dialect
A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
of
biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...
(BH) proposed as an explanation for various irregular linguistic features of the
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...
(MT) of the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" . '' Aramaisms, indicative either of late dates of composition, or of editorial emendations. Although IH is not a new proposal, it only started gaining ground as a challenge to older arguments to late dates for some biblical texts since about a decade before the turn of the 21st century: linguistic variation in the Hebrew Bible might be ''better'' explained by synchronic rather than diachronic linguistics, meaning various biblical texts could be significantly older than many 20th century scholars supposed.
What constitutes linguistic irregularity in the MT is not in dispute, nor is the affinity of many these features to aspects of Aramaic. What distinguishes the theories is a historical question of
language contact
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...
. It is known that the
Kingdom of Judah
The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelites, Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the Davidic line for four centuries ...
(from which name the Jewish people are known), suffered a defeat at the hands of the Aramaic speaking
neo-Babylonian Empire
The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to ancient Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC a ...
, which involved deportation according to standard Babylonian practice. This language contact is recognised by all scholars, as are the resultant Aramaisms in late
Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...
(LBH). What the IH proposal explains, which LBH does not, is the Aramaisms (and other features) that appear in texts that many scholars would consider antedated the period of exile in Babylon. The two theories are thus not incompatible, which is why they co-existed throughout the 20th century. However, the more recent work does pose a challenge to the traditional dating of some specific texts in the Bible, the
Song of Songs
The Song of Songs (), also called the Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon, is a Biblical poetry, biblical poem, one of the five ("scrolls") in the ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh. Unlike other books in the Hebrew Bible, i ...
in particular.
Phonology
The reconstruction of IH proposes that diachronic phonetic shifts in ancient Israelite dialects varied geographically, with northern shifts attesting a number of
isogloss
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss, is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistics, linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Isoglosses are a ...
es with Aramaic and other
northwest Semitic languages
Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze ...
proto-Semitic
Proto-Semitic is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the linguistic homeland for Proto-Semitic: scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant, the Sahara, ...
phoneme ''ṯ̣'' shifts to ''ṣ'' in standard biblical Hebrew (SBH), but to ''ṭ'' in Aramaic. So original proto-Semitic ''nṯ̣r'' ("guard" or "keep") becomes ''nṣr'' (נצר) in SBH, but ''nṭr'' (נטר) in Aramaic. However, the form ''nṭr'' is found in several places in the Bible—in Leviticus 19:18, Jeremiah 3:5,12, Nahum 1:2 and Psalm 103:9—though it has the sense "be angry" in these places. Brown, Driver and Briggs (1907) and the '' Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament'' (1994–99) treat ''nṭr'' as a coinage derivative from ''nṯ̣r''—hence "keep one's anger"— though Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner's earlier lexicon (''Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti libros'', 1958) took a different approach. Irrespective of whether or not SBH coined (or borrowed) this root to convey the sense of "be angry", the Bible also attests the use of ''nṭr'' in exactly the same sense as the proto-Semitic word ''nṯ̣r''. The question is, is this ''latter'' data evidence of early assimilation of Aramaic in the north, or alternatively of late composition or editorial emendation, after Aramaic started to replace SBH in post-exilic Kingdom of Judah in the south? (See
Judeo-Aramaic language
The Judaeo-Aramaic languages are those varieties of Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic languages used by Jewish communities.
Early use
Aramaic, like Hebrew, is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language, and the two share many features. Fr ...
Various irregularities in the morphology of words attested in BH also show affinities with languages neighbouring ancient Israel to the north.
Relative pronoun
The
relative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the relative pronoun ''which'' introduces the relative clause. The relative clause modifies th ...
in SBH is ''asher'' (אשר ''’ăšer''), and in
Mishnaic Hebrew
Mishnaic Hebrew () is the Hebrew language used in Talmudic texts. Mishnaic Hebrew can be sub-divided into Mishnaic Hebrew proper (c. 1–200 CE, also called Tannaim, Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew I), which w ...
(MH) is ''sh''– (–ש). LBH appears to represent a transition stage: the latter form appears, but inconsistently. The
Song of Songs
The Song of Songs (), also called the Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon, is a Biblical poetry, biblical poem, one of the five ("scrolls") in the ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh. Unlike other books in the Hebrew Bible, i ...
is unusual in that it uses –ש consistently, with the sole exception of its first verse, which functions as a title. The Phoenician and
Ammonite
Ammonoids are extinct, (typically) coiled-shelled cephalopods comprising the subclass Ammonoidea. They are more closely related to living octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish (which comprise the clade Coleoidea) than they are to nautiluses (family N ...
cognate is אש.
Independent pronoun
The irregular second-person feminine singular independent pronoun אתי appears as the Ketiv in several IH texts including Judges 17:2, 1 Kings 14:2, and 2 Kings 4:16, 4:23, 8:1.
''Nomina actionis''
Nominalization
In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation, also known as nouning, is the use of a word that is not a noun (e.g., a verb, an adjective or an adverb) as a noun, or as the head (linguistics), head of a noun phrase. This change in functional c ...
of verbs (the
paradigm
In science and philosophy, a paradigm ( ) is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. The word ''paradigm'' is Ancient ...
example being ''qātal'', ) by forming a feminine ''nomen actionis'' (''qətîlāh'', ) is common in MH, but rare in SBH.
Semitic language
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic,
Amharic, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese, Modern South Arabian languages and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by mo ...
s, to indicate a
genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...
relationship between nouns. In simple two-noun examples, the first noun ('' nomen regens'') is cast in the phonetically abbreviated construct state, while the second—more generally, the final—noun ('' nomen rectum'') occurs in its phonetically full form, known as the ''status absolutus''. In SBH, the plural–singular distinction between nouns is still apparent, whether they are cast in absolute or construct form. However, there are a number of cases in the Bible, where the plural form of either ''nomen regens'' or ''nomen rectum'' is adopted to echo its partner, irrespective of whether it is intended to denote a singular referent. A clear example comes from 2 Kings 15:25 where the form of the toponymic ''nomen rectum'' Gilead is plural in the construction ''bəne Gil`adim'' (, "sons of Gilead"), but clearly intends singular reference, ''not'' "*sons of Gileads". An example of the SBH form of exactly the same phrase ''bəne Gil`ad'' () can be found in Numbers 26:30, without the masculine plural suffix ''–im'' (as in cherub/–im, seraph/–im,
kibbutz
A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...
/–im).
Periphrastic genitive
The periphrastic genitive is utilized in MH, Aramaic and Amurru Akkadian to convey an intensity regarding possession, but it is only used once in the Bible—in Song of Songs 3:7 regarding Solomon (, lit. "his
divan
A divan or diwan (, ''dīvān''; from Sumerian ''dub'', clay tablet) was a high government ministry in various Islamic states, or its chief official (see ''dewan'').
Etymology
The word, recorded in English since 1586, meaning "Oriental cou ...
which is Solomon's").
Deponent participle
There are two and only two instances of a deponent participle (passive form with active meaning) in the Hebrew Bible: ''nəḥittim'' (, "descended" for descending, 2 Kings 6:9) and (, "grasped of sword", Song of Songs 3:8). Song (or Canticles) 3:8 survives in the
Qumran
Qumran (; ; ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, about south of the historic city of Jericho, and adjac ...
fragment 4QCantc. This grammatical device is common in
Mishnaic Hebrew
Mishnaic Hebrew () is the Hebrew language used in Talmudic texts. Mishnaic Hebrew can be sub-divided into Mishnaic Hebrew proper (c. 1–200 CE, also called Tannaim, Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew I), which w ...
(MH) and Syriac, which are of relatively late dates; but the contexts could also suggest northern settings, influencing the phraseology.
Demonstrative pronoun
The variant feminine singular demonstrative pronoun is found in 2 Kings 6:19, Hosea 7:16, Psalm 132:12, and six times in the book of Ecclesiastes. All of these are IH texts, making this variant demonstrative pronoun a peculiarity of the Israelian Hebrew dialect.
Lexicon
A number of words have uneven distribution in the MT of the Hebrew Bible, if the indicators above (and internal evidence from the
semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
of the texts) are used to identify which portions may have Israelite
provenance
Provenance () is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, p ...
. In many cases, these words are also attested in the languages of ancient Israel's northern neighbours, like Ugarit,
Phoenicia
Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...
and Aram.
One of the clearest cases is the use of the word ''nʕm'' (נעם, "good, sweet, pleasant", as in the name Naomi) in contrast to the word ''ṭb'' (טב). In
Ugaritic
Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycl ...
, as in SBH, both ''nʕm'' and ''ṭb'' are used to convey the idea goodness. In Phoenician, ''nʕm'' is the only attested word for "good". It is also common in personal names:
Adonis
In Greek mythology, Adonis (; ) was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity.
The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip ...
is called נעמן in Phoenician. Likewise, we know of the Aramaic name Naaman, from the general of that name mentioned in 2 Kings 5. Close inspection of the MT reveals that 22 to 26 of the thirty uses of נעם can be associated with the north.
Methodology
The IH hypothesis identifies a number of linguistic features which are irregular in biblical Hebrew, but standard in the languages of her northern neighbours, or in MH (which clearly postdates the Bible, since it quotes it).
Song of Songs
The Song of Songs (), also called the Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon, is a Biblical poetry, biblical poem, one of the five ("scrolls") in the ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh. Unlike other books in the Hebrew Bible, i ...
"that it belongs to ''North'' Israel, where there is reason to suppose that the language spoken differed dialectically from that of Judah." Ian Young published, in 2001, orthographic evidence from one of the
Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...
( 4QCantb), attesting features of IH. By 2009, Noegel and Rendsburg had listed a total of "twenty grammatical and thirty-one lexical items" typical of IH in the MT of the Song.Noegel and Rendsburg (2009): 52.