Since you refer to my "worldview", permit me to briefly reiterate, at the end of this discussion, what I said earlier: I tend to think that biblical Hebrew was never a spoken language. I imagine that people who spoke Hebrew at home spoke a simplified version thereof. At the wane of the era of the prophets the written language started to come down towards this vernacular. Then, the rabbis, HA-PRU$IYM, who were not part of the temple milieu, and who spoke directly to the people about urgent practical matters, reverted entirely to the speech of the land, culminating in the terse Mishnah. Namely, I tend to think that, essentially, "Mishnaic" Hebrew was there all along.
There is no denying that "Mishnaic" Hebrew absorbed words and turns of speech from both Aramaic and Greek. This light version of biblical Hebrew is essentially what some call now "Modern" Hebrew. So, what Abba Bendavid calls L$ON XAXAMIYM, the language of the wise and the learned, I would call L$ON AM HA-AREC, the language of the people of the land. Isaac Fried, Boston University On May 19, 2011, at 11:41 PM, Randall Buth wrote: > The point is that there was a stage of the language called > Mishnaic that your worldview doesn't seem to have much > room for. Abba Bendavid's leshon miqra ulshon Haxamim > 2vol 1967, is a good place to start. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
