Stand-Alone Perfect and Imperfect examples with identical 'time' meanings

[kwrandolph]

Karl wrote :

There is evidence that native speaking of Hebrew ceased. There’s no evidence that the language was forgotten, a claim that I never made, but there’s also no evidence that Hebrew was the language spoken in the market nor on the street. In fact, the evidence from Ezra and Nehemiah was that Hebrew was not used on the street nor in the market during their time. I have seen no evidence that it was revived as a natively spoken language at a later date.

Karl, I refer to Ezra/Nehemiah and Daniel. Firstly, unless some fortunate Israeli Archeologist on a dig trips over a stone carved with a symbol of Aphrodite holding a bunch of red roses and next to it a clay jar within which he discovers a letter written by a young man to his bride to be in vernacular hebrew dated to 210 BC I guess you will not be swayed.

Thanks for the humor.

Latin continued to change and develop long after it was no longer spoken as a native tongue. It had become the language of religion, law and trade. Because Latin continued being used, its vernacular changed. Luther, in his disputation with John Eck, was able to show that certain documents were late forgeries, because the vernacular Latin was wrong for the claimed date. Everyone who spoke Latin, spoke it as a learned, second language. Latin is still a spoken language.

All the evidence I’ve seen is that Hebrew had the same function among second temple Jews as Latin had for medieval Europe—the language of religion, law, official records and official communication with other Jewish communities. As such, it had a vernacular that developed over the centuries. I see no evidence that it was anything other than a learned, second language for everyone who spoke it.

Point One : May I now refer you back to this:
Maybe I should refer you to Nehemiah 13:24. No doubt you know this verse, of course you do. Now surely one would assume that this corroborates your reasoning? Yes I could see how one might use this as an argument in your favour. However I see it differently, that the incredible resoluteness of Nehemiah and others to preserve national identity, to preserve language and to ensure that Judah returns not just to God, but to what was in danger of being lost, not what had already dissappeared.

What do you mean by “disappeared”?

Point Two :
Haggai chapter Two - Those that had seen the temple in its former glory were obviosly collectng their Temple Pension by now, but may I ask what language they were speaking in the market place? And if they were alive, and weeping, did they not have kids and grandkids? And would they not have spoken market place Hebrew?

By the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, they were long gone, unless they were well over 175.

Point Three:
The many who came back, sorry, the very few that came back from Egypt, yep, speaking Egyptian?

Jeremiah didn’t specify when the very few would return. There were Jewish communities in Egypt during the Persian period, and they spoke Aramaic.

Point Four:
Daniel's Aramaic is absolutely and categorically and in its utter totality no evidence that he waslacking any vernacular or biblical hebrew skills.

Daniel was a native Biblical Hebrew speaker, according to his autobiography. We’re not told how old he was when he started learning Aramaic, a guess would be in his teens. He continued reading the Hebrew Bible, as his reference to Jeremiah indicates.

I write poems, prose, short stories and a play. Some of my work, especially the play are written with archaisms. My play is written in 17th century English with 17th century grammar.

I’ve been told by linguists that they can recognize any writing by a modern writer when the modern writer tries to write archaisms, modern writers can never compose 100% pure 17th century English.

Similarly, my first reaction to the Jehoash inscription was that the rhythm was off, even though the forger thought he copied Biblical era Hebrew. I also noticed anachronism.

My poetry contains old words and modern mixed. Put everything I wrote into a book, bury it for 500 years and boy would I love to see the grammarians conversations then. Karl, Literary styles change with age, what Iwrote 20 years ago has a different style and language than what I write today, yet composed into a single book and dicovered in 1000 years time I would be divided into Chris watts One and second and thrid Chris watts. This is just one reason why I have never agreed with a multiple authorship of Isaiah and find the critics in this area crouching between tightly packed historically literary compact walls through a linguistic escape tunnel.

Point Five:
I live amongst Polish people in Ireland. Next door to me are little children speaking Polish to their Polish friends and English to their English friends. I hear parents in the supermarket with their kids seaking Polish and English. The ones I talk with have been here already 10 some 15 years. These children want to speak Polish to their children. Now these people have no religious identity or common bond of tradtional legalisms and cultural habits that unite them as a people, plus they left their homes voluntarily and most do not wish to return to live. YET they continue with the importance of passing on their language, they, like other foreigners, prefer to mix with their own kind and speak not English but Polish. How much more, how much more Karl can you imagine the importance that a people in exile would wish to continue to pass on their market slang language AND huddle together in groups in Market language using the slang words they are used to while eating their olives and sandwiches over a mug of yoghurt and Persian tea? (of course I allow for exceptions, and yes I have here a university paper on the socio-economic situation of these people in exile and how many got rich and stayed behind and assimilated, BUT, this is important, the majority that returned would have been poor and landless along the Euphrates and South of Babylon, those were the ones that returned for the most part).

I lived among Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. You mention 10–15 years, the immigrants I worked with had been here 30–40 years or longer. Their children had been born in the U.S. They grew up here, got married here, now have children of their own. The American born want to pass the language and cultural identity on to their children. They send their children to “Chinese school” (which most kids hate) and celebrate Chinese festivals, but too many find that their own knowledge of Chinese language is limited to going to the market and restaurants, and domestic affaires. I remember one event where I was speaking with immigrant parents in Chinese, and I mentioned how I had jokingly called an abacus a “calculator”. Their teenage daughter, who had been listening, interrupted in English “Mommy, I don’t know that word.” The word she didn’t know was “abacus”. Another time I ended up translating between an immigrant mother and her American born daughter. Multiply those examples by many other rare uses of language that the American born don’t know except in English, so they can’t teach those concepts to their children except in English. By the time the grandchildren reach adulthood, they basically give up and speak in English almost all the time.

This is the same experience of the midwestern “Scandihoovians”—my mother’s grandparents were the immigrants, my father’s parents were brought here as small children, by the time of my mother’s generation, the Norwegian she picked up was often mangled, e.g. “du scufflebunk” (du skall få bank) and for my father things like “plättar” and “smör gås bord”. I learned only English at home. We still enjoyed some of the Scandinavian customs, like celebrating Sankta Lucia Dagen, but most of the time we were just like other Americans.

Now take the Jews in Babylon, the only thing that differs from the examples above, is that religious ceremonies and official records were kept in Hebrew. Most of their kids grumbled about going to “Hebrew school” and the amount of Hebrew they learned was often just enough to pass their bar mitzvah. From what I can gather, Jews in Babylon and later Persia were not herded into ghettos or shtetls where they had almost no interaction with other peoples. The end result is that by the third generation, most Jews would speak mainly the languages of their surroundings, even at home and in the market. And the majority language in Babylon was Aramaic.

Point 6
I know you will not like point 6 Karl, but I hve to re-iterate my feelings, I am not apologetic for their intrusion, for they remind my that we are talking about human experience and peoples' daily lives as opposed to generalising upon the coldness of a printed sentence that has been emptied of its breath, its tears, sweat and hopes and struggles. The emotions and forces that drive people today, are absolutely no different from what drove the returning Jews, or their teenage children. You say that the last person died out around 500 BC and that vernacular hebrew spoken over chicken soup while mosquitos and grasshoppers un-silenced the night was no longer used, I say there is no evidence to support this and that there is enough circumstantial evidence to refute this idea.

Don’t my examples above breath life into how I interpret those passages?

"And I really hope someone finds that love letter in market place hebrew......"

That would be interesting.

Chris watts

This discussion is going around and around in circles. You keep giving me speculation, I want hard data. All the hard evidence I’ve seen is that the common people didn’t speak Hebrew except often poorly as a learned, second language. Even the highly educated, the priests, learned Hebrew as a second language. The language on the street and in the market was Aramaic, and increasingly Greek during the Hellenistic age. What I would need is more than an isolated love letter, rather a description of a town or district where Hebrew, not Aramaic, was still spoken. So far, that description has not turned up. All the descriptions I’ve seen indicates that Hebrew was used only as a learned, second language while other languages were the daily languages on the street. That’s also why the LXX and Syriac translations of the Bible were made.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Jason Hare]

Jason, I'll send you a link so you can check out the Spanish pronunciation of Latin.

Thank you. I'll go through the links.

Edit: LatinNewTestamentAudio.com is down! That's the one that they said has the Spanish accent recordings. That's disappointing.

[Chris Watts]

What do you mean by “disappeared”?

Point Two :
Haggai chapter Two - Those that had seen the temple in its former glory were obviosly collectng their Temple Pension by now, but may I ask what language they were speaking in the market place? And if they were alive, and weeping, did they not have kids and grandkids? And would they not have spoken market place Hebrew?

By the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, they were long gone, unless they were well over 175.

This discussion is going around and around in circles. You keep giving me speculation, I want hard data.
Karl W. Randolph.

Ok so I will break the circle and let's try triangulating: I would love to answer all your points above but have decided to economize.

What did I mean by "Disappeared'"? I meant that this scripture clearly shows that not just a few were eager to retain the Hebrew vernacular, in other words they were eager to hold onto what was in danger of disappearing, NOT what had already disappeared, IE the language since this is what is referred to. CLEARLY the emphasis is on the language in verse 24 of Neh 13. You can not argue with this.

Now really Karl, 175 years? Do not forget two things please, one, there were three seperate times when Jews were deported so some of those led away had been in Babylon for less than 70 years. Ezra 3:12 and 13, these were not Ghosts, but old men and no doubt a few woman as well. (But I can not provide hard evidence that any older women were there, this is just supposition and theory based on my logic and experience ....)

Since you do not seem impressed with Saenz-Badillos that I mentioned in my last post, I would like to just throw in this. I am only including the link because it just offers a brief summary on Page 6. A summary which by others venturing in greater detail the simple fact about Rabbinic Hebrew. You said you want hard evidence, a lot of this I am reading comes from rather detailed references to the grammar of Hebrew that sometimes goes over my head. Another paper I read also said the same about Rabbinic Hebrew and its offshoot from the vernacular of Post exillic verancular.

https://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/docma ... ation/file

You can not say that vernacular hebrew was lost after the exile, we have a few jews left in Judea, (do you really believe that every single soul left)? I bet you a basket of figs and an olive tree that at least one mum and one dad and 2 children were left in a little house somewhere in southern Judah. Come on Karl, this is reality, there would have been a few. Then you have the returning jews from Egypt, which of course you seem to think forgot their hebrew and picked up an Egyptian version of Aramaic? Seriously? Of course there were aramaic influences and dialectical changes and foreign catch-phrases introduced and grammar changes, I do not deny any of this.

My argument is simple, There would have been plenty of young Men and women in 200 BC going to the local Rabbi and asking him to bless their engagement in good old fashioned hebrew Market street talk, however in the North not so much. And that the evidence I have been able to comprehend convinces me that a vernacular hebrew was still being spoken up to 200 AD.

Sorry, I have re-created the circle. I will stand aside. But at least this discussion forced me to re-read a few things I had forgotten, thankyou for that.

Chris watts

[kwrandolph]

What do you mean by “disappeared”?

This discussion is going around and around in circles. You keep giving me speculation, I want hard data.
Karl W. Randolph.

Ok so I will break the circle and let's try triangulating: I would love to answer all your points above but have decided to economize.

What did I mean by "Disappeared'"? I meant that this scripture clearly shows that not just a few were eager to retain the Hebrew vernacular, in other words they were eager to hold onto what was in danger of disappearing, NOT what had already disappeared, IE the language since this is what is referred to. CLEARLY the emphasis is on the language in verse 24 of Neh 13. You can not argue with this.

You make the assumption that vernacular = spoken on the street and in the market. That’s why I keep bringing up the history of Latin vernacular—we have its history, and that history shows that for most of the last 2000 years, Latin vernacular ≠ spoken on the street and in the market. During that time, Latin vernacular = learned, second language. Latin is still spoken and has a modern vernacular. But all modern speakers of Latin learned Latin as a second language.

All the evidence I’ve seen is that post-exile Hebrew followed the same pattern as did Latin. The evidence from Ezra and Nehemiah is that Hebrew was not the language spoken on the street nor in the market (I repeat myself).

Now really Karl, 175 years? Do not forget two things please, one, there were three seperate times when Jews were deported so some of those led away had been in Babylon for less than 70 years.

Daniel thought the 70 years ended when Darius the Mede over threw the Babylonians. But the 70 years started not with the first group that Nebuchadnezzar exiled, but with the last group. Some Jews were in Babylon longer than 70 years, not shorter.

Ezra 3:12 and 13, these were not Ghosts, but old men and no doubt a few woman as well. (But I can not provide hard evidence that any older women were there, this is just supposition and theory based on my logic and experience ....)

About the first half of Ezra’s book recounts events that happened before Ezra came on the scene, some of those events some decades before. The laying of the foundation of the second temple was one of those events. What is the probability that any of those old people, who were around 80 years old or older when the foundation was laid, were still around when Ezra came to Judea decades later?

Since you do not seem impressed with Saenz-Badillos that I mentioned in my last post, I would like to just throw in this. I am only including the link because it just offers a brief summary on Page 6. A summary which by others venturing in greater detail the simple fact about Rabbinic Hebrew. You said you want hard evidence, a lot of this I am reading comes from rather detailed references to the grammar of Hebrew that sometimes goes over my head. Another paper I read also said the same about Rabbinic Hebrew and its offshoot from the vernacular of Post exillic verancular.

https://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/docma ... ation/file

I’ve seen these arguments before, but they’re based on assumptions and wishful thinking. A case in point is the story of the maid knowing Hebrew ignores the fact that she worked there for years, hearing rabbis and students speaking Hebrew. She was a smart lady, and after years of hearing (and possibly reading on her own) she became a better expert on the Hebrew language than many rabbis. There’s no evidence that she came from a Hebrew speaking town.

You can not say that vernacular hebrew was lost after the exile, we have a few jews left in Judea, (do you really believe that every single soul left)?

Either every single individual left, or Jeremiah lied. I put my bet on that Jeremiah told the truth. After all, he was there, and we were not there.

Sorry, I have re-created the circle. I will stand aside. But at least this discussion forced me to re-read a few things I had forgotten, thankyou for that.

Chris watts

Yeah, you didn’t triangulate, you circled around.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Chris Watts]

Yep, once again I will economise Karl, only because this statement wrangled me quite a lot when you said:

Either every single individual left, or Jeremiah lied. I put my bet on that Jeremiah told the truth. After all, he was there, and we were not there.

Germany was flattened, their towns and cities destroyed, their country in ruins and their people destitute in 1945. Karl, how many times have you read this, or statements like this and are these words a lie...????????????????????? When scripture says that Judah went into exile for her sins, a naton that knows not God, that does evil........does this include every single soul???????????? Was there not a single building left standing in Germany, was there no one left in Judah that was good? Was every German person destitute in 1945?

Generalisations are made about concepts and we know what they mean, even the newspapers are full of them and we mostly know what they mean. Sometimes we make the mistake of disengaging ourselves from the realities and complexities of the human experience in historical narratives when we read the scripture and easily oh so easily forget that a couple of verses or a whole chapter can not even begin to tell us the whole story nor can it account for a million details spanning even a single year of a persons's or a nation's history. Almost everything is a generalisation unless specific details are intricately given us.

It is not disagreeing with God's word or Jeremiah to say that there were a few left in the land. Jeremiah 52: 12-16, these were not the ones that went into Egypt. And Jeremiah 24: 2-8 supports my argument that scripture generalises in the context of when we so often read that Israel was evil, or Judah went whoring after many gods.

And one last non-circular point of comparable interest. God said that ALL israel and ALL judah would be kicked out of the land and so they were after AD 135 and we all understand that this is a truth and we know what it means and it happened just as God said when he said: "The land will vomit you out". However, for 1860 years before 1947, there were ALWAYS jews living in Israel even in AD 136 (one year after the massive deportations to Egypt and Rome), in their hundreds at the very least, and we have documentary evidence for this. This is the exact sort of scenario that would have taken place during the exile.

Chris watts

[talmid56]

Karl, "vernacular' doesn't include a learned second language or scholarly language. It is rather the everyday language of a people, thus that of the man or woman on the street and market. See here for the American Heritage Dictionary, a standard English dictionary, listing: https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=vernacular

Thus your Latin example doesn't quite work. Plus, it is not credible that people who spoke Latin suddenly stopped speaking it when the Roman Empire fell. If they had, the Romance languages would not have developed. For your example to work, that would have to be true.

I have not read any of the non-Biblical DSS, but those who are experts in that field suggest that they reflect a vernacular spoken at the time of their composition. That is, a everyday Hebrew dialect, and one spoken long after your cutoff date. I have read about a quarter of Ben Sira in Hebrew, and it is quite similar in vocabulary to Proverbs. While that doesn't prove that Hebrew was still an everyday language, given the uses to which wisdom literature was put, it makes it probable.

This is no doubt not hard evidence in your view, but it works for many scholars, and it's plausible in my view. As for your take on this, at best you have shown that some Jews no longer spoke Hebrew as a native language after the exile. A point which no one denies. You have not, in my view, demonstrated that all Jews abandoned Hebrew for everyday use, or even that most of them did.

I'm going with Chris on this one.

[talmid56]

Plus, a language that had over a thousand years of use and tradition (likely going back to the Patriarchs, who would have learned Hebrew when living in Canaan before Joseph went to Egypt) would not be lightly abandoned by a people. It doesn't add up.

[kwrandolph]

Yep, once again I will economise Karl, only because this statement wrangled me quite a lot when you said:

Either every single individual left, or Jeremiah lied. I put my bet on that Jeremiah told the truth. After all, he was there, and we were not there.

When scripture says that Judah went into exile for her sins, a naton that knows not God, that does evil........does this include every single soul????????????

That’s what Jeremiah claimed. Your argument is not with me, but with Jeremiah.

Generalisations are made about concepts and we know what they mean, even the newspapers are full of them and we mostly know what they mean. Sometimes we make the mistake of disengaging ourselves from the realities and complexities of the human experience in historical narratives when we read the scripture and easily oh so easily forget that a couple of verses or a whole chapter can not even begin to tell us the whole story nor can it account for a million details spanning even a single year of a persons's or a nation's history. Almost everything is a generalisation unless specific details are intricately given us.

Specific details are given in Jeremiah 43.

It is not disagreeing with God's word or Jeremiah to say that there were a few left in the land. Jeremiah 52: 12-16, these were not the ones that went into Egypt.

I don’t know why the last chapter of 2 Kings was appended here. This chapter describes events that happened before the total depopulation of Judah. The ones who were left were the ones who later went to Egypt.

And Jeremiah 24: 2-8 supports my argument that scripture generalises in the context of when we so often read that Israel was evil, or Judah went whoring after many gods.

Chris watts

I read the whole of Jeremiah 24. I don’t see in it what you seem to say.

Karl W. Randolph.

[kwrandolph]

Plus, a language that had over a thousand years of use and tradition (likely going back to the Patriarchs, who would have learned Hebrew when living in Canaan before Joseph went to Egypt) would not be lightly abandoned by a people. It doesn't add up.

For crying out loud, how many times do I have to say that they didn’t abandon the language?

The reason the language was important is because it was the language of worship, of government, of high literature, of communication with the diaspora. That some of the children were not learning Hebrew shows that Hebrew was not the language of the street nor of the marketplace.

To give an example of what I mean, I knew a man who, when he was a child, was sent to the closest parochial school. It just happened to be on the Apache reservation. When he went out onto the playground for recess, all the other kids spoke Apache. Within a few months, he was able to play with his classmates, speaking Apache. He went on camping trips, went to the market, talked on the street, all in Apache. Because he had started so young, by the time he graduated high school, he spoke Apache as well as any of his classmates.

That there were children who didn’t learn Hebrew, many whose fathers were prominent in society, says that their playmates also didn’t speak Hebrew, at least not on the street nor in the market. That means that they didn’t hear Hebrew from adults either. That those children didn’t hear Hebrew, means that Hebrew was not the language on the street nor in the market. That means that it took special effort to learn Hebrew, the type of effort that required both parents’ cooperation. Cooperation needed to teach a learned, second language. Cooperation that the non-Jewish wives were frustrating.

Karl W. Randolph.

[kwrandolph]

Karl, "vernacular' doesn't include a learned second language or scholarly language. It is rather the everyday language of a people, thus that of the man or woman on the street and market. See here for the American Heritage Dictionary, a standard English dictionary, listing: https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=vernacular

You’re right, “vernacular” refers to a non-literary language that is used in everyday events. It also refers to a natively spoken language. So what do you call a language that is a learned, second language that is used for everyday events such as business, communication between peoples of different language backgrounds, for law, etc.? Medieval Latin fulfilled that function of a common, everyday language that no one spoke natively. Because it was a non-native learned second language used for everyday events, its rate of change was much slower than that of natively spoken languages, yet it continued to be adjusted for changed circumstances. Modern Latin is not the same as medieval Latin.

Thus your Latin example doesn't quite work. Plus, it is not credible that people who spoke Latin suddenly stopped speaking it when the Roman Empire fell. If they had, the Romance languages would not have developed. For your example to work, that would have to be true.

Unlike Latin that was spoken over a wide area by many peoples, Hebrew was spoken by a single people. As a result, Biblical Hebrew had only one offspring—DSS Hebrew that morphed into Tiberian Hebrew that morphed into modern, Israeli Hebrew. I was taught Tiberian Hebrew in class.

I have not read any of the non-Biblical DSS,

Nor have I. My comments are therefore based on the description of DSS Hebrew found in Waltke & O’Connor’s book. Their description is of a language that had a different grammar than had by Biblical Hebrew.

but those who are experts in that field suggest that they reflect a vernacular spoken at the time of their composition. That is, a everyday Hebrew dialect, and one spoken long after your cutoff date. I have read about a quarter of Ben Sira in Hebrew, and it is quite similar in vocabulary to Proverbs. While that doesn't prove that Hebrew was still an everyday language, given the uses to which wisdom literature was put, it makes it probable.

At the same time just as probable of a learned, second language.

This is no doubt not hard evidence in your view, but it works for many scholars, and it's plausible in my view. As for your take on this, at best you have shown that some Jews no longer spoke Hebrew as a native language after the exile. A point which no one denies. You have not, in my view, demonstrated that all Jews abandoned Hebrew for everyday use, or even that most of them did.

I'm going with Chris on this one.

Yes, it works for many scholars. But so far none of them have shown any hard evidence to back up their claims.

Karl W. Randolph.