Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

Hello Randall,

On Fri, 7 Oct 2011 14:28:47 +0300, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:
> I wonder if such a situation might have obtained among speakers of Hebrew
>> during the period of transition into Aramaic, i.e., even though looking
>> from the outside Hebrew and Aramaic may seem distinctly related but
>> separate languages, from one on the inside, Hebrew and Aramaic may have
>> seemed to be dialects of the same language.  Will Parsons
> 
> I appreciate your points about communication across closely related
> languages/dialects, but this may obscure several points in the morphology
> discussion of the CVC thread.
> 
> First of all, and least relevant, the 'transition into Aramaic' that you
> mention is dated by knowledgable scholars to around 200 CE/AD.

I purposely used this phrasology to avoid specifying a definite time period.
Nevertheless, 200 AD seems pretty late unless you understand by 'transition
into Aramaic' something quite different than what I intended.  E.g., Joshua
Blau cites 'around 200 C.E.' as when 'Hebrew ceased to be spoken'.  The
beginning of 'the period of transition into Aramaic' surely took place much
earlier, probably during the Babylonian captivity, when Hebrew speakers
started to use Aramaic side by side with their native Hebrew in their daily
lives.

> Secondly, presuppositions can lead people to misread and overlook plain
> contrary evidence. A classic example are the (Strack)Billerbeck commentary
> and Matthew Black when quoting the Aristeas Letter sec. 11: "they need to be
> translated," answered Demetrius, "for in the country of the Jews they use a
> peculiar alphabet ... and speak a peculiar dialect. They are supposed to use
> the Syriac [i.e. Aramaic] tongue, but this is not the case, their language
> is quite different." Matthew Black, Aramaic Approach Gospels Acts, 3rd,
> claimed that this referred to a different dialect of Aramaic used by Jews,
> which was silly, because Demetrius was talking about the Torah and its
> language [Hebrew] and why it needed special translators to come to
> Alexandria. Now from the DSS we happen to be aware of two registers of
> Hebrew at that time, a literary Hebrew as a continuation of Biblical Hebrew,
> and a colloquial Hebrew, 'soon' to be used in the writing down of the Oral
> Torah. both were Hebrew, and neither was Aramaic.
> 
> More importantly, the MT Hebrew morphology is different from the Aramaic
> morphology. The MT text itself declares that the Jews did NOT use Aramaic
> vowel patternss for Hebrew words. kitbet/katbe/ketbett is not katabti, and
> Arm keta'bu is not Hb  katebu'. Speculating that they used Aramaic vowel
> patterns for Heb is simply without foundation.

I don't know where you get the idea that I think that Jews used Aramaic
vowel patterns for Hebrew - I certainly don't.  (Though I do think that
once the Hebrew speaking population became effectively bilingual in Aramaic,
there would be an assimilation at the phonetic/phonological level.)  The
kitbet/katabti type contrasts that you mention do not necessarily prevent
understanding, once a familiarity with the language patterns has been
established.

-- 
Will Parsons