Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

2011/10/4 Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>

> Karl,
>
> On Mon, 3 Oct 2011 12:36:39 -0700, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Randall:
> >
> > The original link got me to the same place. I was away from the computer
> for
> > a few days, so didn’t comment earlier.
> >
> > I watched the video linked to by the instructor, and all I heard was what
> I
> > understand as modern Hebrew.
>

maybe it would have helped if he saw it transcribed. by some of Karl's
definitions, everything that he HEARs is modern Hebrew. you deal with this
below.


> One of the comments about it, “Biblical Hebrew
> > is Hebrew”. which is true, but then so is Chaucerian English English, so
> a
> > native speaker of modern English should have no problem reading Chaucer?
> Or
> > how about a native speaker of modern English reading Beowulf? Or for me,
> the
> > reason I got into Hebrew on a daily basis was because I had trouble
> > understanding Elizabethan English as used in the KJV. Similarly, a native
> > speaker of modern Israeli Hebrew will think he understands Biblical
> Hebrew,
> > but because of the changes in vocabulary meanings and grammatical
> structure,
> > how often will he misunderstand the text?
>
> This is a good point, but the problem can be overcome by proper study.


exactly.

>

Shakespeare's language, although technically Modern English, is different
> enough from contemporary English that the modern English reader will need
> notes to understand numerous differences of vocabulary, meanings, &c.  (And
> of course for Chaucer one will need *lots* of notes to understand them.)
>
> > When we don’t even know how Biblical Hebrew was pronounced, other than
> that
> > the Masoretic points coded for Tiberian Hebrew which was different from
> > Biblical Hebrew, how can it credibly be claimed that by using modern
> > pronunciation of Tiberian points we are thereby teaching Biblical Hebrew?
> > He’s whistling Dixie.
>
> I think it can be credibly so claimed.  Compare the situation of the
> classical
> languages.  In the case of Latin and (Classical) Greek, we think we know
> pretty well (mostly) how Cicero pronounced Latin and how Plato pronounced
> Greek, and nowadays when Latin and Greek are taught, some approximation of
> that reconstructed pronunciation is taught.  (I'm not in academia, so I
> can't
> say for certain, but my impression is that there is more of an effort on
> the
> part of some instructors to aim for a pronunciation closer to the
> reconstructed original that previously was the case.)  However, using these
> "restored" pronuncations is comparatively recent, and for centuries both
> Latin
> and Greek were taught using pronunciations that diverged widely from
> anything
> an ancient Greek or Roman would have spoken.  (The traditional English
> pronunciation of Latin survives in the realms of law and
> botanical/zoological
> nomenclature.)  But this doesn't mean that classical Latin and Greek
> weren't
> being taught - indeed they were, and those that studied Latin and Greek in
> those days frequently attained a level of expertise that would be
> exceptional
> to-day.
>
> Now the situation of Hebrew is somewhat different from that of Greek or
> Latin.
> First, what is "classical" Hebrew anyway?  The Hebrew text of the Bible was
> composed over a considerable period of time, during which Hebrew no doubt
> underwent many changes of pronunciation and vocabulary.  I think I remember
> reading (a *long* time ago) in some technical article that the language of
> Jeremiah was considered "classical Hebrew".


Yes, it is one stage, at the end of what is called First-Temple Hebrew. Some
definitions of 'classical' include all the stages that were using the
vav-ha-hippux verb system, up to and including the bulk of DSS Hebrew.


> So, for the present, if we take
> the language of Jeremiah the language that one should aim for, how was it
> pronounced?  I'm not up on what might be the current state of thought on
> Hebrew historical linguistics, but I doubt that the level of confidence in
> a
> reconstructed pronunciation of Hebrew of Jeremiah's time would be up to the
> level of confidence in a reconstructed pronunciation of classical Greek or
> Latin.  And even if it were, it would not be represented directly in the
> Hebrew text that the learner has before him, which consists of a basically
> consonantal script with a superimposed system of vowels representing a
> pronunciation of more than a millennium later.


While on the subject of vowels, it may be useful to point out that common
practice today actually follows an older system than the Tiberian MT. Before
the 7-8 vowel system of the MT there was a system that was based on 5
differentiating/phonemic vowel areas/qualities, plus phonemic length. Modern
Hebrew uses that earlier five vowel system, though without
length.Ironically, that makes modrn Hebrew pre-Tiberian, pre-MT, in its
vowels. That 5-vowel system, in turn, went back to a 3 vowel system, plus
length and dipthongs. When dealing with vowels, one must expecially
distinguish meaningful change from 'subphonemic' change. When people
identify the area where someone is from from their speech, they are often
noticing minute little subphonemic shifts that have nothing to do with the
language as a whole. In addition, where dialects have separated through a
change in the phonemic structure, fluent speakers are usually able to track
the other's speech, sometimes requiring a period of 'getting used' to the
new system. With Hebrew, the shift from the 5-vowel system to a 3-vowel
system might take a little time of getting used to it, but I would expect it
to be mutually intelligible from the start because of its close, 'organic'
connection. In addition, 'Comparative Semitic' studies have shown that the
morphemic system of classical Hebrew has remained intact in the MT. See
below.



>
> So the only practical basis for pronouncing Biblical Hebrew is the MT
> consonantal text plus vowel signs.  But I don't think this is too bad at
> all.
> First, although the vocalization of the MT represents a pronunciation no
> doubt
> different in many particulars from that of Biblical times, I doubt that it
> is
> completely at odds with it.  (Just so there is no misunderstanding here, I
> am
> referring to the situations where the MT vocalizaton is "correct", i.e., is
> a
> continuation of the historical pronunciation, not where the Massoretes got
> it
> wrong and mis-assigned the vowel signs.)


This is an important point in a public e-list.Any verse can be challenged,
perhaps changing one word for another, but the system of the language
doesn't thereby change. This is part of what I referred to above in saying
that the morphological system of Hebrew remains intact in the MT. It is
ignoring the morphological system that can get people in trouble and can
produce 'impossible' and 'nonsense' readings. (e.g. מקם m.q.m. might be a
defectively written hif`il participle [meqim] from a root q.w.m., but it
cannot be a "lengthened middle consonant stem" [a.k.a.pi`el] participle
[*meqa(yy)em, meqom(em)] from that root.) As long as people speak according
to a Hebrew morphology they will be able to be understood across dialects.


> So pronouncing Hebrew using the
> Massoretic vocalization, while not representing the pronunciation of the
> era
> of Jeremiah (or any other Biblical period) exactly is probably a lot better
> that pronouncing Latin according to the old "English" way of pronouncing
> it,
> and can legitimately qualify as "Biblical Hebrew".


That is a valid qal va-Homer argument. Biblical Hebrew using a 5-vowel
pronunciation is even better than the Greek examples. People typically read
NT Greek today with what can only be compared to a 'pseudo-Chaucerian'
reading of modern English. Imagine someone reading every vowel of
modern English, but not necessarily with Chaucer's values. True cacophony
for someone who knows better. Fortunately, Hebrew never went through a
'Great English vowel shift' like pre-Shakespearian English, or Greek in post
Alexandrian Greek. In the case of Shakespeare, people will be much better
off and historically closer in pronunciation by using modern English.

And the point of this whole discussion, lest it be obscured, is that
students will learn Shakespearian English much better by using the language
in real communication than by discussing Shakespeare in Russian. The one
will have an opportunity to reach 'second-language-user' fluency, while the
Russian-only speaker will never develop that skill in English. A linguist
can analyze a language, but to rapidly think and process within the language
they must undergo a long process of communicative language use.



>
> --
> Will Parsons
>



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