Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

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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