Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>]

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From: "Isaac Fried" <if AT math.bu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 9:00 AM
To: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Piel Participles of ayin-waw-yod

> 1. Moses was a כבד פה וכבד לשון (stutterer?), but he  wrote superb Hebrew 
> that survived to this day.

If an historical character upon which the Exodus Narrative was framed 
actually existed, aren't any of the pure speculations on the time frame 
prior to the emergence of Hebrew? Particularly the "superb Hebrew" of the 
Pentateuch?

> 2. Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose. Of course Hebrew  "changed", 
> yet it is still, methinks (Gilad Zuckerman  notwithstanding), the same 
> Hebrew. To wit:
> בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ
> is still "modern" Hebrew, except that the modern speaker would have  used 
> the less lofty BA-HATXALAH for בראשית and ASAH for ברא  (I am not sure how 
> it is stated in the recently published  "translation" of the Hebrew bible 
> into mundane Hebrew.) Yet, we still  don't understand what really took 
> place at the first nanosecond of  "creation".

In the first trillionth of a second of the "Big Bang," helium atoms fused 
from hydrogen.  Of course that was 13.75 +/- .17 billion years ago.  It make 
me feel better about turning 70 today.

> 2. "problems that speakers of modern Hebrew have understanding the 
> biblical text" is because the text is occasionally ambiguous or the 
> context not clear. We all have problems with some biblical passages. 
> Speakers of "modern" Hebrew have the same (or maybe even greater) 
> understanding problems with present-day secular Hebrew poetry.

I cannot get a handle on the proposition that modern Hebrew is virtually 
unchanged since the Bronze Age.  Languages are cultural and cultures are 
never static.

Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX


> Isaac Fried, Boston University
>
>
> On Oct 31, 2010, at 2:40 AM, Yigal Levin wrote:
>
> > Really? Did Moses use Ashkenazic or Sephardic pronunciation?
> >
> > Come on, surely you realize that today's Hebrew is the end product  (so 
> > far)
> > of several thousand years of change, due to both internal factors and
> > external influences. One of the problems that speakers of modern  Hebrew 
> > have
> > understanding the biblical text is when they assume that phrases  have 
> > the
> > same meaning there as they do today (although I don't think that this
> > permanently handicaps them, like some folks on this list do).
> >
> >
> > Yigal Levin
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > [mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Isaac Fried
> > Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 6:00 AM
> > To: Uri Hurwitz
> > Cc: Hebrew List
> > Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Piel Participles of ayin-waw-yod
> >
> > There is no "modern" Hebrew. We still speak the same biblical Hebrew,
> > only slightly adapted for everyday use.
> >
> > Isaac Fried, Boston University
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>
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