Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Karl,

You made a claim on another thread that Biblical Hebrew was linguistically isolated. Could you explain what you mean by this? I find this a very puzzling statement. Who were the speakers/writers? Where were they? When were they? What dialectal differences are we talking about? What do we do with the different types of Hebrew in evidence (both in the Bible and in epigraphic finds)? What was the nature of the isolation? How did this isolation come about? How was this isolation ended? What are we to do with Hebrew's close cognates?

GEORGE ATHAS

Dean of Research,

Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)

Sydney, Australia

From: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
Date: Monday, 8 April 2013 8:17 AM
To: "JimStinehart AT aol.com" <JimStinehart AT aol.com>
Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] II Samuel vs. Patriarchal Narratives

Jim:

On 4/5/13, JimStinehart AT aol.com <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

Karl:

In response to scholar Robert Polzin’s assertion that the spelling and grammar of Hebrew common words in the Patriarchal narratives is not much different than the spelling and grammar of Hebrew common words in the second half of II Kings, you said:

“Now we know that this is utter balderdash,  promulgated by an ideology,  better known as a religion, that opposes the history  recorded in Tanakh.  It  has no  historical evidence, merely belief, to back it up.  Here’s a case of  GIGO, when you input  wrong beliefs, wrong beliefs come out.”

Rather than dismissing out of hand all scholarly linguistic analysis of Biblical Hebrew regarding dating the texts of the Bible as being “utter balderdash, promulgated by an ideology”, it is more helpful to try to pinpoint the basic error that this line of scholarly analysis has made. Scholars assume, erroneously, that if the spelling and grammar of Hebrew common words in the Patriarchal narratives is redolent of late 7th century

It would take a book for an adequate analysis of all that is wrong

with this line of thinking. However, someone else has already done it

for the first century of its development, as a PhD dissertation

published in 1970, titled “Zur Datierung der Genesis “P’ Stücke” by

the late Dr. Samuel Külling. In it, he has extensive quotes from those

early practitioners (in French, Dutch and English as well as German)

showing the religious basis for the belief: an à priori belief in

evolution (which is a religion, don’t let anyone fool you that it is

anything other) with a dash of anti-Semitism.

My number one objection to that belief is that there is absolutely no

historical evidence to back it up. None whatsoever. That includes the

claim that the ancient Hebrews didn’t have an alphabetic writing

system until late, while the historical evidence points to that the

ancient Hebrews brought their alphabetic system to Canaan around 1400

BC with Joshua, only later picked up by the Phoenicians. Did the

patriarchs already use an alphabet? No reason to say that they didn’t.

With no supporting evidence, it becomes merely a belief, a religious

belief. It doesn’t matter how many scholars can dance on the head of a

pin, if they have no supporting evidence, what they say is not worth

listening to.

As for the linguistic analysis: languages can be remarkably stable,

even over centuries, especially when linguistically isolated, as

history indicates was largely the condition of Biblical era Hebrew.

Add to that that the Torah, written in the 15th century BC, was the

literary bedrock of society, that would be an even stronger anchor

keeping the language from drifting during that era. Under those

circumstances, it’s almost expected that there would be a close

linguistic similarity between the patriarchal narratives (rewritten in

the 15th century?) and Samuel, probably written in the 10th century

BC.

Karl W. Randolph.

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