Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

>> Bar Kochba period (130-135CE) documents  ...
>>     LIke :
>> "I call upon myself heaven as witness'
>> me`id and `ali ta-shamayim ... (from a BarKochba letter)
>> מעיד אני עלי תשמים
>>
>> or 'that I put/give chains on your legs
>>     like I did to . . .'     (from a BarKochba letter)
>> she-ani noten ta-kkvalim
>>     beraglexem kema she-`asiti
>> שאני נתן תכבלים ברגלכם
>>    כמה שעסתי . . . ל
>>
>> or 'fortify the place'
>> Hazzeq ta-mmaqom  ... (from a BarKochba letter)
>> חזק תמקום
>> ...
>> The above examples are obviously something that was not
>> learned in school, nor from Aramaic.
>
> From the history I was taught, Bar Kochba tried to have a revival of Hebrew
language in all areas of life. >

You should try to explain how the 't' prefix developed. And you need
to ask yourself about any hypothesis whether it is a reasonably
probable explanation. Anyone who would know enough Hebrew to
write these letters would know enough Hebrew to write a proper
'et', especially if they were trying to restore a 'pure'/'religious'/'high'/
whatever language. These are obviously not attempts to write a
high language. They belong to a 'low' language, which by definition
in diglossia studies are colloquial languages. Medieval Latin, on
the other hand was a 'high' language and cannot explain the
phenomenon of mishnaic Hebrew. You really need to have a
better understanding of mishnaic Hebrew if you are going to keep
throwing a 'high language' model at a low language.

Instead of explaining and discussing the linguistic data you have
quoted a "historian" without any data. This is a circular argument
and becomes presuppositionalism. On a language list one
would appreciate at least an acknowledgement and discussion of
this important linguistic evidence in the history of Hebrew.


>Yet the letters written to him were written
>in Greek and Aramaic as well as Hebrew.

Actually, the Greek letter that you cite was written by a SOUMAIOS
to IWNAQHS and MASABALA.

> One of the letters
> had the admission that it was not written in Hebrew because
> no one in his group knew Hebrew.
> That is evidence that Hebrew, even Mishnaic Hebrew, was a
> language of religion, government, high literature but not of
> hearth and market. In other words, its use was similar to that
> of medieval Latin.

This is a wild leap from a letter that may not have been written
by a Jew at all. Note that 1. It was written in Greek. 2. It was not
written in Aramaic as several other letters in the discoveries.
3. The writer apparently could not write Hebrew or Aramaic
script. EYRHKENAI ... EBRAESTI. See Hanna Cotton,
"The BarKochba Revolt and the Documents from the Judean
Desert ", P Shaeffer, ed. Bar Kochba War Reconsidered, 2003.
4. The letter mentions the [k]ITREIABOLHN 'citron bash' or
[p]AREMBOLH 'camp' of the IOYDAIWN 'of the Jews'.
This last phrase 'of the Jews' means that the writer was
probably not a Jew.  4. There were non-Jews that joined the anti-
Roman BarKochba war. 5. A Nabatean signatory SOYMAIOS is
known from PYadin 19.34 and 12.16-17. [6. The use of both
Hebrew and Aramaic in letters shows voluntary choice of
those languages as opposed to assuming an official policy
dictating one of those langauges.]
So this Greek letter is a wonderful window into a trilingual
society, but it neither undermines Hebrew nor Aramaic as
living/colloquial languages at the time.

which brings us back to the Hebrew letters and the need for
anyone writing on this to get a proper appreciation of their
character. Mishnaic Hebrew was a low side of a diglossia
with a 'high' literary Hebrew. Mishanic Hebrew was not the high
language so it can't be compared to Medieval Latin which
was a high language.
ERRWSO

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
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