Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hi,

Quoting 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.

Thanks for these corrections. I haven't gotten round to studying who  
wrote what commentary and when. However, in general, my observations  
still stand. We are still talking about a community of Rabbi's who are  
no longer operating in Jerusalem, the temple being destroyed, who are  
attempting to hold things together after suffering such a loss. From  
this community eventually comes forth

a) the Masoretic text
b) the Tiberian pointing rises triumphant amongst its rivals
c) a general concensus of the oral torah is published in writing after  
much debate and disagreement about what is and is not the oral torah

The main rivals of this time are almost certainly two sects of the  
sect of the Nazarenes (the Arians and the Niceans) that after  
surviving 3 centuries of various persecutions have reached such high  
numbers that Constantine makes it the official religion of the  
Byzantine empire.

Both competing parties are making heavy use of Greek versions and  
Syriac versions of the Tanakh to prove their case. By this time there  
has clearly come to be a number of subtle differences between the  
Greek and Syriac traditions and the Hebrew tradition that becomes the  
Massoretic text and I feel justified in positing that there may be  
ulterior motives to this line of reasoning. The Rabbi is trying to  
affirm superiority to this tradition by recourse to language of origin.

> > 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.

Um. Interesting analysis. I assume that by the table of nations you  
mean the summary in Genesis 10. One observation I would make here is  
that taken for what it is the account presents people in groups of who  
they were children of rather than any linguistic groups. Any  
linguistic grouping is what you have imposed on the account by  
knowledge of what language these groups likely spoke from geographical  
considerations and your knowledge of the history of languages.

Your observations on the verb meaning to mix are interesting but you  
may have missed one important contextual clue. The beginning of  
chapter 11 explicitly tells us that 'Now all the earth continued to be  
of one language and of one set of words'. So if there was only one set  
of words and only one language how on earth could there have been any  
mixing in the way you are interpreting this.

Concerning whether this was a gradual process or not there are a  
number of facts that you need to consider

a) when they started building the city they all spoke the same language
b) the purpose of 'mixing' their language was so that they wouldn't be  
able to carry out these coordinated efforts and would spread out  
across the land
c) mission was accomplished, they stopped building the city and they  
spread out from Babel

So, now I ask myself. If everybody's language evolved slowly from one  
original mother language what would I expect to see. I would expect  
every language in the world to be demonstrably cognate to every other  
language via some theoretical proto-single-parent-language.

While if at some point in history several languages appeared among a  
relatively small group of forefathers I would expect to languages of  
the world fit nicely into groups with a common parent language and a  
group of proto-parent-languages that are difficult to reconcile with  
each other.

So, the question I put to you is this. Which one of these two do you see?

James Christian



> Yitzhak Sapir
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