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  • From: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
  • To: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>, "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] hebrew is dead?
  • Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:02:51 -0600



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From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 4:23 PM
To: "fred burlingame" <tensorpath AT gmail.com>
Cc: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] hebrew is dead?

Fred:

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 10:42 AM, fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>wrote:

it's never easy, jack ...

discovering the facts at odds with one's cherished beliefs ...

regards,

fred burlingame

Look inside yourself.

I used to be thrilled with the idea that Jesus and his contemporaries spoke
Hebrew as their mother tongue. That’s also what I was taught in class.

But gradually, as more facts came in, I had to start doubting that belief.
What was the last straw was to discover that the post-Babylonian Exile books
of Tanakh have a simpler literary structure, consistent with a population
who spoke Hebrew as a second language, in contrast with those books written
before the Babylonian Exile. That literary pattern shows up if and only if
we accept the books at face value as to the dates in which they were
written.

That’s why I now claim that during the second Temple period, every male at
least was taught Hebrew, it was used in the temple, when Tanakh was read
slowly and deliberately in the synagogs, people usually got at least the
gist of the reading and for popular texts more than just the gist. Important
literary works were written in Hebrew and it was the official language of
records. But on the streets and in the homes, people spoke Aramaic.

Hebrew was a living language in that it was still spoken and literary works
were authored in it, but no one spoke it as his mother tongue.

Karl W. Randolph.


Hi Karl.

I am gratified that someone looks at the evidence. I fear that evidence takes a back seat to either a nationalistic fervor or Hebrew chauvinism. The Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud relate that it was ordered by Simeon ben Shetah (120-40 B.C.E.) that every district and major city have a Beyt ha-Sefer for the instruction of male children (Yerushalmy Ketuboth 1c). I don't think that it meant that every male child went to a Beyt haSefer. It would not have been possible for the larger number of male children in the countryside who could not travel to the nearest major city that had a school or who had to help at home or on the farms. The studies by Safrai and Meir Bar Ilan conclude less than 5% literacy.

Jack Kilmon




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