Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

James:

On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 12:20 AM, James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk> wrote:

> #Of course, you are right. The fact that Hebrew is so closely related
> to so many contemporary cognates seems to speak for itself...
>
> However, it does raise interesting linguistic questions. Let us
> postulate that it is historically true that Abraham came out of Ur and
> wandered around Canann. Let us also postulate that it is historically
> true that Jacob and sons ended up in Egypt and that later generations
> ended up in slavery and eventually came out of to wander about in Sinai.
>
> It does raise interesting linguistic questions about what language
> they likely spoke in different periods of their wanderings:
>
> a) while in Canaan before the slavery


What evidence do we have of Canaanite language from the early bronze age? As
far as I know, the only evidence that survives to this day is Genesis.

>
> b) while in Egypt under slavery


The story of Exodus indicates that the Egyptian rulers, at least, dealt only
with the rulers of the Hebrews and passed the work demands through those
rulers, not directly to the workers themselves. (Exodus 5:14 ff) Hence it is
possible that the majority of Hebrews were monolingual and did not
understand Egyptian. However, this “possible” is speculation, as there is no
documentation to back it up.

>
> c) post slavery
>

That the Torah was composed during this period (assuming that it is accurate
history) indicates that Biblical Hebrew was the language spoken by the
people.

>
> Assuming that it is true that Isreal came out of Egypt under some
> leader who gave them their laws and religiion (let us call him Moses)
> then it kind of makes sense, in a way, that the alphabet they used is
> based on a subset of Egyptian hieroglyphics. So, it raises the
> following questions that can be considered objectively:
>
> a) did the Hebrew used to write the Torah come about as a dialect that
> evolved from the Egyptian that the hebrews spoke while in Egypt


I think this is highly unlikely, as Moabite, as shown by the Mesha stele
from centuries later, a people who never went to Egypt, was almost identical
to Biblical Hebrew. There is less difference between Biblical Hebrew and
Moabite than between many dialects and their parent languages.

>
> b) did the Hebrews manage to keep their language, being bilingual,
> while in slavery in Egypt and the Hebrew of the Torah is, therefore,
> more or less the same as the Hebrew of Jacob, of Isaac, of Abraham


The question I raised above, were they bilingual?

>
> c) As a chaldean of Ur, what was likely to be Abraham's mother tongue of
> birth


Where was Ur of the Chaldeans? Was it the same as Ur of the Sumerians, or a
different city? That it was listed almost always, if not always, as “Ur of
the Chaldeans” indicates that it was a different city.

>
> d) did Abraham learn Canaanite while wandering about in Canaan? Is
> Hebrew a direct descendant of Canaanite?


Is there any documentation that could clear this up? I know of none.

>
>
> James Christian
>
> Basically I see you raising questions that, while they are interesting,
cannot be answered at this time given the paucity of evidence that remains.
Karl W. Randolph.