Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Yitzhak:

You are getting dirty and personal again, which is 
a sign that I should bow out of this discussion. In 
fact, that is why the moderators told us to knock 
it off last time we got into a knock down, drag it 
out argument. Unless you stop these straw man 
arguments (look it up under logical fallacies), 
I will not respond again.

You reminded me again why I should ignore certain 
people, and your name is at the top of the list.

As for the disputed stone, once you gave me a clue 
as to where to find more information on the web 
other than what I claimed was a flakey, hence 
untrustworthy site (I mentioned that it was a clue 
only because I had seen photos of the stone in 
books as well), I found information where it was 
found, that it was not in the deserts of eastern 
nor southern Jordan, and if you truly are a 
scholar, you can find that information too.


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
> 
> On 6/30/06, Karl Randolph wrote:
> 
> > >  ...  To compare,
> > > you do not have a version of the Torah from 1400 BCE.
> > > You have a book attested in the last few centuries BCE.
> > > If you claim that the internal dates allow you to date this
> > > book (Torah) back from 300 BCE to 1400 BCE, then
> > > perhaps the Ugaritic inscriptions could be dated back
> > > by the internal dates from 1400 BCE to 2500 BCE!
> >
> > Don't be ridiculous!
> 
> What's ridiculous? It's simple logic!  

It is completely illogical to claim that because 
one document could be dated a certain way, that 
another document or set of documents can also be 
dated the same way. Each needs to be dated on its 
own merits.

> ...   You claim that the text and
> orthography ...

I never claimed that the orthography points to an 
earlier writing, as all that we have are copies, 
and as I said elsewhere, orthography can only 
indicate when the copies were made.

> ... of the Torah, as you have it, dating from around 800
> CE is exactly the same language on all its details as 2000 years
> earlier. 

Are you sure that you don't need to see an 
ophthalmologist? Or a reading specialist?

> ... Giving you a little leeway in that very similar (orthographically)
> manuscripts have been found dating to the late centuries BCE at
> Qumran, and taking the earliest date for these (around 300 BCE),
> there is still some 1100 years of difference.  Comparative analysis
> shows that the orthography seems to reflect dates of around 500 -
> 400 BCE.

See above.

>  ...  Now, not having read historical and literary documents
> from Ugarit, how can you say that my claims are ridiculous?

How can it not be ridiculous?

> ...  The
> only thing ridiculous here is your assumption of 1100 years
> difference with no linguistic change.

Linguistic change and orthographic change are two 
different subjects.

If I make an exact copy of Shakespeare's words in a 
word processor and print it on 20 lb paper using an 
inkjet printer, the orthography and printing 
technology will point to 2006 while the linguistic 
clues in the document point to Elizabethan England. 
It is absolutely illogical to claim that my 
printing of Shakespeare's words using modern 
technology is a clue that there has been no 
linguistic change since Shakespeare.

Unless you can produce documents showing that what 
we have are not close copies of older documents 
reflecting the older linguistics, your claim has 
no merit.

Ridiculous!

> ...  Using a more humble 300
> years, based among other things on inscriptions from the late
> Judaean monarchy, we'd get that the Ugaritic language may
> represent the language spoken in that area from around 1700 BCE
> even though only records from 1400 BCE survive.  That is probably
> reasonable (and in line with claims of certain scholars, if I remember
> right).
> 
That is no more than hot air, speculation.

You need documentation to back up that claim.

> > > The real problem is that you make claims and statements
> > > knowing nothing about Ugarit, or Ugaritic, and even
> > > refusing to try to study Ugaritic because, well, you
> > > already know it can't help you.
> > >
> > The main reason I don't study it is time constraints.
> 
> So you can at least refrain from bringing it in as evidence.
> 
You are the one who brought it in as evidence. 
I merely showed reasons why your claims are 
questionable, at best.

> > I didn't answer you last time because of the
> > moderators who said not to, but now that you bring
> > it up again ...

See above, at the introductory statement.
>...
> 
> > > Besides, your theoretical situation misrepresents the
> > > way linguists work.  Given a document, linguists can
> > > associate the document with known sets of data,
> > > based on script, orthography, and language.  Each of
> > > these sets of data is large, not a single document, and
> > > the language of this set can be compared with others to
> > > determine if the languages are related and how.  In any
> > > case, none of this relates to the "internal date" of the
> > > Torah.
> >
> > You claim that the data sets are large. Prove it.
> 
> You say you have no time to learn Ugaritic.  Isn't that
> sufficient to show that the Ugaritic inscriptions are
> numerous?

There you bring in Ugaritic again.

What you need is a large body of transitional 
documents from Ugaritic to Biblical Hebrew to 
demonstrate that Ugaritic is ancestral to Biblical 
Hebrew. You have failed to produce that body of 
documents.

Then we have descriptions of events that supposedly 
happened around the time Moses authored the 
originals of Torah (of which we have only copies): 
the description of those events indicates that 
Torah could very well predate any of the Ugaritic 
tablets. If so, that would make Ugaritic a 
linguistic backwater with very little connection 
with a study of Biblical Hebrew and its history.

> ...  The same can be said for the Massoretic
> text, which constitutes another "data set" in my view,
> and the Qumran finds which constitute several related
> ones (based on differences in basic language -- Hebrew,
> Aramaic, or Greek -- and orthography)
> 
> > In order to dismiss the internally attested to date
> > of a document based on linguistic data, looking at
> > how the language changed, you need to have many
> > extensive documents totaling multiple hundreds if
> > not thousands of words each century. Where is the
> > list of such documentation for Biblical Hebrew? Eh?
> 
> I am not sure how this topic got here.  

Huh???!!!

That is how you would establish the 
evolution of Semitic languages, by using 
extensive documentation.

> ...   We were
> discussing the evolution of Semitic languages.  What
> does the "internal dating" of the Torah have to do with
> it?  The only thing that has to do with it is an
> assumption by *you* that Moses wrote the Torah
> in Hebrew in the same orthographic conventions as
> the Massoretes.  Since you've read the Mesha
> inscription, you find it easy to conclude that Moabite
> and Hebrew were mutually intelligible.  But rather than
> trying to read Ugaritic to see how close it is to the
> Hebrew language of the Bible, and not having good
> sources and images to allow you to learn what Sinaitic
> inscriptions were really like, you bring some undated
> North Arabian inscription from some kooky website for
> support that the orthography in the Bible corresponds to
> the orthography used in the middle of the 2nd millenium
> BCE.  Why don't you instead tell me where you learned
> and where it says, internally or externally, that Moses
> wrote the whole Torah in Hebrew and where it says what
> orthography he used?  Shouldn't you answer this before
> claiming that I should be keeping speculation apart from
> evidence?
> 
> Yitzhak  Sapir
> http://toldot.blogspot.com

Your last set of questions are not worthy of an answer.

As for me, this discussion is closed.

Karl W. Randolph.

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