Isaac Fried wrote: “The pre-adhered Hebrew HA- is, in my opinion, the curtailed PP הוא HU, or a curtailed PP היא HI.”
In response, let me set forth a scholarly view that, on the contrary, sees hinne, hen as the basis for the definite article in Hebrew.
The best scholarly article I have found regarding how early the definite article is in Hebrew is Na’ama Pat-El, Harvard University, “The Development of the Semitic Definite Article”, Journal of Semitic Studies LIV/1, Oxford University Press, Spring 2009. It’s on the Internet here:
http://www.academia.edu/202934/The_Deve ... c_Approach
Linguists agree that the definite article is rarely found in early Biblical Hebrew poetry. The conventional, majority view erroneously concludes from that that the definite article therefore came late to Hebrew, perhaps not until the early 1st millennium BCE. Pat-El forcefully makes the exactly contrary argument. Since the definite article is found, albeit rarely, in the earliest Biblical Hebrew poetry (such as at Genesis 49: 17, per the quotes below), the definite article likely is integral to the Hebrew language at an extremely early stage.
Let me add my own comment that like the definite article in Egyptian, as to which the case is clear, Hebrew was probably similar to Egyptian in this regard in that for centuries the definite article was used routinely in oral communications, but was nevertheless considered substandard for formal writing. Yet precisely because the definite article was so commonplace in common oral speech in the Late Bronze Age, inevitably formal writing in both Egyptian [prior to the Amarna Age] and early Biblical Hebrew poetry on rare occasion made use of the definite article.
Pat-El does not discuss that Egyptian analogy of mine, and does not propose exact dating. But he does make a very persuasive argument that the definite article is extremely old in the Hebrew language (as opposed to the majority view to the contrary).
Let me set forth here the most applicable portions of the article. I would greatly appreciate people’s comments on this topic.
“THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEMITIC DEFINITE ARTICLE”
pp. 24-25: “While many of the syntactical features of the article are shared, there are some native, and apparently old, patterns in each [Semitic] language which do not quite fit what we think we know about the article’s syntax. The importance of relics to historical reconstruction has been highlighted repeatedly by historical linguists dealing with morphology, but is equally valid in syntax.”
p. 27: “Relics. The following discussion focuses on native patterns in specific languages which do not exhibit the expected syntax but which seem to be very established.”
p. 28: “Hebrew. The Definite Article as a Subordinating Particle
[Here’s the most exciting part (p. 28), as it deals with the apparent presence of the definite article in what may be the oldest Biblical Hebrew poetry. I apologize for the fact that I cannot reproduce at all well the article’s alphabetical representation of Hebrew letters; please consult both the original article and Genesis 49: 17 in Hebrew.]
The definite article may appear on participles whose head noun is not definite:
sepp on ale ’orah han-nosek iqqebe sus (Gen. 49:17) ‘a snake on a road biting a horse’s heels’.
[…See also] (Jer. 27:3) ‘by the hand of messengers coming to Jerusalem’.
The lack of article on the head noun causes great difficulty to Hebraists. Davidson states that in this pattern the head noun is definite, and even when it is not formally marked, ‘the preceding word is really definite’ (1902: 133, §99).”
p. 40: “Origin
The most likely origin of the article is a deictic particle *ha and its derivatives, *han and *hal, as is suggested by Hasselbach (2007). One or both of these particles exist in all the Semitic languages and mostly function as presentatives:
…
Amarna. allû, annû. ‘presentative’ (Rainey 1988)
BH [Biblical Hebrew]. hinne, hen
p. 46: “[M]any of the relics found in both classical and Neo-Semitic languages are very consistent and should be assumed to go back to a common ancestor.”
p. 47: “I have further suggested that the article was derived from the presentative, which is a non-predicative particle. The presentative, or its reflexes han / hal, exists in all the [various Semitic] languages.”
* * *
To me, that suggests that the definite article was known in 14th century BCE Canaanite as a form of pre-Hebrew. The strongest Biblical support for that key proposition is that we’ve got some form of the definite article at Genesis 49: 17, which may be the earliest (or almost the earliest) Biblical Hebrew poetry. Perhaps the one thing that Isaac Fried and I would agree on here is the basic notion that ha- in Hebrew was already in use in the Late Bronze Age, not being an Iron Age development of the Hebrew language (as has heretofore routinely been supposed by the majority view).
I would love to know what people think of that article and my interpretation of that article. How old do people think the definite article is in the Hebrew language?
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois