Biblical Hebrew Forum

["R. Lehmann" <lehmann AT uni-mainz.de>]

Not identical, because: identical with *what*?

There was no Hebrew language in the 1st half of the 1st millennium BCE, but merely a dialect continuum of some South Levantine Canaanite languages (or dialects), which later, under the dominance of the literate Judahite, formed what later was called a "Hebrew language".

The situation is still best described in short by Knauf, Ernst Axel,   War "Biblisch-hebräisch" eine Sprache? Empirische Gesichtspunkte zur linguistischen Annäherung an die Sprache der althebräischen Literatur: ZAH 3 (1990) 11-23.

For Moabite, see most recently the new comprehensive grammar by Klaus Beyer, Die Sprache der moabitischen Inschriften: KUSATU 11/2010, 5-41.

¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨

Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann, Academic Director
Research Unit on Ancient Hebrew & Epigraphy
FB 01/ Faculty of Protestant Theology
Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz
D-55099 Mainz
Germany
lehmann AT uni-mainz.de
http://www.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de/eng
11th Mainz International Colloquium on Ancient Hebrew (MICAH) 2013:
http://www.micah.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de/204.php

From: George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew was linguistically isolated?
To: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
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Posted on behalf of Lewis Reich <lewreich AT gmail.com>:


It's clear from the Mesha stela, whose inscription is linguistically identical to Biblical Hebrew, that Hebrew and Moabite ( and Ammonite and Edomite) are merely dialects off each other.

Lewis Reich
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Message: 14
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 02:09:55 +0100 (BST)
From: john.leake AT yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew was linguistically isolated?
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Not _identical_, Lewis.?I mean, plurals are in -?n (admittedly as in Mishnaic Hebrew), the first person pronoun is ??? which could easily be &#x27;an?k as in Phoenician. Doesn&#x27;t it have a hi?taph&#x27;el in it somewhere, a form that is hardly active in Hebrew (just the single doubly defective ??????, probably not seen as anything but an odd verb)? And we mustn&#x27;t forget that we only have the consonantal framework - the vowelling might have been quite different from contemporary Hebrew. But of course it is very strikingly similar, down to waw-conversive or whatever the name for it is these days, and, I agree, a dialect (except ??? had an army and &#x27;a dialect with an army&#x27; is a language, so the saying goes - ?? ??????? ??? ?? ???????? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ?????? being the original according to Wikipedia...)

John Leake
The Open University