[Pre-publication draft] Periodization (entry on Hebrew language in Textual History of the Hebrew Bible, ed. A. Lange) (original) (raw)
Related papers
The accepted ancient Hebrew diachronic paradigm and the standard linguistic approach for the periodisation of biblical texts are today heavily criticised, the criticism most recently centring on the textual situation of the sources. Critics argue that the high degree of textual instability and linguistic fluidity characterising the extant witnesses preclude any reliable tracing of the history of the language and make even the most approximative attempts at linguistic dating impossible. However, much of this textual argument is abstract, since the effect of secondary intervention on the stability of diachronically significant features has been studied in detail in the case of only a few texts, the investigations reaching conflicting conclusions. After a brief survey of foregoing investigations, the present study compares Pentateuchal material from the MT and Qumran, concluding that (a) preservation of diachronically meaningful detail is still very much the norm, and (b) differences between editions of the Torah often indicate the linguistic conservatism of one edition, here the MT, as opposed to linguistic development of the other, here the Qumran material.
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, 2013
This review was published by RBL 2006 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp. But although we can establish that the language has in general little significance for the literary history, there is one well-known exception. In the books of Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Daniel, Esther, and Ecclesiastes, there is one linguistic level that differs clearly from Standard Biblical Hebrew (SBH). We are indebted to A. Hurvitz in particular for his valuable research into Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH). He has gathered together the morphological, syntactical, phraseological, and lexematic characteristics of this linguistic stage and has described its difference from SBH, as well as the features it shares with Qumran Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew. The influence of Aramaic on LBH emerged clearly. Hurvitz used this finding to show that the language of the Priestly Code is SBH, not LBH. On the basis of this result, he considers it possible to maintain that the Priestly Code was composed in the preexilic period.
Diachronic Analysis and the Features of Late Biblical Hebrew
Bulletin for Biblical Research
The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence for the existence of a later linguistic strand within the Hebrew Bible known as late biblical Hebrew. After surveying the history and methodology of the diachronic study of the Hebrew language, I examine orthographic, morphological, and syntactical evidence, which demonstrates a linguistic shift from the preexilic to the postexilic period. I demonstrate how these same late biblical features of the postexilic period became commonplace in Rabbinic Hebrew and in the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I discuss the different views regarding the reasons biblical Hebrew experienced linguistic change and argue that the events of the Babylonian exile contain all the components linguists regard as necessary to account for language change. An appendix is provided which contrasts the fourteen accepted features of late biblical Hebrew with their early biblical Hebrew counterparts.
Journal for Semitics, 2017
The accepted ancient Hebrew diachronic paradigm and the standard linguistic approach for the periodisation of biblical texts are today heavily criticised, the criticism most recently centring on the textual situation of the sources. Critics argue that the high degree of textual instability and linguistic fluidity characterising the extant witnesses preclude any reliable tracing of the history of the language and make even the most approximative attempts at linguistic dating impossible. However, much of this textual argument is abstract, since the effect of secondary intervention on the stability of diachronically significant features has been studied in detail in the case of only a few texts, the investigations reaching conflicting conclusions. After a brief survey of foregoing investigations, the present study compares Pentateuchal material from the MT and Qumran, concluding that (a) preservation of diachronically meaningful detail is still very much the norm, and (b) differences b...
Linguistics, Philology, and the Text of the Old Testament
James Bar Assessed: Evaluating His Legacy over the Last Sixty Years, 2021
Among his significant contributions to the study of the Old Testament, James Barr’s sage work on the nature of philology and linguistics and their application to ancient texts figure prominently. Nearly sixty years ago, Barr published his first monograph, The Semantics of Biblical Language. Just seven years later he published his Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament. Then a year later he weighed in on the “conflict” between linguistics and philology, a topic he considered from a slightly different angle and extended to biblical studies as a whole twenty-five years later. In between, he demonstrated his attention to detail and sensitivity to text in his The Variable Spellings of the Hebrew Bible. Despite the considerable advances in biblical scholarship—the Dead Sea Scrolls have all been published, new Hebrew lexica (HALOT, DCH) have appeared to supersede BDB, and modern linguistic theories have been increasingly applied to the Biblical Hebrew—some of the same methodological concerns about language and text that prompted Barr’s work have surfaced again. While few of the philological or textual conclusions Barr reached can now be accepted without qualification, his attention to interdisciplinary questions of method combined with an eye to linguistic detail remains a model for scholarship and encourages us to apply a Barr-ian eye to method and theory for a new generation.
The last decade has witnessed a lively scholarly debate regarding the diachrony of biblical Hebrew and the validity of the differentiation between CBH and LBH. Lately, two of the prominent challengers of the traditional views have criticised the diachronic school from a new perspective, arguing against the use of the Masoretic Text as a basis for the linguistic discussion. This paper seeks to establish the validity of the Masoretic Text as a basis for diachronic linguistic analysis from the angle of Tiberian vocalisation. Three case studies from the Book of Qoheleth are examined, each involving an LBH component whose existence in the text is revealed to us only through Masoretic vocalisation. The case studies include the assimilation of third aleph with third he participles; the use of the abstract nominal pattern qitlôn; and the feminine demonstrative ֹז .ה The case studies show that the Masoretes had preserved the difference between CBH and LBH pronunciations, although they were probably unaware of the historical nature of these different pronunciations and of their diachronic dimension. These findings testify to a strong and stable oral Masoretic tradition which accompanied the written one. Both were transmitted for many centuries, and they were, in many cases, precise to the extant they could reflect dialectological differences within Biblical Hebrew. The paper concludes with a comment regarding Masoretic anachronisms and their place in the overall picture of Masoretic traditions.