Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 3:51 PM, James Readwrote:
> I've heard these arguments before ...
> 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, here you are placing what you heard from others in my statements.  I
did not quote Rashi.  I quoted Genesis Rabbah, which quotes a much earlier
authority.  It is very reasonable that Rashi quotes the Midrash.  He does it 
all
the time.  But Rashi does not bring here the full statement of the Midrash --
only its conclusion.  Rabbi Simon is an early 4th century CE authority, and
Rabbi Pinhas (the latest of the three named authorities) is from the mid 4th
century CE.  At the time of Rashi, the competing religions were Islam, and
various sects of Christianity.  I really doubt the Jews in the 4th century CE
saw any issue here with competing traditions of other religions since they
accepted translations into Aramaic and Greek.

> 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.

The story of Babel uses the verb BLL which means to mix up or moisten.
Its cognate in Arabic (so HALOT) means also to disperse.  Your conclusion
that the story speaks of instantaneous confusion is your own reading into
the text.  Nowhere does it say that the process was instantaneous.  Read
independently, as a competing source to the Table of Nations, it may be
understood to mean that the process was instantaneous.  But the verb BLL
still suggests that languages were not created out of nothing.  They were
just mixed up.  You don't create something out of nothing by mixing
something up.  However, coming as it does, after the Table of Nations which
describes a genealogical tree of nations where similar languages and
cultures appear to be grouped together.  The easiest way to read both of
these accounts together (that is, to harmonize them) is to assume that the
 story of Babel discusses in general terms God's reasons for dispersing the
people over several generations.  The Table of Nations discusses the final
outcome of that process.  From its genealogical relationships we
understand that God drew similar languages out of a common source and
that the process was gradual.

Yitzhak Sapir