Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

Karl Randolph posted a response to my other question that really
belongs here:

>Biblical Hebrew hasn’t been spoken for two and a half millennia, so in
> that case it is a “dead” language. So which pronunciation would one
> use in class? Eastern European? Yemeni? Modern Israeli? Does it
> make a difference?

An interesting claim that BH hasn't been spoken for 2500 years.
(Phonology is really a side issue. I know people with mother-tongue
English who speak with a "non-English" pronunciation.)
Strictly speaking, this claims that prophets like Zexarya and Haggai
or Ezra and the author of Esther did not speak Biblical Hebrew.
Yes, they wrote their books, and these were read outloud, and their
publication usually parallels a spoken and or public ministry or
public recitation.

Presumably, this claim referred to a mother-tongue? It could also raise
an amusing situation of a prophet speaking to the people in a language
not understood?! (Incidentally, the comment by NeHemya about children
of foreigners who spoke Phoenician (Ashdodit), et al, implies that children
of Jewish mothers spoke Hebrew/Yehudit).
They certainly wrote a classical Hebrew with 'classical' verb system. Yes, we
can distinguish shifts in usage, but did they think that it was not
classical Hebrew? A diglossic situation seems to have entered the
language and we can see in Qumran two different registers of
Hebrew, one rather close to what would become known as Mishnaic
Hebrew and one that was obviously intended as the continuation of
"biblical"/literary.

The question is important because this classical Hebrew is attested
throughout the second Temple, even in a diglossic context (Mishanic vs
classical/literary). And much "Biblical" Hebrew came into existence
during this time.

Looking thru the list I see that some think of the Vayyiqtol system as
perfective or past, Rolf maybe calling it an imperfective, and George
called it a 'lively' present (I don't remember the wordings). That's pretty
much all over the board. So when did they lose control of whatever was
going on? How did they do it? There was also a discussion of Piel a
few months ago that struck me as out of line with the way that Semitic
languages are used. The binyanim seem to be a case of derivational
morphology, and studying them means that one is studying etymology
not inflectional morphology. Etymology is good, don't misread me,
it's just not how a language is normally used.  It  would require classical
Hebrew, mishnaic Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic users, to somehow
have used roots rather than words when communicating. Be that as it
may, one wonders if some modern positions do justice to the ancients.
And again, it brings us back to the question as to when and how did
conceptions of the language change?  Was there a time when users
'misused' the "pure Piel"? (Actually, we can see movement in derivational
morphology where the NIF`AL ousted both the proto-Hebrew QAL
passive and the HIFTA`AL [cf. Moabite HILTAHAM  with Judean NILHAM.
I would expect this to have been mutually intelligible at the time, and
I doubt that the substitution of forms created a shift in meaning within
their overall system. Certainly NIGGASH nif`al and YIGGASH qal were
considered to have the same meaning. I've had a few students
trained in "binyanim semantics" tell me that that can't be.)
But when was the system lost, if it was?
And was there a time when users flipped the vayyiqtol into something
it wasn't? Anyway, the focus of this thread is time, not the language
deatils themselves.

blessings
Randall


original question:
On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From questions and comments on the list it would seem that Classical Hebrew 
> ,
> especially First Temple Hebrew, but probably including Second Temple Hebrew,
> here is sometimes treated as a language without continuity, and sometimes 
> even
> as if it is a system without ties or counterparts to modern languages.
>
> My question for this list:
> When did Classical Hebrew cease to be understood correctly?
>
> (NB: this is not asking about when a particular word or idiom dropped
> out of use or was misinterpreted,
> but when was the basic system lost to understanding?
> When did people no longer know how to understand/interpret,
> e.g. the verb system, the words in the binyan system?)
>
> Ezekiel?
> Zechariah?
> Ezra?
> Nehemiah?
> Author of Tobit?
> Translators of LXX Torah?
> Author of 1 Maccabees?
> Author of Temple Scroll
> Author of Serex ha-Yahad?
> Yeshua and contemporaries, e.g. Jerusalem Church?
> Tannaitic teachers?
> Amoraic teachers? Hieronomos/Jerome?
> Saadiya?
> Rashi~Radaq?
> Christian Renaissance Hebraists?
> Gesenius?
> Bialik?
> Moshe Shamir?
> It's still understood by some (though not necessarily all the above)?
>
> We know that 'classical' Hebrew with vayyiqtol and veqatal basically
> dropped out of common literary use at the end of the Second Temple.
> (The example of bQidd 66 is likely a fragment from an older history.)
> But was it already grossly misunderstood or was it part of a
> continuous [community] of users?
>
> shalom uvraxot
> שלום וברכות
>
> Randall Buth
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> randallbuth AT gmail.com
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life



--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life