Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

'Data Please' if wanting to discuss 'good BH'.

I’ve been gone for a week or so.

A couple of threads seemed to stop for lack of data.

The philosophical background discussion about comparative linguistics was
helpful to clarify that everyone’s concerns are in fact part and parcel of
the methodology. Thank you for clarifying, Kimmo.  Even a flood only 300
years before Abraham is not a problem for the methodology because
comparative linguistics shows filial distance, and relative relationships,
it does not describe how the distance developed historically or specifically
‘when’. Furthermore, phonemes may merge or split in a language, and
morphological shape tends to be fairly stable and to show familial
relationship quite well. Lexemes can do so, too, but they need to be
examined for genetic descendancy versus cross-language borrowing. Yad ‘hand’
rosh ‘head’ and regel ‘foot’ are part of core West Semitic vocabulary. radyo
‘radio’ is a borrowing and cannot be used for establishing phonetic or
morphological developments.

In discussing Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, it is good to know what is already
understood and a ‘given’ and what needs further explanation. Structurally,
Arabic is more distant to Hebrew and Aramaic than the last two are to each
other. In terms of change/decay/innovation, whether over a long time or a
short time, Arabic can be said to have broken away from a stock that became
Hebrew-Aramaic.

What is the evidence? Things like the binyan structures. Arabic has a
‘simple’ stem, a doubled middle radical stem (cognate to “piel”), a
lengthened vowel stem (unlike Hebrew and Aramaic), a prefix alef stem (like
hif`il ‘h’ stem), a t-prefix doubled-middle-radical stem (like hitpa`el),
but also a t-prefix lengthened-vowel stem, and a commonplace ‘infix-t’ stem
(where the ‘t’ comes inside the first radical letter. This only occurs
vestigially at Ex 2.4 in Hebrew, remarkably preserved in the MT against
Samaritan pentateuch, but also in Moabite and in first layers of
Phoenician). The Arabic ‘n’ stem lines up with Hebrew against Aramaic, and
an istaf`al stem lines up with the vestigial Hebrew hishtaHawah (infix ‘t’ +
causative sibilant). Hebrew and Aramaic revolve around a three-some
‘simple’, double-middle-radical, causative-prefix. The ‘internal simple
passive’ in Hebrew were already being phased out in BH, where the ‘n’ stem
encroached on this use in the simple stem, and Aramaic regularized a
prefix-‘t’ passive for all of its three stems.

In noun morphology, Hebrew and Aramaic have regular plurals, while Arabic
has both the regular and the ‘internal’/broken plural formation.

If someone wants to compare lexical decay, they can get a list of 100 or 200
most common vocab items and see what percentage each language maintains of a
cognate vocab.

Anyway, the above has been done by competent people over the last 200 years
and has led to a consistent picture where Arabic has split from
Hebrew-Aramaic before the latter split from each other.

Q:  So is the above a ‘given’ and something to build from, or not? And if
not, what evidence is provided?

The relationships are important because the languages provide a lot of data
that is relevant to the morphological shape of BH and allows one to discuss
areas where contemporary data may be lacking. This is real data and tends to
confirm the basic morphological shape of all of the other data that we have,
including the morphology of the MT.


The lack of data problem raised its head on the participle question, too. A
normal use of participles for actual-time present has been claimed and
documented. Like Gen 37:15 et aHay ani mebaqqesh. Jud 9:36 tsel he-harim
atta roeh ka-anashim. Jer 1:11 maqel shaqed ani roeh. In cases where an item
is fronted one still finds Subject-Predicate as the following core. Where
participles precede the subject one finds ‘focus’. E.g. Jer 1:12 shoqed ani
… . In looking for ‘prefix-verb’ “presents” one asks for clear examples that
do not have other factors involved like question-modality, or habitual
action, or poetry where various modal nuances can fit. Since ‘plain prose’
examples of subject-participle occur, one would demand plain-prose examples
of ‘prefix-verb’ actual presents before considering the interpretation of
poetry. (Stative suffix verbs like yada`ti ‘I have known/know’ οἶδα and
Hafatsti ‘I have wanted/want are irrelevant to the question since everyone
who has looked at these has recognized that these are a restricted class and
not the norm. One does not say katabti for ‘I am writing’, though they may
say it for ‘I hereby pledge to write’.) The point of this summary is to say
that if someone says, ‘hey, I read a stretch of text and found lots of
counterexamples’, but does not produce one example, the thread becomes
useless and needs to be stopped.

Similarly, if someone says ‘I found that the first part of the Yehoash text
had several examples of non-BH’ but then does not produce one example, one
might conclude that they are hearing kalaam faarigh ‘empty talk’. Kalaam
faarigh applies to the previous paragraph, too, if someone objects to
teaching that has clear precedents and doesn’t provide a clear alternative.
Charges of skepticism, and doubt about the BH quality become kalaam faarigh
without data.


So being gone for a week or so hasn’t meant missing any data. Pity.

Moral of the story:

Please provide data, and data that actually fits the point being discussed.


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