Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

vayyixtov Ya`akov
>All in all, I think there are far more clues to be considered than the
presence of a couple of words of debatable foreign origin.>

This misrepresents the argument. There is a rather extensive list
of words in Qohelet that are shared with Aramaic and not found in
clear First Temple sources, as well as a list of words that are
shared with mishnaic Hebrew and not found in First Temple Hebrew.
Some of these were in an earlier post. (this post is coming from a
Greek isle so I will neither repeat nor expand, sorry)
>From among those two lists of words one would want to put them
through the 'three tests' of Hurvitz and the resulting list of words that
fit those three tests would be the words that one would use for
profiling Qohelet.
The "two" that you refer to are the two PERSIAN-based words,
one of which came into Hebrew via an Aramaic morphology (pitgam)
the other (pardes) most probably the same way thru Aramaic since
the 'high' period of Aramaic/Hebrew contact was the Achaemenid Persian
empire.

vayyixtov Rolf
>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.
>
Well, you do not see the we-qatal in Ex 33:7-11 as different from mishnaic
Hebrew. Most everyone else who has read the Hebrew Bible several times
sees Ex 33:7-11 as strikingly different from mishnaic Hebrew. I and many
other Hebraists do doubt your statement of 'no doubt'.
As I said,
until you come up with a rubric for defining what is special about those
verbs in v7-11 (and many places elsewhere in biblical Hebrew) you will
not be able to distinguish mishnaic Hebrew. which is a weakness of your
theory. Ex 33 7-11 changes aspect according to word order, mishnaic Hebrew
doesn't do that.

>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.
>

This explanation does not explain the lack of -r- in the Hebrew word.
the proposal is not a serious contender.
And the form without -r- became the standard Aramaic form in
Achaemenid times and later. One must say that the historical fit
for Solomonic times is unlikely, but for Achaemenid is quite good for
this word.

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