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  • From: David Steinberg <david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com>
  • To: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] song of Deborah
  • Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 08:13:01 -0500

Karl -

Thanks for your reply.

The point that Vern and others make and sustain is not that the "archaic poetry" is "late" but that it is a thin and conventionalized archaization (like using "thou" in nineteenth century English poetry of the language of general biblical Hebrew poetry. In fact, it could be very ancient with the language updated to be comprehensible to the listeners of recited poetry in mid to late First Temple Judah or written any time 800-400 BCE. The language, in fact tells you nothing about the date of composition, early or late.

Re the reconstruction of the nature and pronunciation of pre-exilic Hebrew, of course the reconstruction of any no longer existing pronunciation of any language is to a greater or lesser extent speculative. For the reconstruction of pre-exilic Hebrew pronunciation see http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_tequ.htm .

David Steinberg



On 17/11/2011 9:29 AM, K Randolph wrote:
David:

If one recognizes that there were some 30 generations separating the last native speakers of Biblical Hebrew (it survived as a second but official language for generations after it ceased being spoken natively) and Tiberian pronunciation, and at least eight generations before the earliest transliterations to Greek (one generation is sufficient for mispronunciations to appear, as workers among immigrants and their children can attest), there is no way that the pronunciation was preserved. I even think the “matres lexionis” (sp?) were a post exile interpretation of pre-exile orthography.

I looked at your link, and it is so speculative. As speculation based on speculation, what probability is there that it is correct?

As for the dating of Deborah’s song, we have historical records indicating its date, so in the absence of any solid linguistic evidence to the contrary, why not just accept the historical date? And in accepting its historically attested date, does that not bring some of the speculation into question?

Karl W. Randolph.

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 7:50 AM, David Steinberg <david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com <mailto:david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com>> wrote:

The early dating of the so called "archaic poetry" is essentially
based
on the work of Albright, Cross and Freedman. It always went well
beyond
the evidence but has now been shown to be unfounded. A few elderly
scholar whose reputations are bound up in early datings - Cross
and Avi
Hurvitz - still maintain the early dates but the evidence is against
them. See -

1. The material I discuss and reference in the box /Can Biblical Texts
be Linguistically Dated?/ http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_6.htm
<http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_6.htm>

2. Vern, Robyn, "The Relevance of Linguistic Evidence to the Early
Dating of the Archaic Poetry of the Hebrew Bible", PhD dissertation,
University of Sydney, 2008.

If you look at the text of any of the so called archaic poems,and you
revert it to its probable form c. 1200-1400 BCE (add case, mood, and
other short vowel endings, revert contractions of final /y/ and /w/
consequent on the disapearance of final short vowels etc.) you
will find
that the orthography is not really archaic and, in many cases, such as
the use of /matres/ - is often typologically late.


David Steinberg





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