Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall:

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 12:19 AM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>wrote:

> For Karl:
>
> >That both Daniel and Ezra wrote in Aramaic shows that both expected that
> even in remote villages in the Judean hills, they expected the people to
> know Aramaic.>
>
> No. In bilingual communities


I don’t think we are dealing with a bilingual community. In theory, maybe,
but not in practice. In practice, one language dominates, often to the
exclusion of the other.


> it is not expected that 100% of the people knew
> both or all languages. … (PS: Both Daniel and Ezra switched into Aramaic
> at culturally appropriate junctures dealing with the foreign court. But
> they
> returned to Hebrew and wrote in Hebrew. This is a well-noted phenomenon
> in sociolinguistic studies on bilingualism.)
>
> >Add to that that history records that two generations grew up
> in Babylon; >
>
> wow, two whole generations! in one of the most insular cultures …
>

Was the culture that insular at that time? The picture given in Esther,
Nehemiah, and Ezra shows a society integrated with its neighbors, so much so
that the national identity was threatened, even in Judea. Hence the
forbidding the marriage to non-Jewish wives.


> … And this ignores what the Bible
> ignores but that is read between the lines in the realworld. Not 100% of
> the
> people left Judah. A dominating army does not need to get every last person
> out. Some are left behind, devasted of course.
>

That’s not what the Bible says. While it is true that the invading army left
behind some survivors, they, of their own accord, left to where they thought
they could be safe. They left because they were devastated and feared the
invading army would come back.

>
> >that the stylistic differences between pre- and post-Exile
> writings indicating that those who wrote post-Exile wrote in a simplified
> style >
>
> just how simplified are we talking? There is nothing that demands a
> non-mother
> tongue. See below a discussion about some scholars who are even trying to
> deny a discernable divide between First and Second Temple Hebrew.
>

I’ve already described what I meant by “simplified”, and as this response is
getting quite long as it is, won’t repeat myself here.

>
> >of those who were not themselves native speakers of Hebrew, >
>
> like I've been saying, presupposition, not evidence. You presume
> 'facts', then cite
> them for supporting your view.
>

Stop babbling about what you do not know.

I came to the table with the presupposition that Hebrew continued to be
spoken as the main language of Judea, and among Jews living in Samaria, at
least through the Bar Kochba revolt. It is the evidence that made me come to
a different conclusion.

I also came to the table living among immigrant communities, and seeing how,
even among those first generation children who tried to keep up their
immigrant parents’ languages, their command of the languages, while often
technically correct, lacks the richness of expression that marks the
linguistic use of the immigrant generation. Already among the adult first
generation, the immigrant languages have achieved the status of a second
language, even among those who learned their parents’ languages first and
try to keep it up. Among the second generation, their knowledge of the
immigrant languages is seldom better than that learned as a second language,
that is if they know any of it beyond a simple smattering.

The picture I get from the post-Babylonian exile books is that Jews were
well scattered throughout the land, i.e. in situations where they were
forced to interact with non-Jews. There were communities enough so that the
immigrant generation had support, but the younger immigrants and their
children had to deal with the non-Jewish world, and by the second generation
would be more at home in the local language than in the immigrants’
language.

After two generations, then Judea was reconstituted as a theocracy with
Hebrew as its official language. But the post-Exile writings appear to have
been written by those who spoke Hebrew as a second language—technically
correct, but without the richness of expression and literary style that
marked the pre-Exile writings.

>
> >rather spoke Hebrew as a second language; that several Hebrew terms were
> forgotten by the time the LXX was written: >
>
> Now you are arguing that language change means language death!


After arguing against it so many times, where do you get this idea? How does
my statement indicate language death?


> This is bizarre.
>

Yes, your reaction is bizarre.


> …
>
> blessings
> Randall Buth
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> randallbuth AT gmail.com
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
>
> Karl W. Randolph.