Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Herman Meester" <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>]

2006/5/21, tladatsi AT charter.net <tladatsi AT charter.net>:
> Even if QNH did refer to Cannabis, why would the Greeks need to borrow a
> word from a foreign language for a plant they were well acquainted with?
> When Herodotus (450 BCE) and Dioskarides (70 CE) refer to Kannabis, Hebrew
> was already a dying language.

Whence this sweeping supposition? If Hebrew had been "dying" as early as 450
BCE, or even only 70 CE, why did it continue to develop into the Hebrew we
have in a.o. the Mishna, midrash collections, etc.? The latter form of
Hebrew is clearly a language that has developed as a result of being spoken
(even if it had not been, languages mainly used for writing aren't dead
languages at all).
The fact that some late-biblical texts such as Daniel or Ezra are (partly)
in Aramaic, only points to the bilingual nature of those editing it. Qohelet
is a late work too, judging language and content, and it's Hebrew. Ben Sira
wrote in Hebrew in Hellenistic times, centuries after 450 BCE; and so on.
The fact that Hebrew continued to develop syntactically, semantically, and
phonologically all this time up to late Antiquity has been well documented
by modern linguists. It has to be pointed out that Modern Hebrew is,
syntactically, a continuation of the form of Hebrew found in Mishna,Tosefta,
midrashim etc., not of B-Hebrew.

Herman,
Rotterdam