Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

vayyixtov Rolf
>it is very likely that Old
Babylonian is the source for the "late" Hebrew
word ZMN as well as the Old Persian word jamana.>

But did zmn enter Hebrew directly from Old (!?!) Babylonian or
mediated thru Aramaic?
If Old ! Babylonian then it was
already in Hebrew throughout OT times and one must deal with
the third test of Hurvitz: why is `et and mo`ed used exclusively
in torah and prophets? There was extensive literary contextual
opportunity for zeman. But it wasn't ever used.

One must reject an Old bablylonian suggestion for a direct
loan into Hebrew as without merit or support.

>the QATAL form with and without prefixed WAW can have past
reference. Therefore, QATAL and WEQATAL in BH is used in the
same way as in MH,>

this continues to miss and misconstrue the aspectual quality of the
ve-qatal in biblical Hebrew where ve-qatal is used in long stretches
and contexts where the marked reference is past habitual. Mishnaic
Hebrew does not use ve-qatal for marked habitual past.

>[karateppe] as narrative verbs with past reference we find 6
QATALs, 2 WEQALs, and 21 infinitive absolutes, 16
of which have prefixed waw. Thus the infinitive
absolute is the typical narrative form.   . . .  Thus,
Qohelet's use of infinitive absolute with a
following pronoun functioning as a finite verb
resembles Phoenician and not Mishnaic Hebrew. >

Sorry, just the opposite. Eccl 4:2, [8:9, 9:11] is only one [three]
example, which does not resemble Karateppe at all. But
it [these] does resemble the four narrative qatol examples in the Qumran
fragments to the book of Tobit.

> The two supposed Persian loan-words have counterparts in old
Sankrit, which could suggest that their origin is much older than
Persian times. >

this may be missing the point. the question is not how old or ancient
a particular word is/was, but WHEN, how, and in what shape did it
enter Hebrew?

>(The rejection of
the parallel between the Sanskrit word PRATIGAMA and Qohelets word
PITGAM because the latter lacks "r" is weak indeed. We may compare
"Nebuchadnezzar" and "Nebuchadrezzar" (Nabu-kudurru-utsur) >

Again, this misses the picture and claim. the 'r' is in sanskrit, but it is
missing in Aramaic and it is the exact Aramaic form that we find in
Hebrew, leading to a probability that the word entered with aramaic
and not from sanskrit.


>Dahood's observation that there are parallells between Mishnaic
Hebrew and Phoenician that are not found in the Tanakh also deserves
to be studied. Do we find Proto-Mishnaic traits in Phonician?>

Yes. One was cited in an earlier thread, where 'ta' was written as an
accusative article attached to a word in bar Kochba letters and
Punic (Western/Late Phoenician).

In fact the Phoenician--Mishnaic connection also undermines a claim
that Qohelet was written by Judean. Having some visiting builders does
not explain why why a foreign dialect would suddenly be adopted by
a Judean king. (I use 'dialect' because I assume that the Phoenician
and Judean Hebrew were mutually intelligible Canaanite dialects to a
reasonably high degree.) One must also remember that it is not old
words that establish dating but young ones. Older pieces of a
language continue to be used while new pieces enter.

hve shalom

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