Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

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/