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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] dagesh in two root nouns with patah

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  • From: Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
  • To: kwrandolph AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] dagesh in two root nouns with patah
  • Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:13:47 -0500 (EST)

On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:29:12 -0800, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
> Will:
>
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:28:48 -0800, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > Will:
> > >
> > > On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu
> > >wrote:
> > >
> > > > But I think the situation of Hebrew in Egypt is rather different from
> > that
> > > > which developed in Latin-speaking areas of Europe,
> > >
> > > Which, incidentally, included Germany, England, Scandinavia, etc.
> >
> > No. People in Germany, England, &c. certainly learned Latin, and even
> > learned to use it as a means of oral communication, but that's a lot
> > different than the situation in France or Italy where people learned (a
> > kind
> > of) Latin as their mother tongue and only gradually came to the
> > realization
> > they were actually speaking something else.
>
> The development of Latin included everywhere it was spoken, because by the
> medieval period, it was the lingua franca of all of Europe and wherever it
> was used, it was recognized that it was a learned language that no one
> learned at home. The same situation existed for Hebrew after the Babylonian
> Exile.

Purely learned languages change over time, like languages that are mother
tongue to a community, but the way they change is different, being driven by
the host languages rather than internal spontaneous development. The reason
that the English pronunciation of "Cato" is "kay-toe" is not because of
spontaneous changes within Latin as spoken in England, as happen in truly
living languages, but because of changes that took place in the pronunciation
of English which were carried over into Latin (in England, but not elsewhere).

In any case, the parallels between the situations of Hebrew and Latin are not
complete - Latin developed into various daughter languages and Hebrew gave way
as a spoken tongue to completely different languages.

> > Why should they? Why should Jewish communities in Palestine or
> > Mesopotamia
> > whose everyday language was Aramaic choose to pick up the peculiarities of
> > pronunciation from some foreign Jews who pronounced Hebrew with a funny
> > Greek
> > accent?
>
> The evidence from the MT indicates that if they did, it was only partial.
>
> > > And why would the MT show changes from only one source? Why not several?
> > And
> > > with the LXX predating the NT, therefore being influential among Jewish
> > > readers as to how they would pronounce Hebrew names and words,
> > > especially
> > > among the largely Greek speaking diaspora, why wouldn’t it have
> > > influence
> > > also back in Judea?
> >
> > I find it hard to believe that the LXX was consulted or influential in the
> > preparation of the MT. It was after all in foreign language (foreign in a
> > way that Aramaic was not), and the oral tradition would be much stronger.
>
> I have never claimed that the MT represented anything other than a local
> tradition of a certain time and place, and I don’t make any different claim
> now. What I ask, what were the sources that influenced that tradition? It
> was in an area greatly influenced by Greek, where the dominant language of
> the area was Greek and had been for centuries prior to the MT. So can we
> rule out the Greek as having at least some influence in that tradition? Does
> it make sense to rule it out?
>
I'll let others who are more competent in this area than I am to judge whether
Greek influence can be detected in the MT.

...
> > If daghesh didn't indicate a phonetic distinction, what *did* it indicate?
> > I can't think it was inserted arbitrarily. (And of course, cognate words
> > in
> > Arabic evidence the nature of that phonetic distinction.)
>
> Of course it indicated phonetic distinction, but where is your evidence that
> that phonetic distinction existed a thousand years earlier? That it existed
> in pre-Babylonian Exile Hebrew?

If a phonetic distinction existed in the MT pronunciation that didn't exist
in older Hebrew, then we have to find a reason for why it developed (i.e, why
there are dagheshes in some words but not in others in the same environments).
I'm not aware of any such.

> > > The bottom line, I think the evidence indicates that the MT does not
> > > represent Biblical Hebrew pronunciation from before the Babylonian
> > > Exile.
> >
> > It depends on how widely you understand "represent". I would certainly
> > agree
> > that the pronunciation underlying the MT was not that of pre-exilic
> > Hebrew.
> > (I doubt that forte/lene distinctions in BGDKPT letters were significant
> > so
> > early, for example, and no doubt there were significant differences in
> > vowel
> > articulation). But the MT is the result of continuous transmission, so it
> > can
> > not be dismissed as evidence of how Hebrew was pronounced at a much
> > earlier
> > time.
>
> How much earlier?

Indefinitely earlier. But of course, the farther you go back in time, the
more uncertainty there is.

> Just because it was continuous, does that mean a static,
> unchanging transmission, or was it a living, changing transmission? Does not
> the evidence point to the latter?

Of course it wasn't static. But that doesn't mean it doesn't mirror to
varying extents the language at previous stages of its existence (decreasingly
as one goes back farther in time).

--
Will Parsons



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