Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

 Dear Uri and Randall,

I have of course my own views regarding the origin of Qohelet. But in 
my posts in this thread I have not argued in favor of a particular 
age of the book. But I have tried to show that the linguistic 
evidence presented by those who argue in favor of a post-exilic 
origin of the book is weak and inconclusive, even to the point where 
the evidence is unscientific (given the fundamentals of the 
Philosophy of Science that first-year students learn).  The basic 
scientific principle that is violated in the studies of Avi Hurwitz 
and others is that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

We do not know the peculiarities of spoken Hebrew and its vocabulary 
in the 10th century. The fragments you (URI) mention give us some 
glimpses of the Hebrew language at their time of writing, The words 
they use were of course a part of the vocabulary, but they tell us 
nothing about the 10.000 or more other words that were used. As for 
Mishnaic Hebrew, we do not know its origin. When I analyzed all the 
verbs of Ben Sira and the DSS written in Hebrew, my conclusion was 
that while there were many linguistic peculiarities, the *meaning* of 
the conjugations  were the same as in the Tanakh. It is likely that 
the spoken language of the people in the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.E. 
were different from the written language-some glimpses can be seen. 
But by and large, we know almost nothing about the spoken language at 
that time.

As far as vocabulary is concerned, I see the similarity between the 
few words mentioned by Randall and Mishnaic Hebrew, but any 
similarity between the WEQATALs  of Qohelet and Mishnaic Hebrew I do 
not see at all. There is no doubt that the verbal system of Qohelet 
is Biblical Hebrew and not Mishnaic Hebrew. When we are engaged in a 
scientific study, and we get results that match our predictions, or 
we see similarities between what we are researching and something 
else, a careful scholar will ask whether there are particular factors 
that could have caused these similarities other than those described 
in our hypotheses; to the point where the similarities between our 
research objects are not real. In order to approach the issue we are 
discussing in a scientific way, we should ask similar questions. 
Qohelet is a unique piece of work among the books of the Tanakh, so 
we can ask: Could this special philosophical genre explain its 
special language? That question should be explored! We could also 
make a study of the interaction of the ancient languages of the 
Middle East, and ask whether this interaction could throw some light 
upon Qohelet's special language.

POSSIBLE CANAANITE-PHOENICIAN INFLUENCE

Regarding the last point I would like to refer to an old but very 
interesting article, which presents a view very different from the 
Proto-Mishnaic hypothesis, namely that there is a very strong 
Phoenician influence in Qohelet. If that is the case, that would 
conform with an authorship of king Solomon. The article is: M. J. 
Dahood (1952) "Canaanite-Phoenician influence in Qohelet". Biblica 
30-52, 191-221.
I have a good background in Phoenician and Ugartiic , since I have 
taught several courses and have translated many documents from these 
languages into Norwegian, and I am very impressed by the parallels 
presented by Dahood.

One particularly interesting point is as follows (p. 4):

 "The Phoenician hypothesis does not deny that Qohelet's style shows 
marked similarities to Mishnaic Hebrew, for Phoenician also shares a 
number of syntactical and lexical parallellisms with Mishnaic Hebrew 
which are not found in Biblical Hebrew."

This indicates that factors that seem to be parallel between Mishnaic 
Hebrew and Qohelet, and therefore suggest a young age of MH, could be 
much older, and in reality stem from Phoenician. There are, for 
example, some linguistic parallels between Qohelet and the Phoenician 
Karatepe inscription from the 9th century. Dahood show parallels 
between Phoenician/Ugaritic in vocabulary,  orthography (pronominal 
suffixes, the demonstrative pronoun, the relative pronoun, the 
indefinite pronoun, the article, different nominal formations, 
prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions), and a host of syntactical 
phenomena. He closes his article with a list of 29 commercial terms 
found in Qohelet which are most appropriate for a commercial culture 
such as was characteristic of the Phoenicians.

Dahood does not prove his case -proofs of such things are not 
possible to acquire. But he presents a very good alternative to the 
view that Qohelet has some Proto-Mishnaic traits. Some of these 
traits may very well be as old as the 14th-12th century B.C.E. (The 
Ugaritic period) and have nothing to do with post-exilic times.

LOAN WORDS.

I have already discussed PARDES, but I will elucidate a little. The 
word is viewed as a loan word from the Zend Avesta (c. 600 B.C.E.). 
Its language is a branch of old Indo-Iranian, whose predecessor was 
the Median language of which we only have some loan-words in Old 
Persian and no documents. Thus the word may have existed in the days 
of Solomon, and his traders may have adopted it. It is possible that 
the word was adopted from Sanskrit, where we find the word "paridhis" 
for "park". The pre-classical form of Sankrit (the language of the 
Rigveda) dates back to c. 1.500 B.C.E. The word "pitgam" may also 
have been adopted from the Sanskrit word "pratigama". We can show 
similar possibilities for other words.  We therefore see that the 
supposed Proto-Mishnaic traits of Qohelet may not suggest a 
post-exilic writing at all.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo




>  Dear Rolf,
>   The opposition to the the evidence about diachronic development of 
> BH,at least in this debate, did not seem take into account the 
> evidence of Hebrew inscription which have been dated to pre-exilic 
> times. Whether in the Lachish letters, the Arad material , the 
> Yabneh letter, or many others  smaller fragments, there is in them 
> no scintilla of evidence of Mishnaic language.
>
>  One may bring as a further point, the evidence of dialogue, or 
> direct speech which authors of many texts within the HB books used 
> in their narrative, such as "Am I my brther's keeper?" This was done 
> for various reasons, but the overriding one was to introduce the 
> drama of live conversation. This was done in the living style 
> familiar to the authors and their hearers or readers. Again, there 
> is not the slightest trace of what would become Mishnaic language, 
> such as is obvious in the style of Qohelet.
>
>  That the latter is a late book, can be deduced from its content alone.
>
>  Uri Hurwitz
>
> ( Please do not mix me up with Avi Hurvitz, not a relative )
>
>
>
>
>      
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