Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>]

Hi Karl,

 

(1) You ask: "Therefore, is it your assertion that the main authorship of the Tanakh came after the Babylonian exile?"

 

Me: No.  I do believe, however, that it went through editorial activity.

 

(2) You state and ask: "In other words, you don’t trust the consonantal text of Tanakh, so why are you making such a big stink about me not trusting the Masoretic points, which are a much later addition?"

 

Me: I trust the consonantal text.  I trust the Masoretic points.  I trust the consonantal text more than I do the Masoretic points.  But I believe the Masoretic points are largely accurate.

 

(3) You ask: "So what do you call the action where a language has been corrupted—its grammar changed and some lexemes having different meanings—by being used by people who are not native speakers in a way that more approximates their native tongue?

 

Me: I do not call it corruption.

 

(4) You state: "This response makes it appear that you don’t know what is a straw man logical fallacy."

 

Me: I know what the straw man fallacy is.  But it is not being used against you.  You are not the victim.  Your position has been described accurately.

 

(5) You state: "You were not listening: they said the language of Canaan, which I reproduced above, not 'Hebrew'. It is I who made the connection that the archaeological record indicates that the Amarna letters were written during the Divided Kingdom era, hence “language of Canaan” referred to Hebrew. "

 

Me: Karl, this is absolutely incredible.

 

Here's your original statement: "Waltke and O’Connor mention that apparently the Amarna letters, archeologically dated to the Divided Kingdom period, indicated that the speech in Israel had every consonant followed by a vowel."

 

I challenged you on that, and then you told me you had no access to the book.

 

But I do have the book.  Here's what they say: "From the Amarna correspondence, Ugaritic texts, and other evidence, we can infer with reasonable confidence that before the Amarna period (ca. 1350 B.C.E.) Hebrew possessed final short vowels, which would have differentiated cases with nouns (see 8.1) and distinguished various prefix conjugations (see 29.4). The grammar preserved by the Masoretes, however, represents a later period, after these vowels had been dropped."

 

And now you tell me I'm not listening?  You simply did not remember accurately what they actually said.  Or you read your own ideas into what they said.  Notice, they said "Hebrew," not the language of Canaan"; and they talked about final short vowels that might have indicated case endings for nouns, or, for verbs, even different prefix conjugations – but nothing about every consonant being followed by a vowel.

 

(6) Finally, sorry Karl–making the assertion that the use of the word "strike" in baseball, meaning to miss, comes from a Norwegian or some other root, is not the same thing as demonstrating that such is actually the case.  It is much more plausible to suggest, rather, that "strike" referred originally to a ball that was struck foul, and then by extension came to cover balls that were missed entirely.

 

Blessings,

 

Jerry

Jerry Shepherd

Taylor Seminary

Edmonton, Alberta

jshepherd53 AT gmail.com