Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Yes, Karl, we can't pin the date of an entire work on one word. Logically, 
that's correct. However, there is more than that as a factor at work here. 
The rationale for the date that a loanword entered a language has to form 
part of the argument as well. In other words, it's not just the word itself, 
but also the historical, linguistic, and poetic concerns.

With פרדס, it's in all likelihood a word that entered the Hebrew vocabulary 
in the Persian Era (or at a stretch just slightly earlier). It usually 
appears in poetic contexts. It's unlikely that a scribe would update a poetic 
text with new vocabulary, since poetry generally uses fancy vocabulary 
anyway. It's more likely that a scribe would update a narrative or legal text 
with a new word.

Given that, Qohelet and Song of Songs (even more so), which both use פרדס, 
are most likely late compositions. Otherwise, you're proposing a scribe 
updated an early poetic text (for which there is no specific manuscript 
evidence), that already had a given word (which we don't know about) meaning 
'paradise' or 'luxury estate' or whatnot, with a new word from another 
language meaning the same thing. Most unusual and, therefore, less likely. 
Possible? Yes, of course. Probable? Not really.

Furthermore, when you get clusters of loanwords, as you do in Song of Songs, 
you start to narrow the field considerably. So, the argument that you can't 
base the dating of a work on a single word might be theoretically fine. 
However, in this case, I think the argument is a little blinkered to the 
nature of the loanword, the nature of the composition, and the other 
linguistic factors surrounding. Ergo, it is far more likely that Hebrew works 
containing the word פרדס are later rather than earlier.


GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au