Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

> Don’t be ridiculous!

"flourishing" was your criterion, not mine. We can drop it as
a criterion.

> Before the last few days, I never ever looked at Ben Sira.
> Then I
> found http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/ohpe/ohpe05.htm , that doesn’t look
> like Hebrew at all.


That's because it isn't Hebrew and it isn't the text of BenSira. That
page that you cite inexplicably starts off in Aramaic.

> http://www.archive.org/stream/hebrewtextofbens00mcrauoft#page/17/mode/2up
> has more text—yes it’s poetry, but a plodding poetry.

a piece out of context, too bad.
To be honest, I don't especially like the book myself, BenSira was
quite the  chauvinist. But he has some nice lines and good passages. I
find his use of Hebrew even more facile than Qohelet, or at least more
classical than Qohelet, but that is partly because of the short-line
poetry throughout. Qohelet strikes me as one of the first documents
that raises much of the low-register, the new language that was being
formed, up into literature.


> These statistics mean little in light of how few writings from Biblical
> times remain. How much greater linguistic diversity would have been known if
> the temple with its records had not burned in 70 AD? How many “late
> features” are really early, just not recorded elsewhere in Tanakh?
> Here we are arguing from silence, where we cannot even assign probabilities
> because of lack of records.

Yes, you are arguing from silence again. The statistics fit a SECOND
TEMPLE placement, but there is always room to argue from silence that
somehow writings with large doses of mixed asher/sh- would have
occurred in the First Temple period. Or that many of the Mishnaic
words would have occurred earlier. Everyone does agree that at the end
of the Second Temple, Hebrew shifted into a fully sh- dialect. Ben
Sira, fortunately for dating, is self-proclaimed as late. And Ben
Sira's asher/sh- style is the closest thing that exists to Qohelet.



> This argument makes no sense at all. Even were it northern dialect, Solomon
> ruled over the northern tribes and would have known the term from his
> contacts with those northern tribes. To say he would not have known it makes
> no sense.

The argument is that a Judean would not write a book in Northern,
without some special purpose and point. Was Solomon trying to pretend
that he was a northerner? Would Obama give a speech in British English
to the US congress?


>> > 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. >
>
> You need to do better.

I would prefer not doing better. Strong linguistic probability vs.
wishful silence. It's enough for most to get started thinking and
weighing.

Someday you may read BenSira, or study Segal's commentary and notes on
the language. It is a published book. There is no point in repeating
it. Others will be able to follow up if they are interested. And for
them I've written this.

braxot
Randall Buth

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life