...
Regarding the "h" in -ah, what I meant was that in the Semitic
group from which Hebrew and Arabic diverged, the change had
already taken place whereby -at had developed into -ah in
non-construct forms, with a consonantal h. Later, the h was
lost, but not before it was used as the basis for spelling in
both Hebrew and Arabic. I've seen this opinion mentioned in
a linguistic article of Sarfatti's in Hebrew, but also the opinion
that this development in Hebrew and Arabic occurred in
parallel. So I'm not sure how strong this position of -ah
having a consonantal h is. I'm also not sure how a /t/ would
develop into /h/. So as a whole, I'm not sure of this position,
but I've seen it now mentioned by one linguist.
All the forms of final -h being a m.l. can be traced, then, to
some consonantal -h with varying degrees of confidence:
1) -h for -o in 3rd person masculine, originally -ahu
2) -h for -a in feminine words, originally -ah
3) -h for -e in final -h verbs (bnh, etc), where the h, being
part of the verbal root suggests it would have been
originally consonantal.
I guess both #2 and #3 are controversial, though.
...
The -h spelling for 3rd person possessive letter is
attested in various places, including Arad, Lachish,
Mesad Hashavyahu, and near Jerusalem. It is hard
therefore to see this as a dialectical variation or different
spelling convention and more reasonable to see the -w
as an alternative spelling convention that began to
replace the -h in the late 7th or 6th century.
How well can we conclude from the spelling as to the
pronunciation? Maybe we can't? Maybe the -ahu
shifted to -o in the 9th century but the spelling
maintained for a couple more centuries. We can't
know. But in any case, the spelling reflects a
certain pronunciation convention. ...
... As time goes by,
sound changes occur, and the relationship between
pronunciation and spelling gets more and more
complicated. This in turn leads to changes in the
spelling convention to standardize things, which may
only slightly change matters for the better. So all
we may be able to say is that the h in the 3rd person
possessive was dropped sometime during the First
Temple period, but before the 6th century.
Given the statement: Was Biblical Hebrew spoken
in the First Temple period? and the definition being
Biblical Hebrew = language represented by the
consonantal text as we have it today of the MT, I
think it is safe to conclude that something similar
was spoken, but given the slight difference in
nuances and more obvious difference in spelling,
that it was similar does not mean that it was the
same and there were probably differences in
both pronunciation and vocabulary.
My point is that although there may have been a pronunciation change
there is no evidence for this in the spelling. This whole thread is
about my insistence on evidence for your hypothesis of major
pronunciation changes between inscriptional and Torah Hebrew. Yes, we
agree that it may have happened, even that it was quite probable. But so
far no evidence for this has been produced which cannot be explained
simply as a change of spelling convention.
Well, the -h to -w spelling convention does show this change of
pronunciation, whether you want to explain it as a belated change
of spelling after the pronunciation had long changed, or a
concurrent one. The use of -h for final -o is not proven in my opinion ...
... and the Biblical text is no evidence in this regard without some
contemporary spelling (such as of "b:mo", "k:mo", "l:mo"). Neither
is the Gezer calendar sufficient evidence. We can even suggest
that in any case that might be a divergent dialect. How would you
suggest to differentiate between a "purely a change of spelling
convention" and "a change of pronunciation which effects a change
in spelling"?
...
If we are now talking about Hebrew transliterated into Akkadian, in the
Hebrew of that period alef represented a clearly pronounced glottal
stop,
How do you know?
... So there are two distinct classes of Hebrew words which
should not be confused: those ending in alef, a glottal stop, and those
ending in he, mostly representing a word final vowel.
Again, how do you know that this is what the convention implied?
Of course Kings in the form we have it was completed and/or edited after the exile. And the orthography of Samuel and Kings was partly updated. Nevertheless, there are significant differences between their orthography and that of Chronicles which is likely to tell us something about orthographic change in the Hebrew of the period. But the details are necessarily obscure.And then of course there are the parallel
passages between the originally probably pre-exilic Samuel and Kings and
the post-exilic Chronicles.
The fact that Samuel may be in origin pre-exilic does not mean it was
spelled in that spelling as we have it today in pre-exilic times. Kings is
not
pre-exilic. How can it be pre-exilic if it mentions the exile?
Now you are beginning to sound like Karl, rejecting standard scholarly methods of reconstruction as "circular reasoning". Yes, not all of the scholarship of these things is entirely sound, and further work would be very useful. But you cannot so easily write off all such reconstruction of ancient languages. And you certainly cannot substitute the scholarly consensus with your own hypotheses without providing convincing evidence both that the consensus is wrong and that your alternative makes sense, and is not just unproven speculation.There are of course a number of complex
analytical issues here, but it should be possible to demonstrate from
these to some extent how the language changed from before to after the
Exile.
So long as you don't mind circular reasoning.
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