Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Michael:

This is more of a historical question than linguistic, though it bears on the question at hand.

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 6:47 PM, Michael Abernathy <mabernathy AT conwaycorp.net> wrote:

I am a bit double minded on this topic. On the one hand, prior to the twentieth century most cities were somewhat isolated.  I used to have a document that showed England had about twenty dialects within twenty miles of London in the 1890's.  It is my understanding that the English language did not come close to being standardized until we had both a published dictionary and a common Bible.

Germany has had a common language since the time of Luther, yet to this day there are still significant dialects spoken throughout Germany that differ so much from high German that they cannot be understood through high German.

I suspect the same thing was true of 1890s England. 

On the other hand, I seem to remember some of the most important trade routes to Egypt connecting with Mesopotamia, Syria, and Phoenicia ran right through Palestine.

Which parts? The maps I’ve seen showed them largely bypassing Judea, though they did go through northern Samaria.

 

  Greek merchants were actively involved trading in this region early in the first millennium and I seem to remember a study strongly suggesting that Greek mercenaries lived in Jerusalem around the time of David.

?? What??? Unless David or Solomon hired them, there were no Greek mercenaries in Jerusalem. There’s no mention of them hiring any mercenaries during their reigns.

 

  As I understand it merchants commonly traveled from one village to another buying and selling local goods.  I have to consider it likely that they used a common trade language. 

I already allowed for local peddlers using a common language for within the kingdom. 

Earlier Hebrews may have used Egyptian for trade since at least in the Amarna period Egypt controlled much of the area.

Don’t the Amarna letters show that Egypt used the lingua franca of Aramaic in its dealings with its vassals in the Levant?

As for the dating of the Amarna period, evidence has been piling up for over 60 years indicating that the official Egyptian history based ultimately on Manetho is so corrupted that it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. The data that makes the most sense puts the Amarna period during the divided kingdom period, around 800 BC ± roughly a century.

 

  During the period of the Judges, they dealt with the Moabites, Canaanites, Philistines, Midianites, etc.  With this in mind I find it difficult to imagine that Hebrew was ever isolated in any real sense.

Yet there was virtually no change from Genesis, predating the time of the judges, to 2 Samuel, possibly written during the time of Solomon.

From the Mesha Stele, it appears that Moabite, possibly also Ammonite, were so close to Hebrew that they were possibly mutually understandable, somewhat like Norwegian and Swedish today. And the others, how much did they differ from Hebrew? How much did they use translators?

 

Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy

Finally, I’m reminded of a story: shortly after India became an independent country after WWII, Indian researchers went from village to village asking people what they thought of independence now that British overlordship was removed. The survey was cut short when it revealed that most village Indians never knew that the British had ruled India for two centuries. That story may be apocryphal, but makes a good story.

Likewise the historical records seems to indicate that vassal nations were still ruled through their native kings, so that often the local people had no relations with any government officials other than other natives, not the foreign overlords.

 

Karl W. Randolph.