Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Rochelle:

I'm almost certain I'm repeating myself, at least on parts of my reply.

Where do you get the picture that only the elites went into exile? The
picture from Tanakh is that the land was completely depopulated: the
elites going to Babylon, while the poor of the land going into exile
in Egypt. The returnies came from Babylon and found an empty land.
What historical documents do you have that indicate otherwise?

The Elephantine Jews are most likely descendents of those Jews who
went into exile in Egypt.

Going back to the example of Latin, it is still a living language in
that it is still spoken, literature is still written in it, including
poetry. True, the uses of Latin are but a fraction of how it was used
400 years ago, but even 400 years ago, no one learned Latin at his
mother's knee, yet Latin was spoken, literature written in it, some
international agreements were written in Latin, and if you go 200
years prior to that, almost everything of importance was written in
Latin and almost all legal, trade and scholarly discussion was spoken
in Latin.

Returning to Hebrew, in all of the examples you gave, which one cannot
be an example of use the same way as Latin is used?

As far as I can remember, I have never said that Hebrew was not
spoken, rather the evidence I have seen so far is that Hebrew was not
taught at one's mother's knee, rather that those who spoke it, spoke
it as a legal, high literature, religious, trade, etc. language, one
that they learned at school, the same as medieval Latin.

A final question: while the DSS included documents that were old, I
was always taught that the oldest documents were from about 250 BC.
That includes those written in Paleo Hebrew script. Is there some new
information that has come out?

Karl W. Randolph.