Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Uzi:

The question is, how much of these languages survive? Is not the largest surviving snippet of Moabite the Mesha stele? What about Ammonite?

But the question of the thread is: was Hebrew linguistically isolated? When a farmer from a small town in Judea normally didn’t hear an accent from a person living in Dan, which was merely a regional variation of his own language, what was the possibility that he would hear and be influenced by even a near cognate language? Let alone further afield, such as Aramaic?

Karl W. Randolph.

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 11:06 AM, Uzi Silber <uzisilber AT gmail.com> wrote:

Karl:

 

Moabite, Ammonite, Phoenician, perhaps Geshurite? All pretty much Canaanite family tongues.

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 1:34 PM, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:

George:

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 11:46 PM, George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au> wrote:

Karl,

You made a claim on another thread that Biblical Hebrew was linguistically isolated. Could you explain what you mean by this?

In societies, particularly peasant ones, where the people seldom traveled more than about 10 miles from their homes, and all their neighbors spoke the same language as those people, so they never even hear of languages other than their own: there’s no reason to learn other languages, nor even other dialects of their own language. Such people are linguistically isolated.

In reading Tanakh, such was the case for the vast majority of Israelite society from shortly after the time of the patriarchs until the Babylonian Exile.

 

What are we to do with Hebrew's close cognates?

How close of cognates are you talking about? Even Aramaic was far enough different that it was not mutually understandable with Hebrew, can that be called “close”?

GEORGE ATHAS

Dean of Research,

Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)

Sydney, Australia

Karl W. Randolph.