Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Chavoux Luyt <chavoux AT gmail.com>]

Shalom Karl

You said:
> >
> > There are norms for sameness, and those norms, at least from
> > discussions on this list, indicate that there are three, if not
> > four, phases that Hebrew went through as it changed from Biblical
> > to modern Hebrews. Those changes include that the grammar of
> > Biblical Hebrew is not the same as the grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew
> > which is not the same as the grammar of modern Hebrew. There are
> > other changes as well. That you do not acknowledge these differences ?
> >
> > (Similar differences are recognized for English, from Anglo-Saxon
> > (Beowulf) to Middle English (Chaucer) to Elizabethan English
> > (Shakespeare, KJV) to modern English. Or is it your claim that a
> > native speaker of modern English should have no problems reading
> > Chaucer?)
I think that we all know that there has been some changes in the
language. Indeed even the Hebrew as written in the beginning of the
20th century differ slightly (at least in terms of "usual" vocabulary)
from Hebrew as spoken today. But in Isaac's defence, the difference
between modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew is much smaller than between
Middle English and modern English IMHO. I would rather compare
biblical Hebrew to Elizabethan English in terms of changes in
vocabulary and grammar. And yes, depending on your view/definition of
language (vs. dialect etc.), it can be considered as being the same
language (cf the many English-speaking people who still use the King
James Version of the Bible). Indeed, having learned English as a
second language as well as learning modern Hebrew rather later in
life, I still find it easier to read and understand most of the Tanach
in Hebrew than Shakespeare in English. The same kind of shifts in
meaning occured and can sometimes be misleading (A good example:
"davar" in Biblical Hebrew with the primary meaning of "word" and also
 "matter" whereas in Modern Hebrew in common usage it means primarily
"thing" or "matter" and only secondarily "word").

And I would rather compare Mishnaic Hebrew to the English of e.g.
Thomas Harding (not sure what you would call that era).

The reason for the smaller change in Hebrew compared to most other
modern spoken languages, is exactly that it was for so long
exclusively used as a "religious" language and functioned as a
language for reading and writing rather than as a spoken language. (I
think Latin is the same in this regard, having changed very little -
if at all - since it stopped being a commonly spoken language. I.e.
the Latin used in modern Zoology to describe a new species is
essentially the same as medieval Latin).

I think one must just be careful not to make it sound as if the
meaning of most of the words in Biblical Hebrew is uncertain, since
that is definitely not the case. I also think that using the "shoresh"
to determine the meaning of words is error-prone since in all
languages words from the same roots can have a variety of meaning
where the link between the "related" words can be very difficult to
imagine. E.g. the English term "understand"... breaking it into its
roots is not going to make the meaning of the word any clearer, but
might rather obscure it.

Regards
Chavoux Luyt