Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall:

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Karl, in the midst of your comments
> (not all within list etiquette but that is a different issue),
>

(Have you always followed list etiquette?)


> there is a basic issue that could be discussed as a thread.
>
> Consequently, I have re-titled the thread,
> The "scope of data for correctly appraising BH”,
> since this issue is not directly related to Greek vowels.
>

I agree that this is where it should be.

>
> I don’t think that there should be much disagreement on the scope of the
> data, at least by Hebraists.
>

Here’s where we are dealing with a tradition that has built up over the
years. And it has its place. It has its strengths, but it should be
recognized that it has its weaknesses. I think many of its practitioners are
so enamored with its strengths that they are blind to its weaknesses.

>
> >> One of the things that often happens is that the 'non-professional'
> >> puts forth highly implausible theories based on an incomplete
> >> acquaintance with the data.
>
> > Correction, the data is the consonantal text of Tanakh. We all are
> dealing
> > with the same data. Where we differ is in the interpretation of and the
> > conclusions derived from said data.
>
> Here is a substantive difference. The consonantal text of the tana”x is
> only part of data. One must include epigraphic texts from the area and
> time periods, spelling and morphological developments between 1st and 2nd
> Temple Hebrew,and one must include the relationships, especially
> morphological and structural parallels with related languages like
> Phoenician, Ugaritic, El Amarna Canaanite, Moabite, Ammonite, Aramaic
> in its many dialects, and then the trajectory of Hebrew itself through
> Dead Sea Hebrew and mishnaic Hebrew and Masoretic Hebrew (plus more than
> one written tradition and/or recorded tradition of these) and Karaite
> and Samaritan traditions, not to mention farther-related languages Arabic
> and Akkadian, South Arabic and Ge`ez.


Whether to include all this other data and its relevance to the study of
Biblical Hebrew is already a matter of interpretation.

For example, does my knowledge of German help me in a study of Norwegian?
The answer clearly is “No”. The reason is that there is sufficient
literature in both languages that reference to the other is not necessary.
But let’s postulate that something happened to Norway that only one large
book survived of the language, and only a few brochures from Swedish and
Danish, then German, Dutch and other Germanic languages can help decipher
the Norwegian. But there are cases where relying on German would give the
wrong answer.

That’s the picture we face with Biblical Hebrew. How many wrong answers have
we gotten by relying on these other languages? How do we know?



> Languages are like living
> organisms, they grow and change, but they are also connected. One must
> come up with a theory that reasonably explains the relationships. E.g.,
> both vowel and consonant phonemic length are necessary in order to
> explain these languages.


You think I don’t know these facts? Isn’t that one reason I think that
Biblical Hebrew originally may have been a CV language?


> … One cannot just jump into the middle, make
> a CVCVCV claim, and then declare all other evidence ‘speculation’ or
> ‘unrelated’.


Show one example where that has been done!


> …. It
> is artificially limiting the data and excluding evidence that would
> otherwise render some proposals as ‘non-theories’ and ‘unacceptable’.
>

How does it limit the data when I question if it shows what you claim it
shows?

>
> [Karl]> >> not through the glasses put on by long training in the
> > >> traditions. The old school doesn’t like people like me, as we often
> > >> upset the apple cart.
> >
> [RB]>> Actually,
> >> the 'long training' of most Semitists is not in the 'traditions' but
> >> in the data.
>
> [Karl]> It is traditions, more than the hard data.
>
> Logically, how can a person who was ‘not-trained’ reliably evaluate the
> training that they didn’t have? (They might show differences between
> systems, but if the untrained person has not reasonably explained the
> relevant data, then any negative evaluation would remain unreliable.)
>

Have you not noticed repeated references to growing up in an academic
environment? You don’t think I would have noticed a thing or two while
interacting with professors and grad students since I was young?


> Most of what I have seen in grad schools revolves around reading
> actual texts.


That is to be expected. However, when one studies so many languages as is in
a typical Semiticist’s program, he never masters any of the languages. This
is a question of mastery.


> Students are expected to know the state of the art, but it is a
> discussion of data in relationship to theories of what is known and of
> what is probable. Portraying this as “tradition” is a mis-representation
> of conscientious scholarship.
>

There are also traditions that are built up within scholarship, and it is to
that which I refer.

>
> [Karl]
> > Randall: you have studied theoretical works on grammar, comparative
> > linguistics, and so forth. But have you ever just sat down and read
> > Tanakh, cover to cover, merely for the purpose of understanding it?
> > Even once? Translating doesn’t count, as the emphasis is not on the
> > Hebrew, rather on rendering the ideas understood into the target
> > language. Nor does for purposes of scholarly analysis, as the emphasis
> > is on the analysis, not on internalizing the meaning, feel and flow of
> > the language. I would not be surprised if an honest answer is, “Not even
> > once.”
>
> Well it’s good that you don’t include “translating”, since that doesn’t
> relate to real language experience. When someone is functioning in
> a language they are not usually translating, unless providing help
> for someone outside the discussion. So - - -
> Let’s see -- reading the tana”x, cover to cover? [first—I don’t read it in
> English or autre langue, though I did once in ‘69.]
> The first time that I remember cover-to-cover Hebrew was 1975, and again
> in 1977. That was 35 years ago, and I don’t count or keep records of
> reading pleasure, though I tend to read by book, sometimes at a sitting,
> or the annual parashot cycle of torah, rather than end-to-end canonical
> order.
>

In other words, twice, and that 30+ years ago. How much of the text do you
miss by not reading it end-to-end in canonical order?

I lost track of the number of times I read the text through years ago. All I
know is that over twenty times is accurate, and that’s enough for me.

As for me, I think in Hebrew when I read the text. I started developing that
skill already the first time I read the text through, so by now, whenever
there is a question on this list, I go first to the Hebrew text (where
relevant, not all questions on this list deal with the Hebrew text) and only
afterwards to other sources of data.


> Maybe another relevant question would be to ask the opposite:
> how many times has someone mis-read the text? If someone were reading
> the consonantal text with only CVCVCV patterns,


Boy are you hung up on pronunciation!

I did not come to the conclusion that Biblical Hebrew may have been (I have
always put it as an optative) a CV language until after about 20 times
reading the text through. Does my question if the language may have had a
different pronunciation change vocabulary? Grammar? Syntax? The answer
should be obvious.

or if one doesn’t
> recognize an infinitive absolute structure being used for a finite verb,
>

After reading the text and learning that many of the grammar claims that I
had been taught in class were wrong, I decided to put grammar on the back
burner and concentrate on vocabulary and meaning. I also noticed many times
that the Masoretic points are wrong as far as vocabulary and meaning,
therefore untrustworthy. How many of the infinite absolute forms were
wrongly pointed as infinite absolutes when they should have been other
forms?

Also, because the grammar is different than what we expect from our
background in western languages, are we making expectations that Biblical
Hebrew doesn’t follow? (By “western languages” I include modern, Israeli
Hebrew.)


> then someone else may have legitimate doubts about just what
> “language” is being read by such a claimant. A CVCVCV language is
> neither First Temple BH, nor Second Temple BH.
> So I suggest dropping ‘personalities’ and following this thread.
>

If you had been reading my comments, the only reason I mention
‘personalities’ is because they have been used as counter-arguments. So if
we follow this advice consistently, we have to drop all claims as “No one
that I know, who is competent to evaluate such data…”, “consensus”,
“Hebraists”, “people who are so acquainted”, and other arguments that you
use. Those are all ‘personality’ arguments. It is your reliance on
personality arguments that makes me think your position is weak.

>
> Just what are the relevant data?
>

That revolves around certain questions:

Was Hebrew the language for which the alphabet was developed? If so, did the
inventors of the alphabet follow the usual pattern of making one letter for
each phoneme, and no more than one phoneme per letter?

As the language changed, was the original pronunciation of the consonants
hard or soft? In other words, if the sounds were hard originally, did some
of them soften to the sometimes hard/sometimes soft pattern seen in the
Masoretic tradition? What other pronunciation changes occurred over time?
When did these changes occur?

The answers that I work with are:

The alphabet was invented for Biblical Hebrew language. What follows is that
the original Hebrew language had 22 consonants, each with its own particular
sound.

(Aramaic and Phoenician both adopted the Hebrew alphabet, centuries after it
was used among the Hebrews. As such, it may, or may not, have been a clean
fit to those other languages.)

The original sounds of the consonants were hard, and later softened. So an
example is the name רבקה which possibly had an original pronunciation of
ReBeQaH(e), only later softened to the modern ‘Rivka’. Like that name, there
are many letter combinations that are impossible to pronounce with hard
consonants without them being separated by vowels. That was the first thing
that made me ask the question, was the original Biblical Hebrew a CV
language? I also saw a few transliterations of transliterations of Hebrew
names from Ninevah that seemed to indicate that the names had CV
pronunciation.

As for when Hebrew pronunciation changed, I think it occurred during the
second temple period, much of it happening before the LXX was written. If
true, that means that later data will not reflect Biblical Hebrew
pronunciation.

A final piece of evidence is that when poetry is pronounced with a CV
pronunciation, including even the “materes lectionis” as consonants with
each followed by a vowel to make syllables, there is a rhythm present that
does not exist for other pronunciation schemes.

There are many ifs in the above scenario, but you can’t rule them out.


>
> >(By the way, is there a list of lexical items that are found in the LXX
> > but not in the New Testament? It would be helpful to me when
> > referencing the LXX in these discussions. Thank you.)
>
> As for a list of LXX vocab not appearing in the GNT, that can be generated
> from a program like Accordance. But the ouput will run about 8000 lines
> and is not appropriate to the list. In the meantime, for vocab, there is
> a new LXX lexicon (that I do not own), and Liddel-Scott-M-J will usually
> list any special usage found in the LXX. The Hatch-Redpath hard copy
> concordance is still available and I find it useful, even in these days of
> software data searches. There is also a reverse Heb-Greek ‘expanded’ index
> that was prepared by Elmar Dos Rios Santos [Jerusalem: Dugit] (out of
> print, but more useful than the newer publication by Muraoka.)
> Hope that helps.
>

Thanks. I was hoping for something small that would fit on a small computer.
I am not in a position to build up a good library, so I am concentrating on
what will fit into a few gigs of electronic files. For example, even the
iPod in my pocket has six Bibles, including the Aleppo, LXX, Καινη Διαθηκη
and a few translations. So I am hoping for something that will at least fit
on my netbook so it will be with me as I travel.

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