Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 12:36 AM, K Randolph wrote:

>> That seems like pretty slim pickings to base a theory on. In other words,
> at that time, the people still used good Biblical Hebrew for their daily
> speech.

Karl, the theory is not about Hebrew and its history.  The theory has to do
with what constituted a Canaanite language.  It synthesizes a wide array
of data to form an answer.  In this case, in the 2nd millenium BCE, we have
vocalic transcriptions that show us that there was no -ay in construct
plurals.  In addition, in Samarian, Judaean, and Ammonite each (all
Canaanite) we have examples of words that appear to function as construct
plurals without the -y: r)$ in Siloam, m(bd in Tell Siran bottle, and nbl in
Samarian Ostracon 1.  Yes, these examples may be interpreted differently,
but the simplest interpretation is one of construct plural in all these cases.
Furthermore, Ammonites spell their name as bn(mn whereas Moabites
spell bny(mn.  What Arad 49 means is that in the late 8th century the
Aramaic influence that created some of the recognizable features of
Biblical Hebrew was already very strong among the elite, at least in the
border fort of Arad.  But in Jerusalem, the official scribes of royal
inscriptions
still used the traditional orthography.

In any case, this does not have anything to do with the issue of spelling
differences between epigraphic Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew.  For example,
in all of the many cases of plurals in Arad, Lachish, and Jerusalem, including
Siloam, you never see the -ym ending, unless it is a dual or gentilic.
So Biblical
Hebrew's orthography is later because it replaced many of the -m plurals with
-ym.  Some remained, which is why you find -m plurals in the Bible.  A similar
argument can be made based on various other differences, some of which
I also listed.

Yitzhak Sapir