Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

several responses are collected in this post:

vayyixtov Rolf,
>Therefore, it is impossible to be certain whether black swans
(=the particular words in Qohelet believed to be post-exilic)
existed in pre-exilic times. >

Not the 'black swan' argument! this would seem to challenge probability
by demanding absolute certainty. If you have 1000 white swan sightings
and then find two black swans, other things being equal, then you still have
a 99.8% chance of sighting a white swan on your next sighting. But more
importantly, if you knew that black swans were breed and exported during
a particular period (Persian Achaemenid period) then sighting a black swan
has an inherent probability to add to any argument. Avi's
methodology is historical and based on probabilities not absolute
certainties. to use data:
is it possible that Persian 'pardes' was used in the 10th century in Hebrew?
Of course. Is it  probable? No way.
As mentioned,
gan ha-melex is attested in known first temple Hebrew, pardes in known
Second Temple Hebrew, plus Persia only rises to international prominence
after the downfall of Babylon, so there is a natural vehicle for explaining
the loan word--where it entered Aramaic as well. Then we add a word like
pitgam 'matter' and find the same thing. Except that with pitgam it appears
to be mediated through Aramaic (since the form is Aramaic is pitgam but
in Persian pratgama), again a characteristic of Second Temple Hebrew and
the achaemenid period.
Karl argued that in Qohelet pitgam was really an unknown word peteg
+ -am 'their', but pitgam is a known word. So one asks, is Karl's suggestion
possible? Yes. Is it probable? No. And so it goes, where one goes down a
list of Aramaic influenced vocab and mishnaic vocab and then asks, what
is probable? Pardes and pitgam compound each other's probability because
the low probability of being pre-exilic need to be true for both in order to
explain Qohelet as pre-exilic.

>As for aspect, you and I disagree both regarding the definition
 of the Hebrew aspects, >

Yes, we do, and so do the masoretes disagree with your view.
the point with Ex 33 was that the writer was marking the repetition by the
choice of verb forms, not that the inherent event forced the the choice of
forms. the context became marked as repetitive and it is the marked
repetitiveness that is missing in mishnaic Hebrew uses of ve-qatal. Find
an example of mishnaic Hebrew where such an interlacing sequence of
ve-qatal is used for a context MARKED as repetitive. They are easy to
find in BH as you have been showing.

(PS: irrelevant to bigger picture. 1 Sam 1:7 vattivke ... 1:8 vayyomer
have shifted into a specific instance of the story development and should
not be read as habituals according to the MT. The NIV is faulty here and
has either edited or misread the MT. Both both the LXX and targum
disagree with NIV on verse 8.
On Psalm 2 we have a poetic play on tense/aspect, a known feature of
Canaanite and Hebrew poetry, and without a ve-qatal)

vayyixtov David,
>We're at the mercy of what I call "the accident of preservation."  Even
with the inscriptions, Aramaic, items like the Lachish Letters and such,
the corpus we have is just too small to make the kinds of conclusions that
Hurvitz does.  His three-part test is thus invalid and cannot be used
effectively to date a book like Qohelet, unless one is already predisposed
to accept his conclusions.>

I'm not sure that this does justice to Avi's methodology, since Avi is
dealing multiple tests before accidence of preservation can be accepted
as diagnostic. He is working on defining compounded,resaonable
probabilities and in explaining why and how the profile exists.
So the question of 'predispostion' seems to glaringly fit David and others
rejecting Avi's work. Avi is certainly not predisposed to dating Qohelet late
any more than he is predisposed to dating 'priestly materials' late (where
in fact he dates them early). Predispositionalism actually  characterizes
many of the responses in this thread against a late date of Qohelet, where
some seem to say 'that just can't be'. Sounds pretty presuppositional to me.
Non-presuppositionalists should be thanking Avi for putting the stratigraphy
of the Hebrew language on a sounder footing than previous generations.

vayyixtov Bryant
>If we are discussing on this list the differences between BH and MH and
are using Qohelet as the example, then please let us see the evidence of
both sides of the debate. ... Please give the examples of MH being found
in BH.>

This isn't quite right. the issue with Qohelet is its chronology and its place
between BH and mishnaic Heb, while the issue of mishnaic Hebrew itself
is a different issue. Qohelet does have mishnaic-looking features like the
non-imperfective use of ve-qatal, and a relatively high frequency of ש she-
'that' (a feature shared with northern dialect First Temple Hebrew).
It shares some features with 4QMMT from Qumran, (for example,
both have she- 'that' and both have qatol inf abs. as a finite verb 
substitute,
something on the increase in Second Temple Hebrew) and both also have
differences from later mishnaic Hebrew so that many/most would call
documents like qohelet and 4QMMT kinds of proto-mishnaic Hebrew.

I would also add that data has been presented on this question. It would
be fair to characterize this as one side showing a probability of Second
Temple features and the other side saying 'but it can't be proved
absolutely'. So does presuppositionalism override compounded
high probability? for some.

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