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  • From: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • To: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Biblical Hebrew orthographical practices in light of epigraphy
  • Date: Thu, 27 May 2010 21:12:15 +0300

Hello James,

I am going to elaborate on the example of Lachish 3 that I used
regarding your point about the lazy scribes and their yodhs. You
have several times now said you are scratching your head
wondering why it is relevant. I hope the following elaboration will
help you see the relevance.

If the scribes were lazy, we would expect that at times they would
use the yodh and at times they would not. Also, we would not
expect that they would be lazy just with the yodhs in this example.
Why not other yodhs.

You said the yodhs are superfluous. But in Siloam, the yodh is
not superfluous. It would have served to identify the word as
"man" rather than "fire." In the Bible, over a thousand times,
this is always the spelling - with a yodh.

In Lachish 3, we have an additional phenomenon. The use of -th
suffixes for 2ms verbs. Thus, we have:
... לספר אשר שלחתה אל עבדך אמש ...
"regarding the message that you sent to your servant yesterday night"
... כיאמר אדני לא ידעתה קרא ספר ...
"and so my lord said: you don't know how to read a message"

In the Bible, the spelling is almost always with a -t for these
verbs. In the Qumran spelling, the -th is usually used as you
saw from the quote George provided the other day.

Now, if the scribe was lazy with the yodhs, why isn't he lazy
with the 2ms verbal suffixes? True, in the Lachish 3 ostracon
we have no examples of plurals, specifically. But we do have
examples without a yodh, as I pointed out:

להגד - Karl pointed out that the text is shown as a lacuna in the
online transcription. The text is not a lacuna, it is just hard to
read. In the original publication, the author places just the ד in
the completion. In Tov's publication, there is no lacuna at all.
Indeed, I can make out in Tov's photo of Lachish 3 the strokes
that Tov shows in the accompanying drawing.

An additional example is הנבא. In both of these, there is no
yodh. If the reason for the missing yodhs in plurals is that the
author was being lazy, why then is he only lazy with yodhs and
not the he of the 2ms verbal suffixes?

Furthermore, in Lachish 3, we have the word ועת "and now."
This word is only rarely spelled in the Bible without an he,
about twice as compared to hundreds of times with the he.
Why is the author stingy with the he on ועת but not with the
he of the 2ms suffix?

This is not just in Lachish 3. The spelling without the he is
found in all the pre-exilic inscriptions, always. There are
sufficient instances to make a conclusion that this 100%
use of the non-he spelling is not accidental. Furthermore,
it also appears on the one pre-exilic document that we still
have on papyrus. So the argument of being stingy or
lazy because we are talking about an "inscription" is further
weakened.

Now, supposedly you can say, well, the missing yodh on
plurals and various other words is one issue of laziness,
but the missing or extra he is not. It is a different issue.
But the argument of laziness only works if the author
was always lazy. It just doesn't make sense that the
author wanted to be concise with one letter and not with
others.

So really, the argument of laziness doesn't work.

I hope that now that I have carefully elaborated my
example, you will be able to follow the logic and not
claim as you have done that I have refused to interact
with the suggestion.

Incidentally, for those interested, there is an article
by Kenneth Kitchen which discusses spelling
modernization in the ANE. Kitchen does this in the
context of Daniel, and writes:

"The second point is that not merely are such changes
(i) possible and (ii) probable, but (iii) they actually and
often took place in the transmission of Ancient Near
Eastern literature, and occurrence of ‘modernization’
is a fact that can be illustrated from that range of
literature. We have no warrant to exempt Biblical
literature from sharing in the same fundamental
processes."

Kitchen then goes on to review the evidence in Egypt
and elsewhere for orthographical revisions of texts in
the ANE. The full article can be read here:

http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/daniel_kitchen.pdf
(the above is from p. 26 in the pdf)

The reason I mention this is only to give a perspective
on the range of scholars that accept this idea. Kitchen
is not a minimalist by any count. I know (at least, I think
if I remember correctly) that Karl has issues of
disagreement. But Kitchen's views are generally
considered very conservative. Amihai Mazar and
Israel Finkelstein (representing opposite extremes on
the debate of the United Monarchy in Israeli scholarship)
together place Kitchen's book "On the Reliability of the
Old Testament" under "Ultra-conservative."

However, even Kitchen accepts that orthographical
modernization took place, because even Kitchen
is familiar with the evidence and can see which way
the evidence points.

Yitzhak Sapir




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