...I was basing my analysis only on the concluding paragraph from Blau which Ken posted, snipped above. In that paragraph he clearly describes QH as "exposed to the influence of the spoken vernaculars, viz. Aramaic and some sort of Middle Hebrew", in other words the influence came from BOTH Aramaic AND Hebrew. Indeed "no proof
To make the point more clearly: I think the following, and it seems to
me that Blau agrees: There was a community of mother tongue Hebrew
speakers, primarily speaking Hebrew and passing it on from generation to
generation, until after the time of writing of the DSS. The writers of
the DSS were in contact with this community, although we don't know
whether they were members of it. The Hebrew in which the DSS was written
(i.e. QH) is intermediate between BH and the language of the mother
tongue community at that time. The differences between QH and BH may be
accounted for, at least in part, by influence from the primarily spoken
Hebrew of the mother tongue community.
I'm not sure this was the case, unless more than one language can be considered a mother tongue, as in the case of folks who grow up bilingual. Without reading all of Blau's paper, which I will have to get by inter-library loan and may take a while, I can't really comment on his views. Still, I got the impression that he said the influence causing change came from Aramaic, not Hebrew. He did mention "some sort of Middle Hebrew" (whatever that may mean), but he also prefaced those remarks with "no proof exists that they reflect a spoken Hebrew dialect used by the
members of the Qumran sect." This would seem to preclude the idea that QH was a transitional form. It almost sounds as though he's saying it was a sort of construct, sort of like some modern Americans' attempts to mimic KJV-style English. But again, I need to read the full article before I comment further.
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