Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ed Walkwitz <edwalkwitz AT yahoo.com>]

Thanks to all for your thots. I took the weekend off from email. Some of your 
thots have been helpful, but the thread is getting to the point where I might 
have to wait and do more study before I can have much more to say. But a few 
responses:
 
Targums and post-exilic Aramaic: I guess I'll have to more reading. Karl W. 
Randolph: you wrote: "
 "If you read widely you will find that characters in a story often have 
native 
names, even if they are foreign. There is no reason why a Hebrew writer could 
not have silently changed Akkadian names to a Hebrew name that was, in some 
way, 
equivalent." Again, appreciating your expertise in the names of the 
patriarchal 
narratives, it's a fairly small corpus, not quite, "reading widely." Your 
study 
has informed you about the names as they occur in the text, not about whether 
they may have been changed or adapted before or when the text was written.
Jim: I appreciate your expertise in the patriarchal narratives, but doesn't 
all 
the evidence that the names are pure Hebrew still leave the question, why 
couldn't Abram couldn't have changed or adapted his name later, or Moses have 
changed or adapted the names? Whether the names occur in their birth 
narrative 
or anywhere else in the narrative wouldn't seem to me to make a difference.
Someone wrote you,
    BTW: small point: I don't know if it's just my computer, but your lines 
are 
a mile long.  I had to paste your emails into a word-processor to read them.
Thanks.
Ed Walkwitz, Des Moines, IowaI noticed the same pattern among post Babylonian 
Exile Biblical authors, that their use of Hebrew follows the pattern of being 
a 
second language, not the language taught at a mother’s knee nor spoken in the 
market. " Is there a write-up somewhere describing what the differences are 
in 
post-exilic Hebrew, and how it looks like a "second language"? I wasn't sure 
how 
to interpret your next sentence. Do you conclude that the post-exilic Jews 
spoke 
Aramaic?
>From edwalkwitz AT yahoo.com  Mon Aug 30 13:03:50 2010
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Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:03:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ed Walkwitz <edwalkwitz AT yahoo.com>
To: Ed Walkwitz <edwalkwitz AT yahoo.com>, jimstinehart AT aol.com,
        kwrandolph AT gmail.com
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Aramaic to Hebrew language switch? read 1st,
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My apologies.  My last email got garbled--don't know how.  Here's what it 
should 
have said:
______________________________________
 
Thanks to all for your thots. I took the weekend off from email. Some of your 
thots have been helpful, but the thread is getting to the point where I might 
have to wait and do more study before I can have much more to say. But a few 
responses:
Targums and post-exilic Aramaic: I guess I'll have to more reading. Karl W. 
Randolph: you wrote: "
Jim: I appreciate your expertise in the patriarchal narratives, but doesn't 
all 
the evidence that the names are pure Hebrew still leave the question, why 
couldn't Abrahm couldn't have changed or adapted his name later, or Moses 
have 
changed or adapted the names? Whether the names occur in their birth 
narrative 
or anywhere else in the narrative wouldn't seem to me to make a difference.
Someone wrote you,
Thanks.
Ed Walkwitz, Des Moines, IowaI noticed the same pattern among post Babylonian 
Exile Biblical authors, that their use of Hebrew follows the pattern of being 
a 
second language, not the language taught at a mother’s knee nor spoken in the 
market. " Is there a write-up somewhere describing what the differences are 
in 
post-exilic Hebrew, and how it looks like a "second language"? I wasn't sure 
how 
to interpret your next sentence. Do you conclude that the post-exilic Jews 
spoke 
Aramaic?"If you read widely you will find that characters in a story often 
have 
native names, even if they are foreign. There is no reason why a Hebrew 
writer 
could not have silently changed Akkadian names to a Hebrew name that was, in 
some way, equivalent." Again, appreciating your expertise in the names of the 
patriarchal narratives, it's a fairly small corpus, not quite, "reading 
widely." 
Your study has informed you about the names as they occur in the text, not 
about 
whether they may have been changed or adapted before or when the text was 
written.
>From jkilmon AT historian.net  Mon Aug 30 13:45:01 2010
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From: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Aramaic to Hebrew language switch?
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From: JimStinehart AT aol.com 
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 11:17 AM
To: jkilmon AT historian.net 
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Aramaic to Hebrew language switch?



--------------------------------------------------
From: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 4:10 PM
To: <randallbuth AT gmail.com>; <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Aramaic to Hebrew language switch?

>
> Ed Walkwitz and Randall Buth:
>
> In my considered opinion, the traditional interpretation of the 
> Patriarchal
> narratives as to Abraham’s origins is completely erroneous, both textually
> and historically.  I view the Patriarchal narratives as portraying Abraham
> as being indigenous to Canaan.  That is why the first Hebrews and the 
> Canaa
> nites spoke the same language, having only minor dialectal differences. 
> The
> Patriarchal narratives open with Abraham on a one-time caravan trip from
> Canaan way out to Ur in southern Kassite Babylonia, to buy lapis lazuli as
> commercial merchandise.  No, the early Hebrews weren’t professional 
> merchants,
> but this was a one-time desperation move in the face of having recently 
> been
> reduced to living in tents in Canaan (whereas Abraham’s father, Terakh, as 
> a
> young man, and Terakh’s ancestors at all times, had lived in settled
> villages in a more peaceful, prosperous Canaan).
>
> Thus YHWH speaks to Abraham at Genesis 12: 1 in perfect Hebrew, a language
> that Abraham learned at his mother’s knee and spoke as a native.
>


I always find such historical/linguistic speculation based on Biblical 
narrative to be to be very awkward.  It places the critical historian in the 
uncomfortable position of challenging faith-based opinion and concepts.  The 
Biblical texts Genesis-2Kings were composed in Hebrew in the late 7th 
century-early 6th century BCE.  Place names and borders fit perfectly with 
the reign of Josiah.  The chronological context for the Patriarchal 
Narrative, aside from arguments regarding historicity, is sometime in Middle 
Bronze Age II (1950-1550) around 1800 BCE.  The Hebrew language of the 
Biblical texts did not exist at this time but if used broadly and 
anachronistically for Canaanite, there was indeed a Canaanite language even 
if the acrophonic abjad was not yet developed.  There was also a wave of 
Aramaean migration in the 2nd millennium BCE.  There was a Canaanite 
language in the Middle Bronze Age which a "Wandering Aramaean" could have 
adopted.  Canaan and Phoenicia are the same, both mean "Land of purple." 
If Abraham was an historical person who migrated to Canaan with his family 
in the Bronze Age, it is safe to assume they adopted the language and spoke 
"purplish."  When a loose confederation of nomadic tribes in Canaan became 
"Hebrews" is a separate argument.

Jack

Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX