Lenguaje de Modelación

Reason for the “Uniformity” of the Hebrew Language

The traditional Jewish attitude toward the Bible, as stressed in the foregoing discussion, has been a very conservative influ-ence on the Hebrew language and has prevented radical trans-formation of its structural character. Yet the uniformity of the language is less real than appears on the surface. There can be no doubt that Hebrew has undergone considerable changes in pronunciation and word-formation since its inception, espe-cially during its pre-literary career, or before the biblical writ-ings gained currency and began to be regarded with reverence.

There was, clearly, a vast difference between the Hebrew used by Moses and Deborah and that employed by the author of Kohelet. Moses would have had some difficulty in under-standing the Hebrew spoken by Kohelet or by the later Psalm-ists, let alone the Hebrew of Rabbi Judah the Prince 1500 years after him, or Judah Halevi in the Middle Ages, or of Bialik of our own day. Furthermore, the people in the Northern King-dom must certainly have employed a different dialect from the people in the Southern Kingdom. Indeed, the Ephraimites were

identifiable by their distinctive pronunciation even from their close kinsmen and neighbors, the Gileadites (Judges 12.6). Ac-cording to Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, five differ-ent Ionian languages were spoken in Asia Minor. A similar situ-ation may have obtained among the Hebrews. Yet the vocaliza-tion of the Hebrew of Kohelet, or of any modern Hebrew text, is based on the same principles as the vocalization of the Song of Moses or of the Song of Deborah. There were doubt-less considerable changes in the Hebrew vocabulary in those widely separated periods, since over such a long stretch of time many new words were admitted and many old words discarded; but the grammatical divergencies remained com-paratively small.

What is responsible for this apparent “uniformity” in the Hebrew language?

The ancient Hebrew texts of the Bible were transmitted in a consonantal form of writing. There were no signs, or very scanty and inadequate signs, to indicate vowel-sounds. Consequently, when the masoretes of the seventh and eighth centuries C.E.

(see Chapter VII) undertook to fix the Hebrew vocalization, they treated alike all the texts, regardless of their respective antiquity, in consonance with the traditional pronunciation which had become more or less standardized in Palestine during the talmudic age. They therefore vocalized the texts of the early biblical period in accordance with the same vocalic principles as those of the late biblical periods. The system was thereupon adopted as the norm for Hebrew texts and has remained the basis for Hebrew grammar down to modern times. It may con-sequently be stated that our masoretic vocalization records the pronunciation of Hebrew in vogue in Palestine during the late talmudic period, but not necessarily the exact pronunciation of the earlier periods.

To illustrate: if we were to take a selection from the writings of Chaucer and if we were to modify its orthography by retain-ing the consonants but changretain-ing the vowels in accordance with

the modern spelling, the Chaucerian English would then differ very little from modern English. Here is an example:

Chaucerian Orthography Whan that Aprille with his

shoures sote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veyne in

swich licour,

Of which vertu engendered is the flour;

When Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in Ram his halfe course y-ronne

And smale fowles maken melodye,

That slepen al the night with open ye,

Modern Orthography When that April with his

show-ers sweet

The drought of March has pierced to the root, And bathed every vein in such

liquor,

Of which virtue engendered is the flower;

When Zephyr eke with his sweet breath

Inspired has in every holt and heath

The tender crops, and the young sun

Has in Ram his half course run

And small fowls make mel-ody,

That sleep all night with open eye,

The interval separating the English of our own day from Chaucerian English is a period of less than six hundred years.

Yet the differences in pronunciation, apart from those in or-thography, are considerable, especially if we bear in mind the fact that many vowels and consonants now mute but left in spelling for etymological reasons were sounded in Chaucer’s days. Since the masoretes, the recorders of the traditional Bible text, actually recorded the pronunciation of biblical Hebrew in vogue in their own days, around the eighth century C.E., one can readily realize how different the recorded pronunciation must have been from that of Moses or the Patriarchs who lived

over two thousand years before the masoretic period. It can also be readily realized how unreliable our vowel-system is as a basis for determining the pronunciation of Hebrew during the days of the early “Hebraists.”

Early Hebrew Pronunciation as Recorded in the Amarna Letters

What was the pronunciation of the Hebrew that our Patri-archs heard when they migrated into Canaan? How was the Hebrew pronounced and inflected during the times of Moses and the Judges?

Fortunately, we are now in possession of some ancient docu-ments which help us penetrate the veil of masoretic tradition and guide us in reconstructing with some degree of accuracy the pronunciation and grammatical forms of Hebrew during these early stages in the history of the language.

In the winter of 1887–8 an Egyptian woman accidentally stumbled upon some clay tablets in the soil of Tell-el-Amarna, situated some 200 miles south of Cairo on the east bank of the Nile. She sold her rights to her find for fifty cents. This dis-covery led to the unearthing of some 400 clay tablets, inscribed in the Assyro-Babylonian language and characters, which opened up an entirely unknown vista in the history of Palestine and the surrounding countries. The tablets were written about a cen-tury and a half prior to the Exodus and they tell of invasions of Palestine by a tribe or a people designated as Habiru or Hapiru.

The fourteenth century B.C.E. was a turbulent period in the history of Egypt. Akhenaton, the “heretic king,” the father-in-law of Tutankhamen, the discovery of whose tomb by Howard Carter on November 4, 1922, caused a sensation, was then the ruler of Egypt. He was, according to the Egyptian records, a religious reformer who attempted to impose a monotheistic re-ligion on the Egyptians whose gods were legion. He was com-pelled by the opposition of the priests of Thebes to abandon the capital, and he built a new one in the middle of Egypt, at

what is now known as Tell-el-Amarna, where he also gathered his court. This was the period portrayed in the Bible as that preceding the invasion of Canaan by Joshua.

It was during that period that the chieftains and provincial kings of the country sent letters to the Pharaoh in Egypt, the supreme ruler of Canaan, appealing for help against the foreign invaders. But in his preoccupation with his religious problems, the Pharaoh apparently neglected the interests of his Palestin-ian vassals, and the letters went unheeded.

The importance of these letters rests, not only on the light they shed on an obscure period of Palestinian history, but also on their help in unravelling the mystery of the pronunciation and formation of Hebrew during the invasion of Canaan by Joshua and the Judges, or even earlier, during the migration of the Patriarchs. In the first place, these documents, although written in Assyro-Babylonian language, the international lan-guage of that time, contain also glosses (translation and expla-nations) in the Canaanite vernacular employed by the writers in their daily work. Secondly, the Assyro-Babylonian script used in these tablets possesses vowel-signs, thus affording us fairly authentic evidence on the pronunciation of the language.

Various facts relative to this stage of the Hebrew language emerge and deserve to be pointed out.

1. There are remarkable variations in the pronunciation of Hebrew among Jews in modern times. For example: the a sound in shalom or barukh is pronounced a (as in “far”) by the Sephardic and Palestinian Jews, o (as the a in “fall”) by the Jews of Lithuania, and oo (as in “food”) by the Jews of Poland, Ukraine, and others. An analogous example of sound modification may be found in the case of the long a in such words as the German Vater (father) which the Lithuanian Jews pronounce foter and the Polish Jews footer.

It will, therefore, be of interest to note similar variations in pronunciation, as may be inferred from the Canaanitish glosses, in vogue in the ancient days of the Habiru invasion. According to the records, it seems that the early “Hebraists” or Canaanites,

were incapable of pronouncing a long a, as that in father. This long Semitic a, which has been preserved in Arabic, was rounded like oo, as it is rendered in these glosses (although the same symbol in cuneiform represents also o).¹ Our Aramaic ances-tors, on the other hand, as is to be inferred from later Aramaic records, probably sounded this a like that in water or small. It must have sounded queer to the Aramaic immigrants, or to their descendants, to hear such “peculiar” pronunciations as tzunu (= tzon) “sheep,” zukini (= sokhen) “guardian,” zuruhu (= zero’a) “arm,” humitu (= homah) “wall,” abutinu (= abotenu)

“our ancestors,” rushunu (= roshenu) “our “head”; in all of which the u was very likely pronounced by them o (as in “or”), while in primitive Semitic it was sounded, as in Arabic, like a long a (as in “father”).

2. In modern English, as in Hebrew, the relation of words in a sentence is indicated by a fixed order. In the sentence “a dog bit a cat” the sense is clearly distinguished from that in “a cat bit a dog.” The difference is determined merely by the order. But in the Latin sentence Deus creavit coelum et terram (God created the heaven and the earth), the word order may be changed without affecting the meaning at all. The relation of words is indicated by means of inflections, or case-endings attached to the nouns (coelum and terram, derived from the absolute forms coelo and terra). All Indo-European languages, as well as the Semitic, at one time possessed case-endings. In the course of time these case-endings were dropped in some languages, but were retained in others. In modern English the case-endings have disappeared,² while in German they have been preserved.

In the Semitic languages the case-endings were as follows:

nominative—u, accusative—a, genitive—i; which may be traced to earlier forms um, am, and im. Classical Arabic still retains these case-endings, but in Hebrew and in modern Arabic there are few traces left of them.³ Proper names, because of their stereotyped character, preserve these case-endings, for exam-ple, Shemuel (for shem-El “the name of God”), Malki-tzedek

(for melekh-tzedek, “the king of justice”). In the same category belong also the familiar names of Hannibal, the famous Cartha-ginian general, and Haile Selassi, the king of Abyssinia. Since the Phoenician language spoken in Carthage was very closely related to Hebrew, the name Hannibal (for han-Baal, “the grace of Baal”) has a familiar ring in Hebrew and would correspond in meaning to the Hebrew Hananyah or Hananel. Similarly the name of the king of Abyssinia, Haile Selassi, should be recog-nized by every student of Hebrew as the equivalent of the Hebrew heil ha-sheloshah (the power of the Trinity). In both these names, Hannibal and Haile Selassi, the case-endings are in evidence.

In the Canaanitish Hebrew glosses, the Semitic case-endings are still consistently preserved. Thus we find there such forms as batnu (belly), hullu (yoke), kilubi (cage), gitti rimmunima (pomegranate press); which are equivalents, respectively, of the Hebrew forms beten, ‘ol, kelub, and gat rimmonim.

3. There seems to be a tendency in some languages to drop off final vowels in unaccented syllables, as, for example, the final e in hope (Middle English hopen = German hoffen). In Hebrew, likewise, this tendency appears to be operative. But when our Patriarchs and ancestors invaded and settled in the land of Canaan, they still heard and probably used these final unaccented syllables in pronunciation, in nouns as well as in verbs, as is evidenced by the spelling in the Amarna tablets of such verbal forms as yazkuru (Hebrew yizkor), “he will re-member” or “he remembers,” naktzupu (Hebrew niktzop), “we will be angry” or “we are angry.”⁴

4. The Hebrew letter ayin is rendered in these glosses gen-erally by h, and it must have been approximately so pronounced, for example, haparu (dust), hullu (yoke), zuruhu (arm); which are the equivalents, respectively, of the Hebrew ‘aphar, ‘ol, and zero‘a.

5. The possessive suffix, first person plural, in Hebrew is ai, for example, tzon (sheep), tzonai (my sheep). But in the

Canaanitish glosses this suffix is ya, hence hinaya (my eyes) for the Hebrew ‘einai.

The Ugaritic Poems

One of the most remarkable discoveries in the realm of the literature of antiquity is that of the Ugaritic poems. These po-ems have significant implications for the study of the Bible and the Hebrew language, as well as for the history of religion and the development of the alphabet.

In the spring of 1928, an Arab peasant, while ploughing his field in the village of Ras Shamra, a sloping Arab hamlet on the Syrian coast opposite the most easterly cape of Cyprus, sud-denly found his plough striking some stone slabs. Removing them, he discovered underneath an ancient tomb, covered with the debris of the ages.

Little did the simple peasant realize that he had hit upon the records of an ancient kingdom and civilization some thirty-five centuries old. Little did he dream that his chance discovery would push back and expand the frontiers of biblical history and civilization and shed much light on the historical back-ground of the Hebrew language and religion.

When this discovery was brought to the attention of the French authorities in Beirut (Lebanon), plans were immediately launched to organize an archaeological expedition, under the auspices of Professor Charles Virolleaud, with a view to exca-vating the mound. The work began in the spring of 1929, but it was only two years later that sufficient evidence came to light on the basis of which this mound could be identified as the site of the ancient kingdom that had borne the name Ugarit, which is also mentioned in the Amarna letters.

The excavations continued until 1939, when they were stopped because of the war. But by that time a large collection of inscribed clay tablets had been exhumed which attracted the attention of every student of antiquity.

A variety of matters are dealt with in these inscriptions. But

of particular interest to us are the poems which contain speci-mens of pagan Semitic literature dating from the fifteenth cen-tury B.C.E., just about the period of the Hebrew invasion of Canaan, or shortly before the Exodus. They are written in a language akin to ancient Hebrew and in an alphabet hitherto unknown, consisting of thirty-two letters. In vocabulary, style and phraseology these poems exhibit characteristic features of biblical Hebrew, and their content is likewise reminiscent of some parts of the Bible. They were probably designed to be recited on certain solemn and festive occasions, such as sea-sonal festivals and cult ceremonies. One can find there mention of such sacrifices, familiar to students of the Bible, as asham (trespass offering), shelem (payment offering), tenufah (wave offering); as well as reference to kohanim (priests) and kedeshim (sacred acolytes). Like cuneiform, the writing was impressed with a stylus on soft clay tablets, but unlike cuneiform it con-sists of single signs and not of syllables. These signs have no connection with the cuneiform writing of Sumeria, Babylonia and Assyria.

Considerable light is shed by these poems on some obscure and indirect references in the Bible to the pagan worship of the Canaanites. Most of the gods and heroes mentioned are re-ferred to in the Bible. The supreme god is called El (compare El Elyon in Genesis 14.18, 19, 20, 22: “the supreme El”), but the counselor of the gods is his wife, Atirat or Asheret (Hebrew Asherah) and their son is Baal or Baal Al’in (the mighty).

The influence of Ugaritic on Hebrew is evident not only in vocabulary and religious concepts, but also in idiomatic expres-sions, in syntactical structure, and in poetic style and imagery.

Thus David, in his dirge of the death of Saul and Jonathan, invokes a curse of drought on the locality where they were slain, employing the expression al tal we-al matar (2 Samuel 1.21). This is almost a verbatim equivalent of the Ugaritic, bl tl bl rbb (nor dew nor rain), included in a dirge recited on a similar occasion. So is Isaac’s blessing mi-tal ha-shamayim um-shemannei ha-aretz (Genesis 27.28) reminiscent of the Ugaritic

tl shmm shmn artz (dew of heaven, fat of earth). Metaphors like the opening of the windows of heaven (Genesis 7.11), going down to the grave of a departed son (ibid., 37.35), melt-ing away the couch with tears (Psalms 6.7), the rider of the clouds in reference to God (ibid., 68.5), death coming up into windows (Jeremiah 9.20); or such similies as biting like a ser-pent (Proverbs 23.32, etc.), goring like a wild-ox (Deuteronomy 33.17), panting like a hart after the water brooks (Psalms 42.2), and the like—all have their parallels in Ugaritic literature. Simi-larly common in this literature are such familiar biblical locu-tions as wa-ya‘an . . . wa-yomer (and he answered . . . and said:

Genesis 18. 27), wa-yikkah . . . wa-yelekh (and he took . . . and went: ibid., 11.31), wa-yissa kolo wa-yikra (and he lifted his voice and called: Judges 9. 7), wa-yissa einaw wa-yar’ (and he lifted his eyes and saw: Genesis 18.2).

The scheme of parallelism current in biblical poetry is also a characteristic feature in Ugaritic. According to this scheme each verse is composed of two halves, which are either similar in thought, contrasting or supplementary. Such a verse, for ex-ample, as “Thy kingdom is a kingdom for all ages and thy dominion endureth throughout the generations” (Psalms 145.

13) is almost an exact paraphrase of the Ugaritic “Thou wilt obtain thy kingdom eternal, thy reign throughout the genera-tions.”

There seems little doubt that the early Hebrews were di-rectly exposed to the culture, beliefs and practices reflected in these mythological poems and that they were influenced by them. In some cases the influences were negative, that is, they evoked a revulsion. Here and there we find in the Bible rever-berations of the protests against some of the practices and be-liefs with which the Hebrews became infected. One of the glar-ing examples is the prohibition in Exodus 23.19, 34.26 and in Deuteronomy 14.21 “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk,” which is the basis of some of our dietary laws. This is

There seems little doubt that the early Hebrews were di-rectly exposed to the culture, beliefs and practices reflected in these mythological poems and that they were influenced by them. In some cases the influences were negative, that is, they evoked a revulsion. Here and there we find in the Bible rever-berations of the protests against some of the practices and be-liefs with which the Hebrews became infected. One of the glar-ing examples is the prohibition in Exodus 23.19, 34.26 and in Deuteronomy 14.21 “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk,” which is the basis of some of our dietary laws. This is