Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com>]

A message for Karl Randolph from Pere:

Karl, I'm with Isaac regarding the question: "Is Biblical Hebrew the same
language as Modern Hebrew?"  --My answer is "Yes".

Their structure is the same. They differ only in vocabulary: in the biblical
times there were no planes nor cars nor refrigerators..... so we cannot find
these terms in the biblical pages...

What makes "two languages" to be the same language is the sameness of their
inner structure, not some differences in the words entered in the general
dictionary.

Remark: I'm not saying that biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew are a pair of
twin brothers. I'm saying that they are the same language (with some
differences between them, of course)

Heartly,

Pere Porta

2011/3/1 Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>

> 1. It is not clear to me how you are "looking at the meanings in Biblical
> Hebrew".
> 2. I have never heard about "indicator of etymology".
> 3. It is not clear to me what "phases" are.
> 4. "not the same" is dependent on the norm for sameness.
> 5. Hebrew is not English.
>
> Isaac Fried, Boston University
>
>
> On Mar 1, 2011, at 11:30 AM, K Randolph wrote:
>
> Isaac:
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 4:25 AM, Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu> wrote:
>> 1. Meaning is not a point-wise, but rather an an extensive quality and
>> therefore comparison of meanings needs to be done in the original Hebrew,
>> not on its purported translation.
>>
>> You are avoiding the issue. I am looking at the meanings in Biblical
>> Hebrew, and finding no connection at all, therefore no indication of common
>> etymology. For good, linguistic reasons, similarity in form alone is not
>> recognized as an indicator of etymology. It is on that basis that your 
>> claim
>> is invalid.
>>
>>
>> 2. It is my firm opinion that "modern" Hebrew and "biblical" Hebrew are
>> one and the same language. As long as we don't have a norm for "sameness"
>> this discussion will be of no avail and of no end.
>>
>> 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?)
>>
>> Isaac Fried, Boston University
>>
>> Karl W. Randolph.
>>
>
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-- 
Pere Porta