Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

On 1 Jul 2006 at 21:15, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

> On 6/29/06, dwashbur AT nyx.net wrote:
> 
> > > Can you:
> > >
> > > 1) Give an example of such scholars who use the "late" date of the 
> > > Bible to
> > > make linguistic conclusions on the similarity of Hebrew, Aramaic, 
> > > Moabite,
> > > Ugaritic, and Akkadian?
> >
> > At the moment, no.  ... But for starters, most of the so-called 
> > minimalists take
> > such an approach.
> 
> Well, let's limit scholars to linguists.  Perhaps you may look to whether
> scholars such as Philip Davies make such uses in the recent book by
> Ian Young? (See here: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/reviews/review180.htm 
> )
> (I don't know.  I had a very general reading of parts of the book.)

That puts you one up on me; I haven't even seen the book, and probably won't 
get a chance 
to for a while.  Not having any real resources at hand, I'm at a bit of a 
disadvantage here, so 
I'll agree to withdraw my earlier comments along those lines until I can 
gather some specific 
info.
 
> > > 2) Explain how come this conclusion -- that Hebrew was a development of
> > > Canaanite -- came to be accepted in a time when it was the scholarly
> > > consensus that the Patriarchal narratives were historical?
> >
> > Can you give some examples of this?
> 
> Well, having mentioned Saenz-Badillos, he writes that "The classical study
> of the development of the various Northwest Semitic dialects is Z.S. 
> Harris's
> _Development_of_the_Canaanite_dialects._" (p. 45)  

Harris wrote this book in 1939, so it's questionable how much he actually 
knew about 
Ugaritic since the site wasn't discovered until 1929 and the language 
deciphered some time 
afterward.  

I haven't read that study
> but I'm making some reasonable assumptions here: 1) this study does
> suggest Hebrew is a 1st millenium development of earlier Canaanite/Ugaritic.

No idea whether this assumption is accurate or not, since I haven't read the 
book either.

> 2) During the mid 20th century, the scholarly consensus was that the
> Patriarchal Narratives were historical.  

I'm not sure where this came from, but my reading has suggested just the 
opposite.

3) Scholars who formed the scholarly
> consensus in (2) readily accepted the conclusions of Harris including (1).

There again, it's questionable how many of those scholars had read Harris.  
Without a fairly 
extensive survey of the relevant literature, it's impossible to say.

> > > 3) Give an example of specific linguistic phenomena that could be 
> > > understood
> > > as ancient and prior/concurrent with such languages as Ugaritic or 
> > > Amarna
> > > Canaanite?
> >
> > See number 1 above, but a good place to start would be M. Dahood's works. 
> >  In
> > fact, his commentary on the Psalms in the Anchor series caused a firestorm
> > because of the way he used Ugaritic to challenge some of the more common
> > linguistic assumptions about Hebrew.
> 
> Ok, so just to be clear: By scholars I meant mainly linguists, and by
> an example,
> I meant one that isn't going to be criticized for using unsound methodology 
> like
> one review of Dahood's work mentioned above does.  See here:
> http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-9231(196612)85%3A4%3C484%3AABPI1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

So on the basis of one review, you reject Dahood's work in toto?  I find that 
methodology 
questionable at the very least.  Since JSTOR won't let me in, I can't 
evaluate the review, 
either.  But I have worked with Dahood's material extensively, and find him 
reasonably 
convincing.  In reponse to critiques of his work, he wrote an article (I 
forget where, and once 
again, my vertical file is 900 miles north of my current location) about 
whether it's more 
effective to use Qumran and the versions or Ugaritic and other cognates to 
deal with BH.  
It's well worth tracking down and perusing.  Personally, I'm partial to a 
synthesis of the two, 
but based on Dahood's description and the critiques of him by those in the 
first-mentioned 
camp, I'm a bit of a minority.  In any case, a bad review doesn't negate the 
significance or 
the accuracy of Dahood's work vis a vis the current discussion.  Looking for 
a linguist 
working with the biblical text who isn't going to be criticized by someone 
for using what the 
critic perceives as "unsound methodology" is a bit like looking for frog 
feathers.

Dave Washburn
Encephaloriasis: That condition generated when the person you are dealing 
with is so 
incredibly stupid, you can actually feel your own brain cells drying up and 
flaking off.