B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Analyzing the book of Esther through linguistic analysis. Here's an article where Holmstedt and Screnock (University of Toronto) discuss the peculiarities of the Language of Esther, and where it fits in the development of BH toward Mishnaic Hebrew.

https://ancienthebrewgrammar.files.word ... bl2013.pdf

Whither Esther? A Linguistic Profile of the Book of Esther
Robert D. Holmstedt (University of Toronto) and John Screnock (University of Toronto) Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew, Annual SBL, Baltimore 2013
Abstract
The book of Esther is linguistically challenging, not due to any specific difficulty in reading or interpretation, but due to its elusive grammatical profile. Much of the text feels like one is reading Genesis or 2 Kings, yet strange features poke through in every chapter. It is due to these strange features—which can often be found in other books among the Ketuvim as well as the Mishnah—that the book has been characterized as “archaizing” (Polzin 1976). Much water has passed under the bridge since Polzin’s work, culminating in the last five years’ heated debate about the historical stages of Hebrew and even the use of linguistic evidence in dating biblical texts. In this essay, we will provide a grammatical profile of the book of Esther, building upon and updating the valuable thesis by Robert Bergey (1983), and in the process offer a few methodological suggestions.

Jonathan Mohler

Jemoh66 wrote:Analyzing the book of Esther through linguistic analysis. Here's an article where Holmstedt and Screnock (University of Toronto) discuss the peculiarities of the Language of Esther, and where it fits in the development of BH toward Mishnaic Hebrew.

I agree that Esther is on the way from Biblical Hebrew to Mishnaic, but this analysis seems to follow some of the same weaknesses that I found in similar studies. Simple word frequencies don’t tell the whole story. In fact, some of the word frequencies listed in the article indicate other than what the authors intended. Others fail to take into account that the words had different meanings, e.g. the ממלכה and מלכות pair listed in the article.

One thing I noticed is that quite early, spoken Biblical Hebrew consists of subject, verb then possible object as the most common pattern. The general rule is that the most important item comes first in a sentence, but it seems in most conversations the actor, or speaker, is usually the most important in the sentence, hence usually comes first. What the actor does is usually the second most important, hence comes second. Therefore the article’s question concerning word order VS verses SV needs to take conversational Hebrew into account, which didn’t happen.

I’m on record for saying that I think that the Hebrew used in Esther is that of street Hebrew rather than good scholarly Hebrew. Thus the inclusion of local terms common among expat communities, of which the Jewish community in Susa was one, just follows that pattern. From historical sources, it appears that the vast majority of Jews of that time were in expat communities, mostly within the Persian empire, hence would be familiar with the Aramaic and Persian terms used in the surrounding communities. I think the authors made a bigger issue of Aramaic and Persian loan words than is warranted.

The authors mentioned the spelling of Jerusalem as ירושלים as being significant, but I think that the four times that it is so spelled in Tanakh are copyist errors from much later. None of the verses where we find that spelling are found at Qumran. The New Testament (Byzantine tradition) records that the pronunciation of Jerusalem was ιεροσολυμα still as late as the first century.

As far as basic grammar is concerned, I found no evidence that it had changed from Biblical patterns. In other words, the verbal use had not yet changed to tense based conjugation, as was the use during the Mishnaic period. Yet it feels as if Esther was written by someone for whom Hebrew was a second or third language. It lacks the smooth, fluent flow found in pre-Babylonian Exile books.

From historical sources that the events recorded in Esther occurred when? We’re not sure. Thanks to Alexander the Great, we no longer have Persian historical records. What we have is uncertain, therefore we can no more than make an educated guess when they occurred, and only an educated guess when the Book of Esther was written. And we know too little about the development of the Hebrew language so we can’t use the quirks of Hebrew use in Esther to pin down its authorship dates.

This response is my thinking through my fingers as I consider this article. I guess my conclusion should be that this is a very flawed article. You’re free to take this response as my 2¢ and you can disagree.

Karl W. Randolph.