Saturday, October 23, 2004
Or, don't read too much into the language analysis
(2) The Aramaisms may perhaps be explained in still another way. We probably possess the Old Testament, not in the original wording and orthography, but in a form which is slightly revised. We must unquestionably distinguish, it seems, between Biblical Hebrew as an unchanging literary language and the conversational Hebrew, which underwent constant changes. For there is no instance anywhere that a spoken language has been preserved for some nine hundred years so little changed in its grammar and vocabulary as the language of our extant canonical books. Let us, for an instance, compare the English, French, or German of nine hundred years ago with those languages in their present form. Hence it seems exceedingly daring to infer from the written Hebrew the character of the spoken language, and from the style of the book to infer the date of its composition. In the case of a literary language, on the other hand, which is a dead language and as such essentially unchangeable, it is reasonable to suppose that in the course of time its orthography, as well as single words and phrases, and, perhaps, here and there, some formal elements, have been subjected to change in order to be more intelligible to later readers. It is possible that Ecclesiastes was received into the canon in some such later edition. The Aramaisms, therefore, may also be explained in this manner; at any rate, the supposition that the time of the composition of a Biblical book may be deduced from its language is wholly questionable.
