Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Pere:

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Karl,
> biblical Hebrew and today Hebrew are the same language if for "language" we
> understand its inner structure rather than its vocabulary.
>

What do you mean by “inner structure”?

You admit that vocabulary is not “inner structure” because even where some
of the same words are used, they are used with different definitions. Many
words are used the same way.

You can’t mean grammar, because, for example, qatal in Biblical Hebrew had a
completely different meaning than the modern grammatical qatal. And that’s
just one grammatical difference, of several.

>From what little I have seen of modern Hebrew, it treats the binyanim
differently than did Biblical Hebrew.

And the spelling, … wow … is all I can say.

So what do you mean by “inner structure”?

>
> Of course in biblical times there were no planes nor cars nor TV nor
> computers. All these are present in our life today... so we need a name for
> them...
>
> Now my question is: how, by what means, by which way is it possible that an
> active pattern (that in the Bible) has become a passive one in today
> language?
>

Because we are dealing with a different language, one with more differences
between it and Biblical Hebrew than did Mesha’s Moabite, possibly more
differences than from Aramaic in Hezekiah’s day which the people could not
understand.

>
> Maybe I'm mistaken, but I guess  nobody on this list ... knows the answer
> to this question...
>
> Pere
>
>
> What’s wrong with my answer?

Karl W. Randolph.