Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Dear Karl,

The names Ziv, Etanim and Bul all appear in the Bible only in the 1 Kings
account of Solomon's reign, and are often assumed to be of Phoenician
origin, adopted in Solomon's court due to his ties with the Phoenicians. In
all other pre-exilic references, the months are known by their ordinal
numbers, in which the month of Passover (so-called "month of Aviv", later
Nisan) is first. The Israelites were commanded to count this as the first
month in Ex. 12, although Genesis, written from a later (in this case Moses
IS "later") perspective, seems to use this count as well. 

The Babylonian months begin to appear in the exilic and post exilic books
such as Esther and Nehemiah, but I do not agree that they prove that the
Jews had stopped using Hebrew as a spoken language. Note how Hebrew-speaking
Jews today commonly use the European month names, albeit with a Hebrew
accent (Yanu'ar, Febru'ar, Mertz etc.).

Yigal Levin

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of K Randolph
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 7:30 PM
To: B-Hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Aviv and Exodus 9:31

James:


Tanakh preserves four of the Hebrew month names, in order:


אביב green ears of grain, also the first month of the year in which is found
Passover.


זו Hebrew name of second month


אתנים seventh month in which is found Yom Kippur


בול eighth month


All the others have been lost.


I think the loss of the Hebrew names for the months is one of the evidences
that the Jews who returned from Babylon had already adopted Aramaic as the
language of the market and hearth, and that Hebrew had already attained a
similar status as medieval Latin: no one learned it at his mother’s knee but
that it was the language of government, religion, high literature and
commerce.

Karl W. Randolph.