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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew

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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew
  • Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2006 11:28:36 +0000

On 05/02/2006 01:09, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
...
Nevertheless, a change from mostly a use of -h at the end of the word
to reflect masculine possessive to a -w at the end does reflect a
sound change, whether it happened earlier or concurrently. ...

Possibly, but not necessarily. ה he is used as a mater lectionis for word final "o" sound in some biblical Hebrew words, especially the name שְׁלֹמֹה Shlomo which may be an early spelling preserved. So this may well have been the original spelling convention for word final "o", which was later usually replaced by ו vav. So there was not necessarily a change of pronunciation.

It is of course well known to comparative Semitists that proto-NW Semitic long "a" changed to long "o" in the Canaanite languages. But I think this change is assumed to have taken place much earlier than the Babylonian exile, probably before matres lectionis were used at all. And so it is unlikely that the masculine possessive in he represents an older -a pronunciation.

... And a
change from -m to -ym possibly reflects a lengthening of the final
vowel in the masculine.

Possibly, possibly not. There is simply not enough evidence of the pre-exilic pronunciation.
All this is evidence that there may very well have been sound changes
-- both in vowels and consonants -- that were reflected in the
"modernized" spelling of the Torah. The spelling of the Torah may
reflect a modernized spelling or it may reflect the spelling convention
of a secretive scribal school in official Jerusalem circles that did not
deal with inscriptions and is therefore uknown from the inscriptional
evidence.

There are at least three possibilities here.
The question whether or not "Biblical Hebrew" (ie, consonantal spelling)
was spoken in pre-exilic times is a controversial and clearly not
something everyone agrees about. The possibility of "Biblical Hebrew"
representing a stage in post-exilic times is still very probably (given
that the other scenario -- secret otherwise unknown official scribal
school -- is unlikely).

So you are partially retracting your earlier statement "No one agrees that "Biblical Hebrew" was spoken before the Babylonian Exile. Practically all philologists agree that Biblical Hebrew as it is spelled today in the Bible represents a stage not earlier than the Persian period." It seems that only one of the three possibilities makes biblical Hebrew into something intrinsically post-exilic, aside from spelling conventions.

By the way, I do not accept your apparent assumption that if the spelling of the Torah was updated after the Exile that makes its language post-Exilic. That is simply not how languages work. The spelling of the King James Bible was updated in the 18th century, but the language of that Bible is still from the early 17th century. I have on my computer a complete copy of the Hebrew Bible transliterated into Latin script. Does this transliteration make this into a work of the late 20th or early 21st century?

Of course the point about whether biblical Hebrew was *spoken* in pre-exilic times raises the separate question of whether biblical Hebrew was actually ever an accurate representation of a spoken language of any period, or whether it was more or less an arbitrary literary convention. But if it was perhaps not spoken before the Exile, it is surely even more certain that it was not the regular spoken language after the Exile.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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