Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

   Randall,

   It is good to keep in mind that the Mishanh is based on biblical texts.
These texts are presented in the MT (Immanuel Tov), or what may be more 
precisely called the Consonantal MT. 

   The Mishnah was codified by the end of the second century C.E.

   This brings into sharper focus the Matsati - matsiti shift which you note.


  Ezov Haqqyr,

  Uri Hurwitz                             Great Neck NY
  







 Randall Buth wrote:

while discussing preparations for the Hebrew immersion seminar next
month, an item came up that might interest the list.

matsati 'I found' is BH, MT.
matsiti 'I found' is Mishnaic, though I don't have data at hand to document.

The differentiation of the two morphologies does have something to
say about the MT tradition of BH. Even though the MT was
recorded many centuries after mishnaic dialect been in use by the
communities, it did not 'level' the morphology of BH into MishnH.
It is also true that Aramaic developed the similar -i- forms as Mishnaic
Hebrew. One may conclude that the forms like matsati are thus
non-Aramaic and non-Mishnaic. The probability is that matsati
represents a pre-Mishnaic, BH.
of course, the 'dialect' for the seminar will be MT based, so participants
will be expected to say 'matsati'. (Few/None would have considered matsiti,
anyway.)

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com

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