Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Randall,

It is extremely difficult to date a document on 
the basis of linguistic evidence. This can for 
example be seen if we compare the completely 
different conclusions regarding the dating of 
Chronicles in the following three works: A. 
Kropat. 1909. "Die Syntax des Autors des 
Chronik," Beiheft für die Zeitschrift für die 
alttestamentliche Wissenschaft; R. Polzin 1976. 
"Late biblical Hebrew Toward an Historical 
Typoligy of Biblical Hebrew Prose" Harward 
Semitic Monograph Number 12;  A. Hurwitz. 1968. 
"The Chronological Significance og "aramaisms" in 
Biblical Hebrew". Israel Exploration Journal 18: 
234-240. (There are several other works of 
Hurwitz as well.) Polzin interprets the material 
in a very different way compared with Kropat and 
Hurwitz.

Let us first look at the the relative particle $. 
It is true that the use of this particle is 
typical for Mishnaic Hebrew. But how old is this 
particle? An Accordance search reveals that this 
particle occurs 113 times in the Tanakh, 
including four times in the book of Judges. The 
song of Deborah (Judges 5:7) where $ occur two 
times has been viewed as one of the oldest parts 
of the Tanakh. So, if the occurrence of words in 
the Tanakh that also occur in Mishnaic Hebrew  is 
the criterion for the existence of 
proto-Mischnaic Hebrew, then proto-Miscnaic 
Hebrew is found in what is viewed as the oldest 
parts of the Tanakh. And if that is true, the 
argument of lexical dating falls completely apart.

The word PRDS occurs three times, and it is 
believed to be a loan word from the Persian Zend 
Awesta (600 B.C.E.). We should, however, keep in 
mind, that the language of this book is a branch 
of old Indo-Iranian, which existed a long time 
before Zoroaster lived. In this post I am 
observing and not arguing in favor of a certain 
age of Qohelet. I observe that in the first 
chapter the book as ascribed to king Solomon, who 
lived around 1.000 B.C.E., according to the 
chronology of the books of Kings. Would you deny 
that Indo-Arian languages  existed at this time? 
If they existed, the word PRDS may have existed 
as well at this time, and contacts between Israel 
and indo-Arians could have been the reason for 
its adoption.

The word PTGM is found one time each in Qohelet 
and Esther. It is believed to be a Persian 
loan-word as well, and it can be viewed in the 
same way as PRDS.

I also find the argument regarding WEQATAL to be 
weak. Stylistic differences should always be 
taken into account in arguments regarding use and 
non-use of words and grammatical constructions. 
If we compared different parts of books ascribed 
to one single author, sometimes we would find 
great stylistic differences. There is no doubt 
that both the contents and the language of 
Qohelet are quite different compared with the 
rest of the Tanakh, but there are of course 
parallels as well. These differences call for 
great caution when one tries to date Qohelet on 
linguistic grounds. Moreover, there are three 
occurrences of WAYYIQTOLs in the book, forms that 
are not found in Mischnaic Hebrew.

From the point of view of the Philosophy of 
Science, dating attempts of Old texts on 
linguistic grounds collide head on with the 
Problem of Induction. This is particularly the 
situation in connection with the Tanakh, because 
we have practically no other old Hebrew texts to 
compare the Tanakh with. So the arguments are 
little more than educated guesses. One can appeal 
to the cognate languages, but how can we know 
with certainty who borrowed from whom? An 
Interesting example is Mitchel Dahood's work on 
the Psalms in the Tanakh (three volume in The 
Anchor Bible). Time and again he compares the 
Hebrew texts with the Ugaritic texts (14th-12th 
century B.C.E.). The vocabularies of the two 
languages are very similar. But how can we know 
that the Hebrew writers borrowed from Ugaritic, 
and that the forms in question were not 
Inter-Semitic, to the point where both Ugaritic 
and Hebrew writers used a common pool of words? ( 
"A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the 
Alphabetic Language"  by del Olmo Lete and 
Sanmartin lists cognates from many Semitic 
languages.) And even an Ugaritic borrowing from 
Hebrew in some cases cannot be excluded.

As for the comment of Delitzsch, I will turn it 
around this way: "There is no history of the 
Hebrew language, so we cannot know that Qohelet 
is a Second Temple work."  For example, we know 
that the Akkadian langauge is old, because the 
Babylonians wrote on clay, but the hebrews 
generally wrote on material easy to be destroyed. 
But regarding Hebrew we have no clues  at all 
regarding the age of the language. We have the 
Gezer Calendar (c. 900 B.C.E.), the Siloam 
inscription (c. 700 B.C.E.) and the "sudden" 
appearance of the books of the Tanakh. But what 
was before the Gezer calendar? According to 
Genesis 31:47, Laban spoke Aramaic and Jacob 
spoke Hebrew in the first part of the second 
millennium B.C.E. Again, I am not arguing for a 
particular viewpoint, only observing. And the 
observation is that we have no way to know 
whether the statement is true or not, whether 
Hebrew was spoken in the first part of the second 
century B.C.E. And the reason is that the Hebrew 
language has no history in the B.C.E.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo




>  >>  I would call Qohelet and
> >  4QMMT two different dialects of proto-mishnaic Hebrew on the one
> >  hand, or simply 'mishnaic Hebrew' when speaking broadly.
> >
> > You have made this statement a few times, and I am just now getting around
> to calling you on it.
> > Are you claiming that Qohelet is a document authored
> during the second temple period?>
>
> Yes, Qohelet is a Second Temple document.
> 'pitgam' is Second Temple,
> 'pardes' is Second Temple.
> (1. they pattern as Second Temple in the Hebrew
> Bible, 2. they occur in cognate languages of the period, especially Aramaic
> and mishnaic Hebrew [though of Persian origin], and 3. they are not accidently
> left out of First Temple Hebrew because of lacking an approriate context. Gan
> 'garden' and 'devar' "word/decree' provided contexts.)
> the preponderance of she- 'that' (70xx)
> and the frequent use of ve-qatal (50xx) instead of vayyixtov is 'low
> dialect' not just
> Second Temple, and lines up with mishnaic Hebrew.
>
> Delitzsch's comment 140? years ago, to the effect: "If Qohelet is not a Second
> Temple work, there is no history to the Hebrew language."
>
>
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> randallbuth AT gmail.com
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew