[Avodah] Dikduk and the Age of the Chumash

[Micha Berger]

R Prof Joshue Berman recently blogged a review of Proc Aaron Kornkohl's
work: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/biblical-grammar-enters-the-culture-wars

I was interested. When I was a bachur, RSM zt"l pointed out to me the
evolution of only using "asher" - not having a prefix version in Chumash
to "sha-" as a prefix in Shofetim or Rus, to "she-" as you get to later
books of Tanakh. The context of our discussion was the Ashkenazi "Midim
anachnu Lakh shaAtah..." instead of "sheAtah". I thought we were calling
Hashem "The You", but RMS said it was a grammarian's hypercorrection to
Biblical Hebrew. And an older biblical

Here are key snippets from RJB's review:

    ... [Aaron] Hornkohl is a professor of ancient Hebrew at Cambridge
    and he loves dikduk. He's an expert in historical linguistics, the
    study of how languages change over time. Scholars like Prof. Hornkohl
    identify differences between the Hebrew found in the former prophets
    - early biblical Hebrew - and the Hebrew found in the books of the
    post-exilic era, such as Ezra, Nehemiah Chronicles and Esther. For
    example, the name "David" in early biblical Hebrew is almost always
    spelled with consonants alone - dvd. However, in post-exilic works
    it is almost always spelled with a vowel; something like dvid,
    because this form of spelling (called plene spelling, or ktiv male)
    is much more prevalent in the post-exilic books.

    There are many hundreds of markers of the difference between early
    biblical Hebrew and late biblical Hebrew, and they help us date the
    authorship of the books....

    If Hornkohl is correct that the Torah uniquely preserves so many
    pre-monarchic linguistic features and presents a linguistic profile
    that is earlier than that found in the other books of the Hebrew Bible...

    Some dismiss the work of historical linguists like Hornkohl, arguing
    that we cannot determine the relative composition date of a biblical
    book based on language. They contend that an author from a later period
    could easily mimic an earlier style to lend their work an air of
    antiquity and authenticity.

    However, the truth is that writers from later periods inevitably betray
    the language of their own time. They unintentionally slip in modern
    expressions and stylistic nuances - not occasionally, but pervasively
    and unmistakably...

    ... For instance, if your character says, "I am really tired,"
    in the 1970s this would likely have been expressed as, "I really
    am tired." Over the past fifty years "really" has moved from more
    frequently emphasizing the verb ("am") to modifying the adjective
    ("tired"). Or consider this: "I've got a station wagon. I would
    recommend buying one, too." While invoking the Brady Bunch-era vehicle
    might seem era-appropriate, both "I've got" and "recommend buying"
    reflect more recent linguistic preferences. A truly 1970s character
    would have said, "I have a station wagon. I would recommend to you
    to buy one also."

    As someone who lived through the 1970s, I can assure you: none of us
    would have consciously remembered such minute differences - and even if
    armed with a comprehensive guide, most modern readers wouldn't notice
    the discrepancies. These are the subtleties that historical linguists
    like Hornkohl detect after painstaking analysis of vast data sets, not
    the kinds of things that leap out to the average person.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 It is harder to eat the day before Yom Kippur
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   with the proper intent than to fast on Yom
Author: Widen Your Tent      Kippur with that intent.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                     - Rav Yisrael Salanter