Israelian Hebrew (or IH) is a northern

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is ...

biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of t ...

(BH) proposed as an explanation for various irregular linguistic features of the

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...

(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 Synchronic may refer to: * ''Synchronic'' (film), a 2019 American science fiction film starring Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie * Synchronic analysis, the analysis of a language at a specific point of time * Synchronicity, the experience of two or ...

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 and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

. It is known that the

Kingdom of Judah The Kingdom of Judah ( he, , ''Yəhūdā''; akk, 𒅀𒌑𒁕𒀀𒀀 ''Ya'údâ'' 'ia-ú-da-a-a'' arc, 𐤁𐤉𐤕𐤃𐤅𐤃 ''Bēyt Dāwīḏ'', " House of David") was an Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. C ...

(from which name the

Jewish people Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

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 Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and bei ...

, 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 branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of t ...

(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 in particular.

Features

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 (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Major ...

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 A ...

/ṱ/ > /ṣ/ or /ṭ/

The assumed

proto-Semitic Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language ancestral to the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic '' Urheimat''; scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant ( ...

phoneme /ṱ/ shifts to /ṣ/ in standard biblical Hebrew (SBH), but to /ṭ/ in Aramaic. So original proto-Semitic ''nṱr'' ("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 The ''Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament'' ("HALOT") is a scholarly dictionary of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, which has partially supplanted ''Brown–Driver–Briggs''. It is a translation and updating of the German-language Koehle ...

'' (1994–99) treat ''nṭr'' as a coinage derivative from ''nṱr''—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 ''nṱr''. 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.)

/ṣ́/ > /ṣ/ or /q/ then /ʻ/

/ṯ/ > /š/ or /t/

/ḏ/ > /z/ or /d/

Morphology

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. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the r ...

in SBH is ''asher'' (אשר), and in

Mishnaic Hebrew Mishnaic Hebrew is the Hebrew of Talmudic texts. Mishnaic Hebrew can be sub-divided into Mishnaic Hebrew proper (also called Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew I), which was a spoken language, and Amoraic Hebrew (also c ...

(MH) is ''sh''– (–ש). LBH appears to represent a transition stage: the latter form appears, but inconsistently. The Song of Songs 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 a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid and cuttlefis ...

cognate is אש.

Independent pronoun

The irregular second-person feminine singular independent pronoun אתי appears as the

Ketiv Qere and Ketiv, from the Aramaic ''qere'' or ''q're'', ("hat isread") and ''ketiv'', or ''ketib'', ''kethib'', ''kethibh'', ''kethiv'', ("hat iswritten"), also known as "q're uchsiv" or "q're uchtiv," refers to a system for marking differences ...

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 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 of a noun phrase. This change in functional category can occur through morphological t ...

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. Etymology ''Paradigm'' comes f ...

example being ''qātal'', קטל) by forming a feminine ''nomen actionis'' (''qətîlā^h'', קטלה) is common in MH, but rare in SBH.

Syntax

Double plural

SBH utilises the '' status constructus'', typical of many Afroasiatic and especially

Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...

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 can a ...

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 Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

''nomen rectum''

Gilead Gilead or Gilad (; he, גִּלְעָד ''Gīləʿāḏ'', ar, جلعاد, Ǧalʻād, Jalaad) is the ancient, historic, biblical name of the mountainous northern part of the region of Transjordan.''Easton's Bible Dictionary'Galeed''/ref> ...

is plural in the construction ''bəne Gil`adim'' (בני גלעדים, "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'' (בני גלעד) can be found in Numbers 26:30, without the masculine plural suffix ''–im'' (as in

cherub A cherub (; plural cherubim; he, כְּרוּב ''kərūḇ'', pl. ''kərūḇīm'', likely borrowed from a derived form of akk, 𒅗𒊏𒁍 ''karabu'' "to bless" such as ''karibu'', "one who blesses", a name for the lamassu) is one of the ...

/–im,

seraph A seraph (, "burning one"; plural seraphim ) is a type of celestial or heavenly being originating in Ancient Judaism. The term plays a role in subsequent Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Tradition places seraphim in the highest rank in Christ ...

/–im,

kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...

/–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 (מטתו שלשלמה, lit. "his divan 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'' (נחתים, "descended" for descending, 2 Kings 6:9) and (אחזי חרב, "grasped of sword", Song of Songs 3:8). Song (or Canticles) 3:8 survives in the

Qumran Qumran ( he, קומראן; ar, خربة قمران ') 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, near the Israeli ...

fragment 4QCant^c. This grammatical device is common in

(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 זוֹ / זֹה 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 (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

of the texts) are used to identify which portions may have Israelite

provenance Provenance (from the French ''provenir'', 'to come from/forth') 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 i ...

. In many cases, these words are also attested in the languages of ancient Israel's northern neighbours, like

Ugarit ) , image =Ugarit Corbel.jpg , image_size=300 , alt = , caption = Entrance to the Royal Palace of Ugarit , map_type = Near East#Syria , map_alt = , map_size = 300 , relief=yes , location = Latakia Governorate, Syria , region = ...

Phoenicia Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their his ...

and Aram. One of the clearest cases is the use of the word ''n`m'' (נעם, "good, sweet, pleasant", as in the name Naomi) in contrast to the word ''ṭb'' (טב). In

Ugaritic Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic language, classified by some as a dialect of the Amorite language and so the only known Amorite dialect preserved in writing. It is known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologist ...

, as in SBH, both ''n`m'' and ''ṭb'' are used to convey the idea goodness. In Phoenician, ''n`m'' is the only attested word for "good". It is also common in personal names:

Adonis In Greek mythology, Adonis, ; derived from the Canaanite word ''ʼadōn'', meaning "lord". R. S. P. Beekes, ''Etymological Dictionary of Greek'', Brill, 2009, p. 23. was the mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite. One day, Adonis was gored by ...

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).

Evidence in the Song of Songs

As early as 1920,

Samuel Rolles Driver Samuel Rolles Driver (2 October 1846 – 26 February 1914) was an English divine and Hebrew scholar. He devoted his life to the study, both textual and critical, of the Old Testament. He was the father of Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver, also a disti ...

considered of the Song of Songs "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 the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...

( 4QCant^b), 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.

References

Bibliography

* Driver, Samuel Rolles. ''An introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament''.

Charles Scribner's Sons Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan R ...

, 1920. * Gervitz, Stanley. "Of Syntax and Style in the 'Late Biblical Hebrew'–'Old Canaanite' Connection". ''

Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society The ''Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society'' (JANES) is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal. It was established in 1968 as ''The Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University'', and since 1980 it has been housed a ...

'' 18 (1986): 28–29. * Hurvitz, Avi. * Noegel, Scott B. and Gary A. Rendsburg, ''Solomon's Vinyard: literary and linguistic studies in the Song of Songs''. Ancient Israel and its Literature.

Society of Biblical Literature The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), founded in 1880 as the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, is an American-based learned society dedicated to the academic study of the Bible and related ancient literature. Its current stated mis ...

, November 2009. * Rendsburg, Gary A. "A Comprehensive Guide to Israelian Hebrew: Grammar and Lexicon". ''Orient (journal)'' 38 (2003): 5–35. * Rendsburg, Gary A.
Notes on Israelian Hebrew (I)
. In Yitzhak Avishur and Robert Deutsch (eds). ''Michael: Historical, Epigraphical and Biblical Studies in Honor of Prof. Michael Heltzer''. (Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publications, 1999), pp. 255–258. * Rendsburg, Gary A.
Israelian Hebrew Features in Genesis 49
. ''Maarav'' 8 (1992): 161–170. * Rendsburg, Gary A. "Morphological Evidence for Regional Dialects in Ancient Hebrew" in Walter R. Bodine (ed.) ''Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992), pp. 65–88.'' * Rendsburg, Gary A. "Northern Hebrew through Time: From the Song of Deborah to the Mishnah". In Cynthia L Miller-Naudé and Ziony Zevit (eds). ''Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew''. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012), pp. 339–359. * Vern, Robyn. ''The relevance of linguistic evidence to the early dating of the archaic poetry of the Hebrew Bible''. PhD dissertation.

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

, 2008. * Young, Ian. ''Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew''. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 5. Tübingen: de:Mohr Siebeck, 1993. * Young, Ian. "The 'Northernisms' of the Israelite Narratives in Kings". ''Zeitschrift für Althebräistik'' 8 (1995): 63–70. * Young, Ian. "Notes on the Language of 4QCant^b". ''

Journal of Jewish Studies A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

'' 52 (2001): 122–31. {{Hebrew language Language of the Hebrew Bible