Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

The thread on "words adopted ..." seems to have had quite a bit
of unsubstantiated rhetoric, though the topic could be benefitial.

It would be a courtesy to the list to have some data discussed and
compared, rather than have positions pontificated.

Karl:
> but the literary style is
> consistent with a pre-Babylonian Exile style in a way that was not
> copied by any post-Babylonian Exile Hebrew documents, which
> also shows up in the poetry of the document. Therefore, the
> claim that the one word shows late authorship is contradicted
> by a far greater weight of data  indicating early authorship.

'The literary style is consistent with a pre-Babylonian ... style ...'?
This is an assertion.
Data would be appreciated. This is also where the loan word
discussion on pardes or pitgam can be included.

Personal feelings are naturally diminished as testimony on style
if they argue habenu הבנו as "let's deliver", or hatsil as the
causative of a qal that already means 'to take out of' in the qal.
A list of examples of pre-Babylonian stylistics would be necessary
before making the style claim.

DVance:
>It does no such thing. What are the extant texts from the ninth
> century to which you are comparing it? It, in fact reads very much
> exilic and post-exilic, to the degree that a text can be dated on style.

This too, is an assertion. However,
as Delitsch said a century and a half ago, if there is any history to
the Hebrew language, Qohelet is post-exilic. I would concur.
And pardes and pitgam (Q 8.11, Est 1.20, widely attested in post-exilic
Aramaic) clearly fit a Persian period, and do NOT CLEARLY fit the
tenth century.
Probability is certainly on Donald's and George's side. But this is just
the beginning.

There was also the confusion of 'remotest possibility' for 'probability'.

>The question here: is it possible that this word came into Hebrew
> early and possibly from sources other than Persian? The answers
> to both is yes. The moment one admits that the possibility is positive,
> then one has nullified its presence as a date marker for later
> composition. Probability is not the question

Exactly the opposite is true.
Probability is always the question in things historical. Lack of certainty
is not a criterion that allows someone to disregard probabilities.
Probabilities are weighed.

So instead of arguing that those who mentioned "pardes" are silent,
why don't people list features of Qohelet that they find distinctive,
and potentially diagnostic? These can then be WEIGHED, together,
rather than have them all individually doubted on the grounds that any
one feature can always be explained as an accident of one kind of
another. Distinctives could link Qohelet to earlier Hebrew or to later
Hebrew. Both sides can be accomodated in the discussion.

Here are a some linguistic examples:

אספות asuppot Q 12.11 occurs only here and in mishnaic Hebrew.
כבר kevar only in Qohelet and mishnaic Hebrew.
לוה "accompany" Q 8.15 and in mishnaic Hebrew.
ענין 'affair' 8xx Q and in mishnaic Hebrew
רעיון 'thought' Q 2.22 and in mishnaic Hebrew

ש she- "that" is interesting because of its frequency in Qohelet and
in mishnaic Hebrew. It has been argued to have come from a northern
dialect because of its occurrences in Judges and perhaps Jonah. Of
course, a northern origin would not help a Solomonic authorship
claim. Since "she-" 'that' cannot be easily explained as Judean in the
pre-exilic period, it adds considerable weight to the post-exilic
perspective.

Another remarkable feature of the book is the use of w+suffix verb in
contexts that are parallel with other suffix verbs. All twenty-one
occurrences are accented as mil`el in the MT. This is remarkable
because the rabbinic tradition was that Solomon wrote the book, but
the "mishnaic Hebrew" accentuation of this book is without any
parallel in the Hebrew Bible for its absolute consistency. In the rest
of the Heb Bible, non-pausal forms 1s and 2s suffix conjugation tend
to have a final syllable accent as part of the sequential verb system.

The features above are not 'silence' and they do, in fact, support the
otherwise strong probability that pitgam and pardes were borrowed into
Hebrew when there was strong Aramaic pressure from on top--during the
Persian period.

braxot
Randall Buth

--
Randall Buth, PhD
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