Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Hello Peter,

I've read a little more articles on the subject.

Let us leave the Shakespearean discussion for now.  I used it as an
example to make a point.  I didn't intend to start a discussion about
Shakespearean English that completely ignores Hebrew.  In any case,
yes, you misunderstood what I meant in that particular one context.
And I think what is to be learned from that discussion is that one
cannot claim to know how a word was spelled in earlier times, without
actually having seen it spelled.

The Gezer calendar appears to be one of the main elements which
suggest that already by the 10th century did the -ahu suffix develop
into -o.  The argument goes that the form "yrxw" developed as
follows: yarxayhu > yarxehu > yarxew, where "yarxay" is the dual
construct form.  Now, if this word means "his two months" then the
form "yrx" means "his month" which, absent the -h, suggests that
there was a final vowel -o.  But I have long thought that yrxw is a
special dual form of segholates, just like segholates originally had
their own plural forms.  I connect this form with the word "yxdw"
("together") which would be the dual of "single," and which became
a "frozen word" in Biblical Hebrew while other forms of this dual
merged with the standard dual form.  I think this is a more
attractive solution to this form than the "his two months" solution
but it's hard to build a theory based on two words.  In any case,
this is apparently the only reason that I can see why scholars
would suspect that very early the -h fell off in Hebrew.

The Ketef Hinnom amulets do show the -w as a use for the
possessive in the word "bw" ("in him").  But then, we have other
evidence that in the 6th century -w was introduced in place of
-h as a m.l. for final -o or -au/aw and perhaps this is when the -h
was actually lost.

Regarding the "h" in -ah, what I meant was that in the Semitic
group from which Hebrew and Arabic diverged, the change had
already taken place whereby -at had developed into -ah in
non-construct forms, with a consonantal h.  Later, the h was
lost, but not before it was used as the basis for spelling in
both Hebrew and Arabic.  I've seen this opinion mentioned in
a linguistic article of Sarfatti's in Hebrew, but also the opinion
that this development in Hebrew and Arabic occurred in
parallel.  So I'm not sure how strong this position of -ah
having a consonantal h is.  I'm also not sure how a /t/ would
develop into /h/.  So as a whole, I'm not sure of this position,
but I've seen it now mentioned by one linguist.

All the forms of final -h being a m.l. can be traced, then, to
some consonantal -h with varying degrees of confidence:
1) -h for -o in 3rd person masculine, originally -ahu
2) -h for -a in feminine words, originally -ah
3) -h for -e in final -h verbs (bnh, etc), where the h, being
part of the verbal root suggests it would have been
originally consonantal.
I guess both #2 and #3 are controversial, though.

I guess the second common form of final -o in Hebrew is
the relative words "bmw", "kmw", "lmw".  We don't know
if they were spelled with final -h in pre-exilic times.  But
this is something that is not traceable to consonantal h.

The -h spelling for 3rd person possessive letter is
attested in various places, including Arad, Lachish,
Mesad Hashavyahu, and near Jerusalem.  It is hard
therefore to see this as a dialectical variation or different
spelling convention and more reasonable to see the -w
as an alternative spelling convention that began to
replace the -h in the late 7th or 6th century.

How well can we conclude from the spelling as to the
pronunciation?  Maybe we can't?  Maybe the -ahu
shifted to -o in the 9th century but the spelling
maintained for a couple more centuries.  We can't
know.  But in any case, the spelling reflects a
certain pronunciation convention.  As time goes by,
sound changes occur, and the relationship between
pronunciation and spelling gets more and more
complicated.  This in turn leads to changes in the
spelling convention to standardize things, which may
only slightly change matters for the better.  So all
we may be able to say is that the h in the 3rd person
possessive was dropped sometime during the First
Temple period, but before the 6th century.

Given the statement: Was Biblical Hebrew spoken
in the First Temple period? and the definition being
Biblical Hebrew = language represented by the
consonantal text as we have it today of the MT, I
think it is safe to conclude that something similar
was spoken, but given the slight difference in
nuances and more obvious difference in spelling,
that it was similar does not mean that it was the
same and there were probably differences in
both pronunciation and vocabulary.

> My point is that although there may have been a pronunciation change
> there is no evidence for this in the spelling. This whole thread is
> about my insistence on evidence for your hypothesis of major
> pronunciation changes between inscriptional and Torah Hebrew. Yes, we
> agree that it may have happened, even that it was quite probable. But so
> far no evidence for this has been produced which cannot be explained
> simply as a change of spelling convention.

Well, the -h to -w spelling convention does show this change of
pronunciation, whether you want to explain it as a belated change
of spelling after the pronunciation had long changed, or a
concurrent one.  The use of -h for final -o is not proven in my opinion
and the Biblical text is no evidence in this regard without some
contemporary spelling (such as of "b:mo", "k:mo", "l:mo").  Neither
is the Gezer calendar sufficient evidence.  We can even suggest
that in any case that might be a divergent dialect.  How would you
suggest to differentiate between a "purely a change of spelling
convention" and "a change of pronunciation which effects a change
in spelling"?

> Well, not agreed by Karl, and I thought he had quoted some scholars who
> hold that the -w in the Siloam inscription is a singular possessive.

Karl didn't quote any scholars.  Of two scholars to whom I referred -- Jim
Davila and Joseph Naveh -- he misspelled Naveh's name and noted he
doesn't know nor care much who Jim Davila is, because Jim Davila
accepts proto-Semitic.  By saying "widely agreed" I referred to scholars
who have the relevant academic background and have studied the
corpus of inscriptions thoroughly.  Karl is not one of them.

> It certainly seems to have become the practice in at least later
> inscriptional Hebrew not to leave word final vowels unmarked, so it is
> hardly likely that word final -o was an exception. But it is I suppose
> possible that in the corpus of inscriptions there are no examples of
> word final -o, apart from the masculine possessives under discussion.

All kinds of final vowels are not marked in later pre-exilic inscriptional
Hebrew.  There are obvious examples -- such as Mesad Hashavyahu's
use of "klt" for "klti". and less obvious ones -- such as the same
ostracon's "dbr (bdh", where "dbr" may be in the plural and therefore
possibly have a vowel in the end.  Consider also Siloam's "r)$ hxcbm"
where "r)$" may also be in the plural, and in fact, I think that must be
the simplest reading.  It is also generally accepted that final short
vowels were not usually indicated.

> > ... Note also the use
> > of final Alef in various names of Biblical persons from pre-exilic times 
> > that
> > are transliterated in foreign inscriptions with an -a. ...
>
> If we are now talking about Hebrew transliterated into Akkadian, in the
> Hebrew of that period alef represented a clearly pronounced glottal
> stop,

How do you know?

> but this is not clearly represented in Akkadian, or in English,
> because these languages lack the glottal stop. (Well, in fact glottal
> stops are very common in the colloquial English of my area, but that's
> another matter.) So there are two distinct classes of Hebrew words which
> should not be confused: those ending in alef, a glottal stop, and those
> ending in he, mostly representing a word final vowel.

Again, how do you know that this is what the convention implied?

> Well, your original claim was that the differences of spelling
> convention, to which we have added some subtle lexical differences,
> proves that there was a time difference between inscriptional and
> biblical Hebrew. But such differences can easily by synchronic i.e.
> dialectal rather than diachronic. If you want to demonstrate that the
> differences are diachronic, you need to provide some evidence, rather
> than assert that a difference implies a time gap.

What evidence, for example?  I get the feeling you are comfortable
making various assertions (h is for -o, -a, ) is for glottal stop) which are
just as unproven as those assertions or claims of mine that you doubt.
It is actually the lack of evidence of dialects which you need to
explain.  We can substantiate that a different dialect was in use in
Israel as opposed to Judea (for example, the shortening of *ay to "e").
But you are claiming a different dialect in the lack of any archaeological
evidence to that effect.  You are just claiming this is a possibility.  But
until you show this in evidence, the evidence points to a "diachornic"
scenario.

> The kind of evidence which you might be able to provide is variant forms
> of the same text from before and after the Exile. Yes, they exist -
> there is a pre-exilic version of the priestly blessing - or has this
> been rejected as a forgery?

Its relationship to the Biblical text is unclear.  Which came first?  Or are
they both copies of some common blessing?  In any case, the blessings
themselves have no cases of final -h's or such that we can use.

> And then of course there are the parallel
> passages between the originally probably pre-exilic Samuel and Kings and
> the post-exilic Chronicles.

The fact that Samuel may be in origin pre-exilic does not mean it was
spelled in that spelling as we have it today in pre-exilic times.  Kings is 
not
pre-exilic.  How can it be pre-exilic if it mentions the exile?

> There are of course a number of complex
> analytical issues here, but it should be possible to demonstrate from
> these to some extent how the language changed from before to after the
> Exile.

So long as you don't mind circular reasoning.

Yitzhak Sapir