Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Yitzhak:

It sounds like you still believe the “first year lies” that you were taught
in class. Orthography is a modern invention, only within the last couple of
centuries. And even within orthography, there are acceptable variations
allowed for poetry and idioms. How many of these grammatical anomalies were
acceptable practices in the days before orthography?

Secondly, their grammar allowed for variations that our modern western
grammars don’t. And one of those is a singular noun to be in construct with
a plural noun, though that was not the usual construction. In our modern
western thinking, we have different expectations of singulars and plurals.

For me, making myself read Tanakh from cover to cover really opened my eyes
to the variations allowed in the language. And made me recognize that much
that I had been taught in class was not true.

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>wrote:

>
> Karl, the theory is not about Hebrew and its history.


You are contradicting yourself. It is 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.


But what about Hebrew? If the Torah was accurately copied from when it left
Moses’ pen, then we have plenty of such 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.
>

Simplest, … but accurate? Or simplest according to modern, western
expectations?


> Furthermore, Ammonites spell their name as bn(mn whereas Moabites
> spell bny(mn.


What this shows is merely dialectal differences, not a change in
orthography.


>  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.
>

Is this merely theory, or do you have examples to show us? Remember, not all
of us have access to good libraries.

>
> 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.
>

“Gentilic”? In grammar, what does it mean? Tribal? Is this imposing western
grammar onto Hebrew?


> 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
>

You say that the language changed, but this is not about the history of
Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.