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November 28, 2007
Whence Came Hebrew?
Anson Rainey kindly sent me a copy of the paper he presented at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in San Diego, "Redefining Hebrew - A Transjordanian Language." Unfortunately, I was unable to hear his paper at the meeting. This paper is an expansion of a theme that Rainey has been promoting for some time. Until this SBL paper, I think his "Whence Came the Israelites and Their Language" published this year in the Israel Exploration Journal (I've mentioned this paper once before) was the fullest expression of the theme.
As a first order approximation, Rainey seeks to distance Hebrew, Moabite, Ebonite and Aramaic, on the one hand, from Phoenician and the Late Bronze Age language(s) of Canaan known primarily by way of the glosses and interference language(s) in the Amarna letters on the other. For him Phoenician and the Amarna interference language(s) are "Canaanite" and the others are, for lack of a better term "Transjordanian." In both his SBL paper and his IEJ paper, he identifies various glosses in an attempt to differentiate these two language groupings:
- The apparent differences the size of the repertoire of spoken, as opposed to written, consonants: Phoenician seems to have had 22 while Hebrew had at least 25 and Aramaic may have had as many as 29.
- The use of the root *HWY/HYY, "to be," in Hebrew and Aramaic against Phoenician and Ugaritic that use *KWN for about the same thing
- Deferring relative pronouns: אשׁר in Hebrew and Moabite, אש/ש in Phoenician
- The use the narrative preterit sequence with wa-conjunctive in Hebrew, Moabite and Old Southern Aramaic but not in Phoenician or Ugaritic
To these Rainey added a few additional differentiators in his SBL paper.
- עשה, "to make" in Hebrew and Moabite as opposed to פעל in Phoenician: he does acknowledge that the root פעל occurs in Biblical Hebrew saying, "The root never occurs in historical prose books or in epigraphic Hebrew."
- זהה, "gold," in Hebrew (דהב in Aramaic) but חרץ in Phoenician: again he notes that חרץ is found in Biblical Hebrew as a loanword form Phoenician. He also cites cognates to the Phoenician word from Ugaritic, which itself may be an adaptation from Akkadian, and a Semitic loan into Linear B (ku-ru-so > χρυσός).
- The use of סכן, "governor," "chief administrator" in Phoenician for which Hebrew uses the phrase אשר על־הבית, "he who is over the house." Of this Rainey said, "That the official Judean title is based on the relative pronoun אשׁר, demonstrates that it is original and not acquired from Canaanite."
Friedrich and Röllig, 4, already knew many of these differences in 1970. They even mention, ". . . das fast völlige Fehlen des Waw consecutivum," which Rainey would modify by removing the word "fast." His examples taken separately all seem correct to me. But, do they support Rainey's conclusion? I'm not so sure. There are also significant isoglosses shared by Hebrew and Phoenician. Without much work, I can think of the following:
- The definite article ה in both Hebrew and Phoenician
- The â > ô shift in Punic and Amarna Canaanite which Rainey even mentions in his discussion of סכן without noting that this shift occurs in Hebrew also.
And then there are glosses shared by Phoenician and Aramaic but not with Hebrew like רב for "big" where Hebrew prefers גדל.
I tend to agree with Jim Getz of Ketuvim who said of Rainey's paper, ". . . his arguments seemed unconvincing and based on older understandings of linguistic typology." In my own view the typology of North West Semitic languages is extremely complex and one must consider a much broader range of glosses than does Rainey if one wants to make such an important claim. In particular, one must address the counter evidence. As Carl Sagen famously said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." While Sagen's standard is not very precise, I don't think Rainey has met it. I also think that the linguistic analysis need be divorced from any theory of the origin and migrations of Israelites. To be sure, the results of a linguistic analysis may well inform such a theory but not the other way around. It is not clear to me that Rainey, for all his linguistic acumen, avoids this problem. On the other hand, I do think that those who want to defend the consensus view, that Hebrew is indeed a Canaanite language, will find their greatest challenge in Rainey's claims concerning the repertoire of spoken consonants and the verb HWY. I also think that this debate needs to look more closely at the language of the Deir 'Allā inscription. Rainey does mention it here and there but I think not nearly enough. Perhaps I need to look more closely at it also. In addition, I think more attention need be given the work of scholars like Garr, Kaufman and more recently Huehnergard among others. I find this a fascinating area of inquiry but it requires an effort well beyond my current skills and focus. And anyway, I'm still trying, without too much success, to finish my series on horse doctoring at Ugarit.
References:
Garr, W. Randall, Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1985 (see also the review by J. Huehnergard, JBL 106 (1987) 529- 533
Huehnergard, John., “Comparative Semitic Linguistics,” IOS 20, The State of the Art at the Turn of the 21st Century, ed. S. Izre’el, IOS 20, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002, 119-50
Kaufman, Stephen A. "The Classification of the North West Semitic Dialects of the Biblical Period and some Implications Thereof," Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Panel Sessions on Hebrew and Aramaic, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1985
Rainey, Anson F., "Whence Came the Israelites and Their Language?," Israel Exploration Journal, 57, 2007, 41-64
Posted by Duane Smith at November 28, 2007 8:37 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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Comments
Confessional Reformed Contemplations links to Rainy's article, here, with Dever's response to the article attached.
Posted by: Phil Sumpter at November 29, 2007 1:02 AM
Phil,
As Andrew Compton indicates in his post, the article he links to is not Rainey's SBL paper. It is a more popular version on the same theme. The SBL paper was far more technical.
Posted by: Duane at November 29, 2007 7:20 AM
Nice summary. I think you are right in quoting Sagan on this one. I think the types of evidence are too dissimilar to make the sorts of arguments that Rainey is making.
Posted by: Jim Getz at November 29, 2007 10:13 AM
Thanks for the post. Hearing the counterpoint to Rainey's argument is helpful.
Posted by: Andrew Compton at November 29, 2007 8:18 PM
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.
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