what I wrote?? ...

> ...
> Hebrew was probably written in the spelling and vocabulary that
> appears in the Hebrew Bible only starting from the Persian
> period.
> 
Where's your evidence for that? What documents?

When I read documents like the Gezar Calendar and the 
Siloam Inscription, I find writing entirely consistent with 
examples found in pre-Exile Tanakh. Give me a clear 
enough image and I have no trouble reading the text. 
Have you ever read Tanakh from cover to cover?

> ...
> ...  This claim was "There were more
> phonemes originally in Hebrew than is transmitted by the
> consonantal text."  This claim would be pretty simple to
> convince anyone who accepts the Massoretic text, using
> the Shin/Sin example that is preserved.
> 
The Masoretic pointing is irrelevant to the question, 
as I have repeatedly pointed out. That includes the 
Sin/Shin pointing.

> > If you had some documentary evidence ...
> 
> Perhaps you should first read the evidence before making
> claims that there is no evidence.
> 
Well, where are the documents? Eh? I'm still waiting.

> > ... why do you
> > keep arguing?
> 
> Why not?

That settles it.

> ...  The more this discussion goes on, the more it is
> clear just how little you are basing yourself on any kind of
> evidence whatsoever, while obstinately refusing to read the
> Ugaritic texts and Aramaic translation of the Torah that I
> suggested you read.
> 
As I have repeatedly said, evidence from cognate 
languages does not mean that Hebrew ever had those 
pronunciations nor grammatical features (Ugaritic), further 
your Aramaic examples are from long after the last native 
speaker of Hebrew died, therefore doubly irrelevant. 
Where are your Hebrew documents showing Hebrew 
losing those features?

> > It does pertain to this discussion. You have made certain
> > claims concerning the development of the language,
> > based on "hard facts". But if Moses wrote the consonantal
> > Torah in the 15th century BC basically as we have it
> > today, then the evidence from Hebrew contradicts your
> > claimed "hard facts".
> 
> Ever since the development of the Massorah, which is
> generally dated to the 6th century CE by scholars, Jews
> accepted that Moses received the Torah along with the
> Massorah on Mt. Sinai.

What does this tradition have to do with an analysis of the 
unpointed Hebrew text? Huh??

Have you ever *read* the unpointed text cover to cover?

> ...
> > In summary, since it is merely your faith claims against my
> > faith claims, your attempts to change mine is nothing less
> > than proselytism.
> 
> Mine is not faith claims.  I don't need to proselytize you to get
> you to look at the evidence.
> 
So far you haven't presented any evidence, all you have 
done is present presumed beliefs starting with "What if...?"

> 
> The original article is now publicly available at:
> http://www.sbl-site.org/Publications/JBL/JBL1242.pdf
> 
Thanks, I read the article, and all it gave was evidence 
consistent with what I have previously stated, namely that 
we have no solid evidence from when Hebrew was still a 
natively spoken language. All we have are data from long 
after the last native speaker of Hebrew died, and that from 
a cognate language, not Hebrew itself.

> Yitzhak Sapir

In closing, I have come to the conclusion that you don't 
know Biblical Hebrew. Oh, you may have taken a class or 
two in it, learning the paradigms presented in grammar 
textbooks, but that is a far cry from reading the text cover 
to cover. You have not analyzed even a simple, small 
book like Ruth using an unpointed text, let alone the 
whole Tanakh. All you do is parrot the beliefs of others. If 
you were handed a document in archaic Hebrew script, 
could you read it? I can. Apparently you love to argue just 
to argue, well go on without me.

Karl W. Randolph.

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