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crosspost from Ioudaios
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 04:53:56 EST
From: Frederick Cryer <FC@teol.ku.dk>
To: Multiple recipients of list <ioudaios-l@lehigh.edu>
Subject: languages of Palestine
Well...I keep trying to point this out, but:
it's only a dictum that we scholars have inherited that insists that
Hebrew had died out or was dying out in the "post-exilic" period (a
period that, in a linguistic sense, has no meaning: the removal of
2,000-3,000 Judaeans from Jerusalem will not stop the citizens of
Moresheth from speaking their ancestral language; only quite specific
forms of social pressure can do that). We have, literally, NO
EVIDENCE to that effect. Nor do we actually possess huge mounds of
cast-off Greek administrative papyri to attest to the popularity that
is claimed for Greek; we have only some traditions in Josephus about
the inroads made by "Hellenism" in Palestine. With all respect, such
traditions are not linguistic facts and cannot be evaluated as such.
We can make some guesses as to the growth of significance and use of
Aramaic in Syria-Palestine, much of it based on the later success of
Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Palmyrene, and Syriac, but...we do not
have reams and reams of daily correspondence in Aramaic,
administrative bumpf and the like, which would enable us with
confidence to locate it socially. We DO, however, have huge amounts
of both literary and non-literary compositions in Qumran Hebrew,
Copper Scroll Hebrew, and now, 4QMMT, where the latter two point in
the direction of later Middle Hebrew. So: Hebrew is the only well-
attested obviously *linguistic* evidence we possess.
Fred Cryer