Robert Rezetko and Ian Young. 2014. Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: Steps Toward an Integrated Approach. SBL ANEM/MACO 9. Atlanta: SBL Press. This book, available as a free PDF [see link below] , follows up on Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (henceforth LDBT) by Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd (London: Equinox, 2008) wherein the authors broke new ground in the field of BH historical linguistics by arguing that the biblical texts themselves cannot be used to date BH according to the traditional strata of Archaic Biblical Hebrew, Early/Standard Biblical Hebrew, and Late Biblical Hebrew. Instead, the authors demonstrated that so-called Archaic, Early, and Late BH features coexist with each other throughout the Hebrew Bible. The importance for Bible translators, and anyone, is to be able to explain why the text is the way it is. But the application for Bible translators is unique: we have the opportunity to nuance our translations for our audiences in ways relevant to the way BH was nuanced for its audiences. For example, why is the grammar of the book of Ruth so unruly? Why is it that the narrator of the book seems to use proper (Standard) BH grammar, but Naomi (who cant get grammatical gender straight) and Boaz (who loves paragogic nuns) deviate from what BH students consider to be good grammar? LDBTs hypothesis suggests a possible solution: the writer(s)/editor(s) might have used variant grammatical features to highlight something distinctive about the way these characters speak. It is possible that the author of Ruth used what he considered to be older Hebrew to characterize Naomis and Boaz speech. If so (and there are other options, for example I remember a SBL paper from Naama Zahavi-Ely using Naomis speech as an example of default grammatical gender (which I disagree with, but it is an option)) then Bible translators could take this as a cue to characterize Naomis and Boazs speech in translation in distinctive ways, relevant to the target culture. Abstract: The authors of this monograph seek to continue the scholarly dialogue and break fresh ground in research on the history of ancient Hebrew. Building on theoretical and methodological concepts in general historical linguistics and in diachronic linguistic research on various Ancient Near Eastern and Indo-European languages, they bring to the fore and reflect critically on fundamental issues such as the objective of the research, the nature of the written sources, and the notions of variation and periodization. They draw on innovative work by experts on premodern scribally-created writings in English, French, and Spanish, arguing that a similar application of a joint history of texts and history of language approach will advance our understanding of language variation and change in ancient Hebrew. They illustrate the progress that can be made through the application of two conventional historical sociolinguistic methods. The first method, cross-textual variable analysis, compares linguistic variants in different versions of the same writing, and is applied first to four sets of parallel passages in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible, and then to the Masoretic Text and the four Dead Sea Scrolls biblical manuscripts of the book of Samuel. The study of Samuel is accompanied by an extensive commentary on linguistic variants between the Hebrew texts of this book. The second method, variationist analysis, compares changing proportions of occurrence of linguistic variables in different writings, and is applied to an assortment of lexical and grammatical issues in the Hebrew Bible (Masoretic Text, Samaritan Pentateuch, biblical Dead Sea Scrolls), monarchic-era inscriptions, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, and the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls. The application of the two methods in the various case studies shows that previous accounts of language variation and change in ancient Hebrew are inadequate, and that more complete descriptions and evaluations of the distribution of linguistic data using the integrated text-language approach will advance and enrich our understanding of historical developments in ancient Hebrew. sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/9781628370461_OA2.pdf
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 01:02:32 +0000
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