Karl, On Mon, 3 Oct 2011 12:36:39 -0700, K Randolph <[email protected]> wrote: > Randall: > > The original link got me to the same place. I was away from the computer for > a few days, so didn’t comment earlier. > > I watched the video linked to by the instructor, and all I heard was what I > understand as modern Hebrew. One of the comments about it, “Biblical Hebrew > is Hebrew”. which is true, but then so is Chaucerian English English, so a > native speaker of modern English should have no problem reading Chaucer? Or > how about a native speaker of modern English reading Beowulf? Or for me, the > reason I got into Hebrew on a daily basis was because I had trouble > understanding Elizabethan English as used in the KJV. Similarly, a native > speaker of modern Israeli Hebrew will think he understands Biblical Hebrew, > but because of the changes in vocabulary meanings and grammatical structure, > how often will he misunderstand the text?
This is a good point, but the problem can be overcome by proper study. Shakespeare's language, although technically Modern English, is different enough from contemporary English that the modern English reader will need notes to understand numerous differences of vocabulary, meanings, &c. (And of course for Chaucer one will need *lots* of notes to understand them.) > When we don’t even know how Biblical Hebrew was pronounced, other than that > the Masoretic points coded for Tiberian Hebrew which was different from > Biblical Hebrew, how can it credibly be claimed that by using modern > pronunciation of Tiberian points we are thereby teaching Biblical Hebrew? > He’s whistling Dixie. I think it can be credibly so claimed. Compare the situation of the classical languages. In the case of Latin and (Classical) Greek, we think we know pretty well (mostly) how Cicero pronounced Latin and how Plato pronounced Greek, and nowadays when Latin and Greek are taught, some approximation of that reconstructed pronunciation is taught. (I'm not in academia, so I can't say for certain, but my impression is that there is more of an effort on the part of some instructors to aim for a pronunciation closer to the reconstructed original that previously was the case.) However, using these "restored" pronuncations is comparatively recent, and for centuries both Latin and Greek were taught using pronunciations that diverged widely from anything an ancient Greek or Roman would have spoken. (The traditional English pronunciation of Latin survives in the realms of law and botanical/zoological nomenclature.) But this doesn't mean that classical Latin and Greek weren't being taught - indeed they were, and those that studied Latin and Greek in those days frequently attained a level of expertise that would be exceptional to-day. Now the situation of Hebrew is somewhat different from that of Greek or Latin. First, what is "classical" Hebrew anyway? The Hebrew text of the Bible was composed over a considerable period of time, during which Hebrew no doubt underwent many changes of pronunciation and vocabulary. I think I remember reading (a *long* time ago) in some technical article that the language of Jeremiah was considered "classical Hebrew". So, for the present, if we take the language of Jeremiah the language that one should aim for, how was it pronounced? I'm not up on what might be the current state of thought on Hebrew historical linguistics, but I doubt that the level of confidence in a reconstructed pronunciation of Hebrew of Jeremiah's time would be up to the level of confidence in a reconstructed pronunciation of classical Greek or Latin. And even if it were, it would not be represented directly in the Hebrew text that the learner has before him, which consists of a basically consonantal script with a superimposed system of vowels representing a pronunciation of more than a millennium later. So the only practical basis for pronouncing Biblical Hebrew is the MT consonantal text plus vowel signs. But I don't think this is too bad at all. First, although the vocalization of the MT represents a pronunciation no doubt different in many particulars from that of Biblical times, I doubt that it is completely at odds with it. (Just so there is no misunderstanding here, I am referring to the situations where the MT vocalizaton is "correct", i.e., is a continuation of the historical pronunciation, not where the Massoretes got it wrong and mis-assigned the vowel signs.) So pronouncing Hebrew using the Massoretic vocalization, while not representing the pronunciation of the era of Jeremiah (or any other Biblical period) exactly is probably a lot better that pronouncing Latin according to the old "English" way of pronouncing it, and can legitimately qualify as "Biblical Hebrew". -- Will Parsons _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
