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  • From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] theories and standards
  • Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 13:51:10 +0100

Yep. Sure. I didn't mean to suggest for one minute that you believe the story of Babel to be true. I've heard these arguments before and was referring to the story of Babel as it shows, that biblically speaking, there is no real basis for this argument as the account shows that, in the biblical sense, languages did not evolve from a mother languages but were miraculously and instantaneously confused.

I think Rashi had an agenda in the quotation that you show. The competing religion of the time, the sect of the Nazarenes, were both making great use of Greek and Syriac (aka aramaic) and some were even asserting the primacy of the Greek and Syriac versions of the Tanakh. I think his main agenda was to show that Tanakh was authored in Hebrew and not in Greek or Syriac to give some form of credence to the primacy of its tradition.

James Christian


Quoting Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>:

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 2:32 PM, James Read wrote:
Sure. I get the logic. You could also make an argument based on Adam's name.
But these arguments are by no means conclusive.

I don't know why you think I even intended to claim these arguments
were very strong or that the story of Babel to be necessarily historical.
I don't. You just said "I did once hear a theory that Hebrew must be
the mother of all languages and that there was some biblical support
for this. However, try as I might, I haven't been able to find any ..." So
I provided the source where "some biblical support" for the idea might
be adduced.

Yitzhak Sapir
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