Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
Hi Karl, just a few things here.
kwrandolph wrote: Protosemitic is not evidence, as it is a language for which we have no evidence of it ever existing. It is purely a theoretical construct based on certain presuppositions that may or may not be correct.
You are right in that protosemitic doesn't constitute solid evidence. However, we have constructed that protosemitic based on what we know, …
That’s just the problem—there are just too many things that we don’t know, and cannot know.
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
for instance, about Arabic (which has largely remained unchanged between classical and modern), Akkadian, and Ugaritic, the former of which we have LOTS of texts from. So linguists and grammarians assume that proto-Hebrew once shared a lot of the characteristics of Arabic and Akkadian; for instance, that Hebrew originally contained case endings which eventually dropped out of use. We still have evidence of these case endings, though; for instance, in the locative he and the he on the cohortative.
Notice your use of the word “assume”. That’s exactly my point. You make assumptions where there’s no evidence whether those assumptions are accurate or mistaken.
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
kwrandolf wrote: As for the semitic languages, they were distinct from their earliest extent examples. Were those distinctions already present at the Tower of Babel when God mixed up the languages?
We can't possibly know that.
This is a matter of which version of history do you trust?
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
Personally, I think the story is metaphorical. We know from linguistic science that languages don't just spread like that.
Not normally today. The picture given in Tanakh is that this spreading of the languages was not normal, rather had a supernatural origin. Do you accept that there’s a God who in six days created the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that’s in them? If yes, what’s to stop him from a little thing like mixing up languages in one night?
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
Further, the languages may be distinct enough, but languages that come from the same region share a lot of the same characteristics, some of which are virtually identical. For instance, there is very little difference between Moabite inscriptions and what you'd find in Biblical Hebrew.
I’ve read the Mesha stele, and noted the linguistic similarities and differences. But Moabite was basically a Hebrew dialect, seeing that historically it branched off from Hebrew.
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
kwrandolph wrote:As for historical Biblical Hebrew, all we have is Tanakh. That was written from about 1450–400 BC. Internal evidence of Genesis is that Moses compiled it from older documents
Actually, internal evidence suggests that Moses did not write the Pentateuch at all, or at least very little of it. There were at least four distinct sources. Furthernmore, how did Moses continue writing the Pentateuch after his death in Deuteronomy?
Okay, so you believe the Documentary Hypothesis. I won’t argue with it, except to say that I read a history of that theory from its beginnings in the first decade of the 19th century, its evidence and philosophy, and I personally reject it. You can believe it if you wish, but don’t insist that I agree with you, as that is proselytism. But I also ask you not to be offended if I take the historical view.
We see in Joshuaa 24:26 that he added to Torah, which would account for the final chapter of Deuteronomy. But we don’t have to rely on that, in that God was able to tell Moses to write that final chapter before the events happened.
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
Now, if we find a copy of the Torah written in ancient Egyptian, which is the language in which Moses likely wrote (if in fact he was a real person, which I doubt) I will certainly rethink my position, both as to the existence of Moses as well as the composition of the Pentateuch.
Why would he write in Egyptian? He was a member of a people who had a different language from Egyptian. There are examples of peoples keeping their languages alive even when living among other nations, even for centuries. Then there are other examples where languages are lost within two generations. What evidence is there that Moses may have been a member of the latter group?
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
Super-conservative evangelicals are the only ones who believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch; even church fathers such as Augustine didn't think he wrote it.
Augustine was a neo-Platonist, not an orthodox Christian. He took his cues more from Plato than the Bible. There were many like him who wanted more the praise of men, to be considered intellectual, than to follow exactly what the Bible teaches.
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
kwrandolph wrote:The vowel points were added a millennium after Biblical Hebrew ceased to be a natively spoken language. There’s no question that they don’t represent Biblical era pronunciations. How much do they represent Biblical Hebrew grammar and usages? There are clear cases where one can give evidence that the points are wrong as far as meaning.
Of course you are correct. What makes a difference here is how faithful you believe that the Masoretes were to the pronunciation of the text. They put in vowel points in order to preserve the oral tradition because people were forgetting how to pronounce it.
I think the Masoretes were very faithful, to the Tiberian tradition of pronunciation. But it is the Tiberian tradition that they inherited that differs greatly from Biblical era pronunciations.
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
Yes, there are mistakes in the pointing, but that doesn't mean that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Further, the imperfections inherent in the pointed text don't give you license to come up with your own system and just say "they're wrong." In order to do that, you would have to assume that they were ALL wrong, which is quite a leap.
Nah, I just ignore them. Where they’re correct as far as meanings go, they’re just clutter on the page. Where they’re wrong, they’re a distraction. It’s easier just to ignore them and concentrate on the consonantal text. Better yet, just read a text that doesn’t have them, the same way Hebrew was read before the points were invented.
Jonathan Beck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:56 pm
If you have faith enough to believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch and the Bible is divinely inspired (by the way, I DO believe the Bible to be divinely inspired), then why do you assume that the preservation of the oral tradition is wrong? Personally, I believe God was a part of this process as well.
Respectfully,
Jonathan
Yes, God could have preserved Biblical Hebrew pronunciations, or he could have just allowed the pronunciations to become lost as people applied the pronunciations of their native tongues—Aramaic, Persian, Greek, Latin—to the Hebrew text. The evidence I’ve seen seems to point to the latter.
Karl W. Randolph.