Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

> > Karl:
>>> While I haven’t done an academic study on the subject, I have noticed
>>> a pattern that I have also seen among children of immigrants who still
>>> speak their parents’ languages. I noticed it among several language 
>>> groups,
>>> the same pattern, a simpler vocabulary and far less usage of figures of
>>> speech. That, combined with the historical record, causes me to conclude
>>> that those who moved to Judea under Cyrus no longer had native speaking
>>> ability in Hebrew. And by extrapolation neither did those who lived later
>>> as well.
> >
RB:
...
>> I don't believe the evaluation of Hebrew and challenge it for evidence.
>> Some of the postexilic books have as rich a vocabulary as preexilic.

. . .

RB:
...
>> The challenge remains: please document the simpler vocabulary and lack of
>> figures of speech in whatever you call 'Late Biblical Hebrew'.

Karl:
> You are asking for evidence of absence.


First of all, that is incorrect. 'simpler' is not 'absence' it is a
relationship.

> In order to prove absence, one
> needs to take months, if not years, analyzing sentence structure, syntax,
> correlating statistical analysis of relative frequencies of writing, etc.
> studying all pre-exilic writings comparing them to all post-exilic
> writings. You haven’t done that to prove your disbelief in the pattern. I
> haven’t done it to prove it.

Secondly, I am of a split opinion on whether or not your 'answer' is
perhaps evading the question. I have decided to make one more try
at getting data to discuss.

Karl, you were the one that made the claim of a visible pattern.
Surely you have something to back it?
You need to show that you are relying on something beyond your own
personal suspicions. And pieces of the claim are fairly easy to do.

For example, you could do a statistical study of vocabulary density
for a work like Nehemya
versus a comparative stretch of Judges.
Judges has
 (14086 total words)
Number of different forms = 1209 (that includes names)
Nehemyah:
 (7884 total words) Number of different forms = 1083 (inc. names):

Judges 1-12  (8269 total words)
Number of different forms = 917 (incl. names)

Here above you have two narratives, one allegedly from somewhere
in the First Temple Period, the other from the Second Temple Period.

or try 1Sam 1-14:
 (8026 total words)  Number of different forms = 855 (incl. names)

that wasn't so hard.

And while it certainly doesn't prove the issue at all,
it might justify someone who suspected that your claim was
unfounded. We don't want to entertain such suspicions,
we would prefer having some data to discuss.

> It is just something I have noticed while
> reading through the text time and time again,

then a few examples should be easy for you to illustrate, having
noticed this time and time again.

> which you admit you have not done,

Wrong.
But why move into 'incorrect personals', so that I need
to correct your memory? it hurts your case and diverts the issue.

a. I've never said what you just attributed to me, and it's false.
I did once say that I read the Hebrew Bible cover to cover, twice,
thirty five years ago. If you think that I haven't been reading it many
a time since, you've got a strange imagination. I also mentioned that
I no longer read in 'canonical order', preferring individual books on
their own. I might read Lamentations one day, Judges another.

b. Since you repeatedly allege some authority based on your
personal 'reading', I need to ask: what kind of 'reading' do you do?
Should it be called 'reading BH'? (there will be a blog tomorrow
on the BLC blog discussing 'reading'.) The quality of the BH
mistakes that keep re-occurring in your posts leads to the
questions. A couple of days ago you called Num 16.16 heyu a qatal
(AKA 'suffix-tense' verb), then did not correct it when correcting Num 33.33,
and then did not mention it or correct it or apologize for hastily accusing me
of not being 'careful'. That was kind of funny to be warned to be 'more
careful', and to have two blatant mistakes from the nay-sayer brought
forward as the only evidence against my observation.
Maybe you remember how you went around and around in circles a
few months ago trying to argue that 'M+cons+cons' could
be a "pi`el" of a root "cons+[W/Y]+cons, based on your personal,
grammatical 'instinct' ?
100% of consonantal Hebrew, MT Hebrew, and historical
linguistics was against you, leaving you with ZERO to argue
from, and raising the question as to why you even started?
People who know BH well, just had to roll their eyes.
There is no point in arguing who is more right or wrong, or who
reads more and/or with more accurate comprehension,
please just discuss the BH issue with data and illustration.

>but there were other studies I considered more important than to
>prove that pattern. Your past history indicates you will not be satisfied
>with anything less than a full-blown academic study,

Au contraire,
I prefer short and illustrative on a public elist. Time is short. What I
dislike is evasion from issues.

Karl:
> possibly a dissertation: well, unless someone else does that study, you
> will have to remain unsatisfied.

Personally, I'm already satisfied. Mishnaic Hebrew scholarship has done plenty
in this area. And just last week an old resource was mentioned by someone
else on this list,
Abba Bendavid's leshon miqra ulshon Haxamim, 2 vols. 1967. Absolutely
delightful reading. You are welcomed to try to 'correct' published
scholarship with suggestive illustrations of real text.

RB:
>> I can give an example from the other side to help you along:
>> In First Temple BH we have a generic word like sefer 'book, writing,
>> letter'. It is used for a wide scope of written materials. From Second
>> Temple texts Est 9.26, 29, Neh 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 6.5, 6.17, 6.19, 2Chr 30.1,
>> 30.6 we have a new word אגרת iggeret 'letter' that has entered the language
>> and taken over a PART of the range of meaning of the older word 'sefer'. In
>> that sense the language has become richer. Cf. Neh 7.5, 8.1, 8.3, 8.5, 8.8,
>> 8.18, 9.3, 9.23, 13.1, where sefer is still used, but not for 'letter'.
>> This looks exactly like the natural development of a language.

Karl:
>Focussing on one word that is used fewer than 20 times can be misleading.

Yes, theoretically, one word could be misleading. But it is certainly
illustrative and it is certainly a clean pattern that is against your claim.

> What about the two times it is found in דברי הימים ב ל referring to a
> pre-exilic event? Since דברי הימים is a condensation of pre-exile records
> focussing on the spiritual life of the nation, what word was found in the
> original pre-exilic records of the event?

Your question is not evidence. If you accept that Chronicles is a Second
Temple document, then one would expect to find both First Temple and
Second Temple vocab and structures in it. But it is an irrelevant methodology
to point to probable Second-Temple-isms and ask if it was possible for
such a word to occur earlier. A theoretical possibility is not a fact or 
datum.
Nor could it have contributed to your alleged 'pattern'.
And an easy explanation for אגרת in Chronicles is that the author used a
word that was common in his day.
Are you seriously arguing that אגרת was common in First Temple times?
And if so, why? Even if were true, it would not support your claim. But
why would you argue for something with no hard evidence, nothing,
when we have a clear pattern of the opposite?

Let's get our focus back.
We are looking at patterns and illustrations. You are the one who
claims to see patterns clearly enough to make all sorts of broad
claims about the language. BTW  'sefer' as 'letter' is clearly
identified in books that are alleged to be first Temple.
(Actually, I accept them as First Temple, and I'm pretty sure that you do,
too, but there are some who date almost everything Second Temple.)


> Secondly, look at how often letters are mentioned before the Babylonian
> Exile, and how often afterwards:

Contrary to your broad question, I sometimes look at data and I do
notice that letter contexts are quite common before the exile:

Deut 24.1, 24.3 (letter/bill of divorce) cf. Is 50.1, Jer 3.8,
1Sam 10.25 wayixtov bassefer wayyannaH lefney y"h
2Sam 11:14 wayixtov David sefer el Yoav, 2Sm 11.15,
Is 37.14, 39.1,
1Ki 21.8, 21.9, 21.11,
2Ki 5.5, 5.6, 5.7,10.1, 10.2, 10.6, 10.7, 19.14, 20.12, 21.8,
Jer 29.25,
Jer 32.11, 32.12, 32.14, 32.16 (letter/bill of sale),

And for completion, look at the other 'letter' contexts in Second Temple
Est 1.22, 3.13, 9.20, 9.30 (sefer still used in a Second temple text)
Est 8.5, 8.10, 9.25  (and parallel with iggeret in 9.26 and 9.29 'edict').
2Chr 32.17, (yes, even Chronicles can preserve the old attested word)

>that fact alone can account for a
> pre-exilic use not being recorded in Tanakh.

Might possibly could. Maybe Jonah brought it back from Nineveh. ...
But most people see a pattern, and your 'fact' is nothing but a 'possibility'.
And the pattern is against treating your suspicion/possibility as probable.
BUT IN ANY CASE
your 'possibility' is irrelevant and a diversion from the issue:
you must admit that with these words sefer and iggeret and with the
frequent context of letters in both Temple periods, the richer language
is ATTESTED after the exile.
You must show some examples of a rich, pre-exilic language that is covered
over with an impoverished post-exilic language. That was your claim.
You claimed to have observed it time and time again.

By the way, it would be good to remember another of your givens:

>>> (Karl)  a simpler vocabulary and far less usage of figures of
>>> speech.
>>> . . .  And by extrapolation neither did those who lived later
>>> as well.

"who lived after" refers to post-biblical people and documents.
We have an interesting example recorded in the Mishna and Talmud.
The mishnah records a long list of grains and legumes in Mishnaic
Hebrew. Kilayim 1.1
החטים והזונין אינם כלאים זה בזה
השעורים ושבלת שועל, הכסמין והשיפון,
 הפול והמפיר, הפרקדן והטפח, ופול הלבן והשעועית
 אינם כלאים זה בזה

A later reference in the Talmud yKil 1.1 mentions an Aramaic gloss list
written on a third century wall list for those last 6 Mishnaic Hebrew terms:
אשכחון כתיב על כותלא דרבי הלל בי רבי אלס
 פילה פישונה גילבונה מילותה סרפוונא פסילתה.

What is of interest is that the mishnaic vocabulary did NOT come
from the Bible and did NOT come from Aramaic.
It is positive testimony to a rich mishnaic Hebrew
vocabulary (apparently pre-2nd century AD/CE). It was so rich,
in fact, that it was lost in Talmudic post-Tannaitic times and
apparently needed a contemporary Aramaic translation
(3rd century AD/CE)

However, I don't expect you to follow this part of the data, or to
want to follow this data, since it is post-biblical, so we can return
to your claim.

One could go in the other direction, one could look at First Temple
Hebrew that shows some of the development within the language
that you have sometimes alleged to only be a part of non-mother-
tongue Hebrew.
On another thread I listed the verb for intransitive 'wake up'.
In First Temple Hebrew the yiqtol is yiyqats ייקץ (qal from y.q.ts.)
Gen 9.24, 28.16, 41.4, 41.7, 41.21, Jud 16.14 (all spelled 'full')
16.20 (spelled Haser ויקץ ),  and 1Ki 3.15, 18.27, Hab 2.7, Ps 78.65.
while the qatal and participle are heqits הקיץ (hif`il from q.y.ts):
1Sam 26.12 מקיץ , SecondKi 4.31, Is 26.19, 29.8, Jer 31.26,
Ezek 7.6, Joel 1.5, Hab 2.19, Ps 3.6, 17.15, 35.25, 44.24, 59.6,
73.20, 139.18, Prov 6.22,
(Jer 51.39, and 51:57 attest a Hif`il prefix yiqtol, also Job 14.22,
Prov 23.35, Dan 12.2.)
What does not appear to occur is the simple *yaqats יקץ as the
suffix verb '(intransitively) wake up'.
Zero out of 16 possibilities.
As a comparison: *yalak 'he went' doesn't occur either,
though we have both yelek 'he will walk' (root y.l.k.) and yahlok
'he will walk' (root h.l.k).
Most Hebrew linguists immediately recognize the process of
'suppletion' taking place. Where two pieces of a verb from
different dialects are fused into one verb.

You have tended to argue in the past against such observations
because they would contravene your view of binyanim needing
to be actively available for roots during the time that the language
was 'mother-tongue'.
But perhaps you accept this particular verb constellation here. In
any case, it shows a development from beyond the way you have
typically read BH, and if you attribute it to degeneration, you will
be doing so to First Temple Hebrew, not to Second Temple Hebrew.
Of course, this is not 'proof' of anything,
it is only an anecdote that shows that someone should
be careful about comparing First and Second Temple Hebrew and
possiblly assuming too much for the First Temple.

Instead of making unsupported claims about simpler vocabulary
and idiom in Second Temple Hebrew, what you need to do is to
present some positive examples of whatever you were basing your
'pattern' on.
Pick a half dozen of your favorite, attested facts.
Those could be fun to discuss. Discussions could be positive.

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