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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • To: George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew as a holy language
  • Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 11:30:32 +0100

Hi George,

thanks for this. It was an interesting and well thought out post.

Quoting George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>:

I think the point that Petr was trying to make (correct me if I'm wrong, Petr) is that there is a logical leap from saying that because Genesis **apparently** portrays events in the Early Bronze Age and it does so in Hebrew, that Genesis is therefore evidence for the state of Canaanite or Semitic languages in the Early Bronze Age. If that's Petr's position, he's absolutely right. There is a big leap in logic there.


I think it is perhaps best to drop terms like EBA in this discussion. I don't think they are very helpful. The author of Genesis had no concept of EBA. It is perhaps, IMO, to consider things from the point of view of how they are presented by the author. The author cannot be held responsible for any chronology that came after the torah was written. His only chronological concern is with reference to the beginning of mankind. In other words he's working forward in his dating system while we are trying to work backward. The two systems are incompatible.

That's just my opinion for what it's worth.

And regarding language, the Torah doesn't seem to make any specific claims of the language used by just about anybody. All we can see for sure is that Joseph's brothers were using an interpreter. This suggests a different language being used in Egypt. And we have a table of nations. And we have a story about when languages got confused. But that is all we have. Any assumptions about what language the ancients spoke have been read into the text not out of it.

Firstly, let's assume that the events portrayed in Genesis are staged in the Early Bronze Age (EBA). Though I doubt that's the case, let's assume it is for the moment. The most we can say is that the characters in the book of Genesis, who occupy the world of the text, speak Standard Biblical Hebrew.

But one of the key questions to this discussion is 'can we really say that?'. We do not even know for sure that the Hebrew torah we have today is not a translation from what Moses originally wrote in a more ancient language. We just assume that Hebrew tradition has it correct that the Torah was originally penned in Hebrew and then we work backwards heaping assumption upon assumption to get to the conclusion that the characters in Genesis spoke BH. This is not made explicit in the text and is one of the key questions that the text engenders.


Logically, you have to argue the case that you can then extend the world of the text to the real world of the real EBA of the real past such that Standard Biblical Hebrew becomes a language of the EBA. You can't simply use the text to do it, because that's completely circular evidence: "The biblical text speaks about the EBA, so the biblical events look like the EBA, and therefore when we look at the EBA it looks just like the biblical text. Therefore, the Hebrew of the biblical text is EBA Hebrew." That line of reasoning is trying to hold itself up by its own bootstraps. It doesn't work.


You have to look for some kind of anchor point outside of the text to test the hypothesis. And there is virtually no evidence, as far as I know, of Hebrew in the EBA. In fact, if anything, the linguistic trajectory that Hebrew seems to be on suggests that Semitic languages in the Bronze Ages looked a little different to what they did in the Iron Age and the Persian Era.


Ok. Granted. But we also have to consider this. If, and I concede that this is a big if, Moses did indeed originally pen the Torah in Hebrew and start up a tradition of it being copied by Joshua then this represents a moment in the history of the Hebrew language which froze the language and its evolution did not happen at the same rate as its contemporaries.

Furthermore, there are good arguments that the biblical texts were written during Iron II and the Persian Era, with some final redactions occurring in the Hellenistic Era.

Sure. This is possible. And something we should keep an eye out for if we are interested in restoring the Torah to its original form.


References to Chaldeans, Sheba, and probably a good few of the other names in the Table of Nations (Gen 10) smell like the 8th or 7th century BC.

I'm not entirely sure this is true. We would have to go into dating of each these terms independently in depth to put this claim to the test. Also, even if they did prove to be true they could easily be reduced to minor redactions of the original text that help it be of value to its contemporaries. e.g. change a few place names here and there so that folk understand which place you are talking about. This is not necessarily indicative of entire sections being interpolated. This is the kind of thing that copyists would notice and may raise an objection to. While a series of small changes that appear acceptable at the time is far more plausible.


There's barely much evidence to put them any earlier.

I disagree. We definitely see a limit to the number of generations listed in the table of nations. In a late origin I would expect many more generations showing me who was the father of each town and city.

Each time we see a genealogy it takes us closer in time to the time of Moses. In Esau's genealogy we see lists of Sheiks for a few generations, for example.


The result is that the long distant past of Genesis looks a lot like the 7th century BC (or so). It's a bit like those Renaissance paintings of biblical scenes, where everyone is wearing Italian garb of the 15th and 16th centuries. It's not difficult to make the case, therefore that the Hebrew spoken by the characters of Genesis is at home in the 7th century BC.

I can see your line of reasoning but in order to make those conclusion we first need to have an accurate picture of the 7th century. Do we have one? Even if we do, we also then need an accurate picture of later centuries to make the comparison with. Do we have one?

Even if we had all of this we would then need to stop and consider whether we are talking about minor alterations, interpolations that the scribes felt rendered the tradition more accessible to their contemporaries or are we talking about coordinated large scale fraudulent forgery of ancient texts?




Finally, the claim that many of the dates in the biblical texts co-ordinate with 164 BC is not all that far-fetched and baseless. It's a case of doing the math. What you make of the calculations is a different matter entirely, but the observation is intriguing. And no, it does not mean that the biblical texts were invented in the Maccabean Era. All it means is that the numbers in the final form of the text might have been reconfigured in the Maccabean Era.



Now this is perhaps the most interest thing you have said. Because this would perhaps give us an explanation of why we have two different traditions with conflicting dates.

If we can trust the logic you applied above it would seem that the numeric tradition we see in the Samaritan, Greek and DSS traditions are more reliable.

This view would seem to be backed up by one view of the Qumran community as refugees from the wicked priest who has no right to be high priest.

With Roman domination, a fake High Priest with no real right to be in that office, and a pretender to the throne of David Jerusalem was perhaps in its darkest hour in the first century CE and you can see why the people were waiting for a Messiah.

James Christian







Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au
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