Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

>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.>

There are two logical problems with these arguments.

One, is that it applies something influenced from one area of
sociolinguistics to
another area. In this case, it applies something from an area of government
and
international law and commerce--the months as would be used under the
Persian
hegemony and commerce--
and applies them to family speech. The Babylonian names simply
prove outside contact and influence, and in sociolinguistics these kind of
things
come in from the 'high' level, from strata of power in a society,
they do not predict the 'low level' language, though they do penetrate into
the low
language.

Secondly, the Latin connection is a good comparison, but the data is
misapplied.
In medieval Latin people wrote 'high Latin' and spoke 'low Latin'.
Proto-spanish,
proto-French, et al., were none other than spoken Latin dialects. If one
wants to
compare to Hebrew, then one must explain the two-register nature of Hebrew,
with a 'high Hebrew' and a 'low Hebrew (Mishnaic)'. To say that Hebrew was
like
Latin would suggest that Hebrew was also in two registers, which is true.
Again, sociolinguistics would suggest that the two-register nature of Hebrew

would naturally develop as Hebrew developed a 'low, spoken Hebrew' distinct
from 'high Hebrew'. And Mishnaic Hebrew is that low Hebrew. Mishnaic Hebrew
was not a high Hebrew.

what is happening above is somewhat strange. It assumes something "Hebrew
was not a mother-tongue", and then applies arguments like the two above
that would naturally have led in a different direction. It has the 'high's
and 'low's
mixed up or obliterated.



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