Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

> "High" and "Low Hebrew" appears to be a construction of your own.

No, not so. It's standard linguistic terminology for diglossic situations.
At the end of the Second Temple, there were two distinct registers,
a High, classic, biblical Hebrew, and a low colloquial Hebrew, often
named mishnaic Hebrew or proto-mishnaic.
Low registers are by nature colloquial in their development.

A whole century of mishnaic Hebrew scholarship backs this up.

>Lets say
> we get to the issue. Aramaic was the spoken language of the non-literate
> population,

You've assumed data not in evidence.

>  how are you dating your
> Mishnaic Hebrew as a vulgar "low"  form?

Dating? It was a low form during the Second Temple until around 200 CE.
It apparently became a new High language in the 3-5 centuries CE. finally,
a new mixed high language developed in medieval times that was neither
biblical nor mishanic.
Mishnaic Hebrew was a different dialect of Hebrew that pops up here
and there through the literary texts of the Second Temple.
You might want to read
Moshe Bar-Asher, "Mishnaic Hebrew: An Introductory Survey." in
The Literature of the Sages. Second Part: Midrash and Targum, Liturgy, Poetry,
Mysticism, Contracts, Inscriptions, Ancient Science and the Languages of
Rabbinic Literature (ed. Samuel Safrai, Zeev Safrai, Joshua Schwartz and
P.J. Tomson; Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum
2.3b; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006), 567-596


>> ALL of the Semitic inscriptions on all of the catalogued ossuaria are in
> Aramaic.  >

...

You shouldn't be making statements like the above. It skews a discussion.

So in sedate prose,
your statement was "incorrect, false, and highly misleading".

>
> One recent grave inscription discovered last year at Qiryat Shemuel,
> Hadashot Arkheologiyot / ESI 122 (2010), is published online at
> http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail.asp?id=1497&mag_id=117
> http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/images//5621-7.jpg
> The report presents an inscription in mishnaic Hebrew, though mentioning a
> name with an Aramaic patronym:
> אלכסא בר שלום ברת אלכסא
> ארור שיטלני ממקומי
> (“Alexa bar Shalom berat Alexa // Cursed is the one who casts me from my
> place”)
> The clear part for potential grave robbers is in mishnaic Hebrew.
>
> *****That is speculation.

Well. It's a real ossuary.

> You will find similar inscriptions in LATIN on
> Medieval tombs that the general population could not read.  Do you think
> grave robbers were literate?  The name is in Aramaic. Someone who call
> himself BAR Shalom rather than BEN Shalom spoke Aramaic.

Actually, the names are not definite markers. Ben and bar are mixed in
language use at this thime.

>
> This also is NOT an ossuary.

Huh?
Actually everything that I referred to were ossuaries. I don't know
why I typed 'ostraca' the first time. I did send a second email pointing out
that the intended word throughout was 'ossuary'.
In any case, the fact remains that these were ossuaries.


> Another ...
ossuary
>of interest is a bilingual Hebrew--Aramaic one where the
> Aramaic side is written with a non-Aramaic form:
> CIIP 368a/CIJ 1352a: מרים יועזר שמעון בני יחזק בן קלון מן בני ישבאב
> CIIP 368b/CIJ 1352b: מרים יועזר ושמעון בני יחזק בר קלון מן ברי ישבאב
> (note: ברי instead of בני!).
> Why they bothered to do both languages remains a question when it is
> inconceivable that people couldn't read both/either--
>
> ****Like the grave robbers above?

Maybe so--read the inscriptions!--they are virtually identical and
without content beyond names.

> but then the Aramaic part is 'artificial Aramaic' and incorrect.

This needs to be understood and processed.

> ****You asked the right question. Why is it bilingual?  It is also NOT an
> ossuary.

Hello? Read the inscription! They apparent felt a need of adding
Aramaic for some social expectation even though they didn't seem
to know Aramaic.
Look it up.
And why do you say it was "NOT" an ossuary?
It was an ossuary.
And the Aramaic was faux-Aramaic,
since the plural of 'sons of' is "bny" in Aramaic, not "bry"

>
> anyway, in Greek-Semitic
ossuaries
> where the Semitic language is
> unambiguous,
> there are 9 Gk-Aram and 13 Gk-Heb.
> In Semitic-only
ossuaries
> where the  language is unambiguous,
> there are 25 Aramaic and 16 Hebrew.

these are all ossuaries.
numbers taken from the article cited below,
which was extracted from a chapter of his dissertation.

...

> Guido Baltes in a forthcoming article concluded in general,
> "These conclusions drawn from the epigraphic material of the land of
> Israel might appear disappointing at first glance, since they are
> predominantly negative in essence: the language distribution within
> the inscriptions and documents is too evenly divided and too diverse
> to make any certain claims on geographical, functional or sociological
> language peculiarities. However, it might be just this non-existence
> of clear results that is the most important result of this study: Too
> easily New Testament scholars have looked for simple patterns and
> ready answers to explain the complexity of a reality two thousand
> years separated from ours. ... Too negligently, we have separated
> ourselves from the fruitful studies of our colleagues in the fields of
> archeology, linguistics, and history." (the article will be in the
> second volume of the Brill series Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic
> Gospels, possibly available in SF SBL.)
>
> Any discussion of the sociolinguistics requires an accurate control of
> the development of and relationship of "biblical Hebrew" and
> "mishanic Hebrew". Too many, scholars and students both, write on this
> subject without controlling the linguistic data.
>

>  The
> commentaries of the Mishnah are in Aramaic (the Gemara).

in the 3-5 centuries CE (wrong time period), and not completely in any case.
Maybe only 1/4 or less of the Jerusalem talmud is Aramaic.

> I have no doubt
> that the sages of the Beyt Hillel and Shammai and the Sadducees and priests
> spoke a dialect of Hebrew among themselves but when they went home after the
> business of the day they talked to the wife and kids in Aramaic.

that's not what scholars of Mishnaic Hebrew say.
There's that famous story about Judah ha-nasi's maid that used Hebrew terms
around some early 3rd century rabbis, and they pointed out the the meaning of
words in common usage is what settles the meaning of words. (true for both
Hebrew and Aramaic.)

So please remember to include the Hebrew ossuaries when
when you do your counting.
I would start making room for Guido's conclusions,
he collected the available data, as of 2010, and covering the
development of the 20th century.

blessings
Randall

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
Biblical Language Center
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