Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall:

I stated before I never studied Mishnaic Hebrew and don’t know it. As far as
people being mother-tongue speakers of it, all we have are clues which
different people interpret differently. As far as I have been told, there is
no document that definitely states that Mishnaic Hebrew was spoken as a
mother-tongue, nor one that denies it. Hence my statement that we are
speculating.


what is 'simpler' and just how much simpler is it?
>

What I noticed is not changes in the language, but changes in the literary
style. What I noticed was that over time,  allusion was widely used along
with a fairly extensive vocabulary, particularly in the late pre-Babylonian
Exile books (I would put Job as late pre-Babylonian Exile from the literary
style. Once one recognizes the style, he is only middling difficult to read
and well within the mainstream Biblical Hebrew.).

But in books written after the Exile, I find a noticeably greater percentage
of simple, declarative statements with a smaller vocabulary. Also the
sentence structure tends to be simpler. There appears to be deliberate
archaicising, i.e. copying the style of Torah instead of a continuation of
the styles of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. I haven’t made a formal study on this,
just something that I noticed while reading.


> Does it correspond to Mishnaic Hebrew? How often? When/why?
>

Don’t know Mishnaic Hebrew, therefore can’t answer these.


>
> > writings, are indicators that Aramaic, not Hebrew, was the language of
> the
> > street and home. These are clues just from the Bible itself.>
>
> This overlooks nature of the texts themselves. The Aramaic of Ezra and
> Daniel is is used for Babl. court scenes and international correspondence.
> In addition it is literary.
>
> You missed the point. The question is not the type of Aramaic used, rather
that such extensive sections were in Aramaic in the first place. That shows
that Daniel and Ezra expected that their readers would know and understand
Aramaic. Particularly in the case of Ezra: if he lived in a society where
Hebrew was the mother-tongue, then he could not make the expectation that
his readers could read the Aramaic correspondence. But if he lived where
almost all used Aramaic in the market and in the home, but studied and used
Hebrew as the language of commerce, religion, law and high literature, he
then could expect that both languages would be understood.


>
> Again, the result of 100 years of mishnaic scholarship has led to a
> consensus
> that the thesis that it "was [not] spoken as a native language spoken in
> the
> home and market, [and] was only a learned language for religion, legal and
> high literature, like medieval Latin," cannot explain the data and must be
> rejected as false.
>

What data? The only data I have seen is also consistent with the “like
medieval Latin” understanding.

“‘Consensus’ is the refuge of scoundrels” shows how much I am impressed by a
consensus. Now I am not calling *you* a ‘scoundrel’ by that quote above, I
am just quoting others to indicate how much ‘consensus’ impresses me.


> Most would
> see Qohelet as a part of a proto mishnaic Hebrew. And it certainly needs
> to be compared and contrasted with any "simpler literary style" of Second
> Temple BH that you mentioned above.
>
> I have heard that claim, but I don’t think it can be supported. While
Proverbs (as well as much of the rest of Tanakh) is semi-poetic to poetry to
help with mimnetics, Qohelet is mostly prose. That difference alone is
enough to explain how an early writing feels different from another early
writing.


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


There are those who know Elizabethan English well enough that they could
write modern works in Elizabethan English with only a few quirks betraying
that they are modern works. But other than Shakespear and KJV, there are no
Elizabethan English literary works that are widely known. Further, those
works do not have the cachet of authority that Tanakh had for Mishnaic
Hebrew speakers. Because the most important reason for a religious Jew of
the second temple period to learn Hebrew was to read Tanakh, it follows that
if he were to write Hebrew, he would try to emulate Biblical style
(archaicism).

Karl W. Randolph.