I have no problem viewing post-Esilic Hebrew as post-Exilic Jewish Latin. As such, one cannot rule out the possibility that GDD in the Damascus Document as an Aramaic loan word or backwards development from a noun.
As I stated before, when I research the definition of a lexeme and find that the majority of uses, like 90% or thereabouts, clearly have one definition but a few seem to have a different one, I then look at those outlyers and ask "Have I understood all the other terms in the context correctly?" "Is this an example of metaphoric or indirect speech?", only after ruling out misunderstanding or metaphoric use do I look at having a different definition.
I dont understand why you put so much effort to defend a dictionary definition when the evidence for it is weak, at best.
From dwashbur AT nyx.net Mon Oct 11 16:19:31 2004Return-Path: <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
Dear Dave,
I'm sorry that i sent that last post to you
instead of b-hebrew. Thanks for relaying it to
b-hebrew in your reply.
> > > > HH: My first guess would be that there were three languages in
> > > > use. A
>> >>
>> >> good number of scholars say that.
>> >
>> >Definitely they were. The question is, which was used for what
>> > purposes? That's where we differ.
>>
>> HH: Here's an interesting quote from apparent experts in the Hebrew
>> language and linguistics, Bernard Spolsky and Elana Shohamy:
>> http://www.biu.ac.il/hu/lprc/Hebrew_after_a_century_of_RLS_efforts.htm
>>
>> The process of shifting from the use of Hebrew as a spoken
>> vernacular may have started as early as the sixth century BCE, and
>> certainly was well along for many living in ancient Israel by the
>> beginning of the common era (Chomsky 1957; Rabin 1973). How long
>> Hebrew continued to be spoken among Jews is a matter of some debate
>> but it is now generally believed that there were still monolingual
>> speakers of Hebrew in villages of Judaea at the time of the Bar
>> Kochba Revolt, in the second century of the Common Era, and native
>> speakers even later.
>
>It's a tantalizing quote, to be sure, but upon reading the article I don't
> see any evidence given, and statements like "it is now generally
> believed" really don't do anything for me. What does "generally" mean? > "Believed" by whom? They don't say, and give no backing for such a
> statement. Simply citing "apparent experts" isn't going to get us very
> far.
HH: Here's a quote from David Steinberg with
names. I give some introductory material to show
your side of things, too. The second to last
paragraph makes my point:
http://www.adath-shalom.ca/history_of_hebrew.htm#biblicalheb
With the destruction of the First Temple (587
BCE) the scribal schools and royal patronage of
writers ended, Jerusalem was depopulated, the
country was ruined and much of the population was
exiled to Babylonia where the common language was
Aramaic. Later, a small number of Babylonian
Jews, probably mainly Aramaic speaking, returned
to Judah where they provided the leadership,
under Persian imperial patronage, for a slow
restoration of Jerusalem and a much reduced Judah
known as the province of Yahud.
When written sources again give us a look in, the
linguistic situation of the country was:
· Greek was widely spoken
in (see map of Hellenistic and Herodian Cities):
o Coastal plain;
o Decapolis (Jordan Valley north of the
main Jewish area in Trans-Jordan);
o Greek cities within Jewish areas in Galilee;
o Greek cities within Samaritan populated
areas of central and northern Samaria;
o Greek cities within Idumean areas in the
northern Negev i.e. what was formerly the
southern section of the territory of the tribe of
Judah.
· Aramaic was the majority
language of the country. Probably it was the
only language, other than Greek, spoken
throughout the country except for some areas of
Judea between Lod and Jericho. It seems to have
been the language of the upper classes in
Jerusalem; and,
· A proto-Mishnaic form of
Hebrew was probably spoken, along with Aramaic in
some areas of Judea between Lod and Jericho;, and
· Late Biblical Hebrew
which was a literary language, along side Greek
and Aramaic for the Jewish population. There
were no speakers of this artificial tongue. This
is not dissimilar to the situation of Modern
Literary Arabic today or Church Latin in the
middle ages.
Spoken Hebrew underwent great changes of three kinds:
· Natural developments
internal to the language (see Segal, Kutscher,
Bendavid);
· A mixing of dialects due
to the political upheavals, exile etc.; and
· The profound influence of
Aramaic in vocabulary, semantics and grammar
including inflection.
Christian scholars have, at times, claimed that
Hebrew was completely replaced by Aramaic during
this period. However, Segal, Greenfield and
Levine have demonstrated that this was not the
case. Modern linguistic study, research on
contemporary sources, the Bar Kochba letters in a
popular spoken Hebrew all show that Hebrew was a
spoken language of southern Palestine until at
least 135 CE when, in the wake of the Bar Kochba
rebellion, the Romans evicted or killed the
Jewish population in the areas in which Hebrew
was still spoken. At that point, Aramaic and
Greek became virtually the only spoken languages
of the whole of what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon,
Jordan and Israel. An early form of Arabic was
already spoken on the desert fringes of this area.
T he Roman suppression of the first Jewish revolt
against Rome (67-70 CE), including the
destruction of Jerusalem led to a
social-cultural-religious collapse. This
included the disappearance of the priestly
aristocracy and Jewish groups such as the
Sadducees and Essenes. The earliest Rabbinic
literature dates from the period 70-200 CE and it
is written in the spoken Hebrew of the time,
called, after the most famous literary product of
the time, Mishnaic Hebrew.
HH: Here are the sources he gives:
Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew by M. H. Segal, Oxford 1958, Paperback 1980
The Languages of Palestine, 200 B.C.E.-200 C.E.
by Jonas C. Greenfield in Al Kanfei Yonah:
Collected Studies of Jonas C. Greenfield on
Semitic Philology, ed. Shalom M.
Languages of Jerusalem in Levine, Lee I. Judaism
and Hellenism in antiquity : conflict or
confluence?, Hendrickson Publishers, 1998. Paul,
Michael E. Stone, and Avital Pinnick. Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 2001.
Yours,
Harold Holmyard
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