December 15, 2009
Biblical Hebrew Poetry and Word Play
Reconstructing the Original Oral, Aural and
Visual Experience
By David Steinberg
David.Steinberg@houseofdavid.ca
Home
page
http://www.houseofdavid.ca/
1. Biblical Skeleton, Changing Script and Orthography, Medieval Vowel Signs, Modern Pronunciation
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“It’s not
just a question of what the theatre practices were like at the time… I feel
that you can, if you wanted to, reconstruct everything except the audience.
And the real exciting thing in the theatre is how you bridge the gap between
what’s happening on the stage and what’s happening in the audience - because we only do it for the audience.” William Christie in a talk accompanying the DVD of the Rameau’s opera - Les Boreades |
William Christie made this statement in regard to French Baroque opera, on which he is a leading expert, supporting the use of modern dance techniques to act as a cultural interpreter within his production of Les Boreades. The modern opera-goer has grown up in a society whose values, structures, cultural and linguistic associations and assumptions are totally different from that of the mid-eighteenth century courtiers who were Rameau’s audience. In addition their life experiences, how they are maintained, life expectancies, sanitation and a thousand other factors were very different from the modern audience. Indeed, the use of familiar words, apparently analogous events etc. may be faux amis leading the viewer even further astray. For Baroque Opera, we can compensate for this problem by learning relevant socio-cultural information that would have been in the bones of the original audience but must be studied, as one studies the values and literature of an extinct civilization, by the modern opera-goer. We can do this because scholars have examined and digested masses of official and unofficial documents, historical and philosophical writings, music, paintings, clothing, buildings etc. from the period and social context that produced French Baroque opera. Thus, properly prepped, we can understand, intellectually if not viscerally, cultural allusions, linguistic nuances etc. as they were understood by the original audience.
When lovely woman stoops to folly,And finds too late that men betray, What charm can sooth her melancholy,What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover,To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover,And wring his bosom--is to die.
Psalms 48
Great is the
LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God. His holy mountain,
beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far
north, the city of the great King. Within its citadels God has shown himself a
sure defense. Then the kings assembled, they came on together. As soon as they
saw it, they were astounded; they were in panic, they took to flight, trembling
took hold of them there, pains as of a woman in labor …. As we have
heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our
God, which God establishes forever….
Psalms 2
Why do the
nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel
together, against the LORD and his anointed, saying, "Let us burst their bonds asunder, and
cast their cords from us." He who
sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD has them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and
terrify them in his fury, saying,
"I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill." I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He
said to me, "You are my son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your
heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, and
dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." Now therefore, O kings, be
wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth….
To enable
advanced students of Biblical Hebrew to recover, as closely
as possible, the pronunciation that a scribe in Jerusalem
700-600 BCE would have used
in reading poetry to upper class Judeans or members of the king’s court with
the aim of better appreciating Biblical Hebrew poetry and wordplay[1].
Box
Sense and Nonsense from Robert Alter
|
In his
justly influential book The Art of Biblical Poetry, Robert Alter correctly writes - “…even where there are doubts about the
poem's meaning, it may exhibit perfectly perceptible formal patterns that
tell us something about the operations of the underlying poetic system.”[2] Equally the following is justified - "The
actual sound of biblical poetry will remain at least to some extent a matter
of conjecture. Certain distinctions among consonants have shifted or blurred
over the centuries, and what is worse, we cannot be entirely sure we know
where accents originally fell, what the original system of vowels and
syllabification was, or whether there were audible changes in these phonetic
features during the several hundred years spanned by biblical poetry. (The
indications of stress and vocalization of the Masoretic text were codified
well over a millennium after the composition of most of the poems and
centuries after Hebrew had ceased to be the vernacular.) On the level of
meaning, although comparative Semitic philology in a remarkable age of
archaeological discovery has done heroic work in restoring the original sense
of poorly understood words, it would be foolhardy to imagine that we can
always recover the real nuances of biblical terms, or the relation between
poetic diction and colloquial diction (of which there is no record) or
between poetic diction and other specialized usages of the ancient
language." [3] However, he goes on from there
to use a transcription system based on the vowels and some of the consonants (eg. waw transcribed as v ) of current Israeli
pronunciation which we have every reason to believe are substantially
different from the pronunciation of biblical Hebrew at the time of writing (/EBHP/ and /LBHP/). It is as
if we were to say: (1) we cannot know exactly how Geoffrey Chaucer would have pronounced his poetry; therefore, (2)
we will read it as if it were educated New York English of today!
An example of the result is found at the foot of
p. 5 (Gen. 4:23-24)
Robert Alter's transcription (adapted to my
notational system)
caˈdah vetziˈlah šeˈmacan qoˈli
neˈšei ˈlemekh haʾˈzena ʾimraˈti
ki
ˈʾiš haˈragti lefiˈtzi
veˈyeled leḥaburaˈti
ki šivcaˈtayim yuˈqam ˈqayin
veˈlemekh šivˈcim vešiˈbcah
The following would be my attempt to approach much
closer to the original pronunciation
caˈdaː wạṣilˈlaː šˈmacn qoːˈliː
nạšey ˈlamk haʾˈzinnaˑ ʾimraˈtiː
kiː
ˈʾiːš haˈragtiˑ lạpiˈṣiː
wạˈyald lạḥabbuːraˈtiː
kiː šibcaˈtaym yuqˈqam ˈqayn
wạˈlamk šibˈciːm wạšiˈbcaː
You will note that Alter's transcription eliminates vowel and consonant length - a very prominent feature of Ancient Hebrew. |
The underlying assumption is
that a clear understanding of the probable approximate pronunciation of the
Hebrew of the Bible, at time of its writing[4], is vital to appreciating
the meter of biblical poetry[5] and to detecting word play[6] etc.
Box
Wordplay in the Hebrew Bible
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“…the
biblical authors consistently opted for word play, especially the
alliterative type, whenever the opportunity arose. When a choice of synonyms
was available, the writers typically chose the word that produced the greater
alliterative effect. This can be seen especially in the case of rare words, even
hapax legomena.”[7] As stated
by the Encyclopedia Judaica “Within
this framework of rhythmical parallelism there is a whole gamut of sound
repetition and sound patterns, freely distributed, but clearly embellishing
the text.” All of these can be vitally effected by changes in pronunciation. (1) Alliteration based
on sounds that were heard as similar by the author not necessarily by the
modern reader. E.g. the biblical writer could play off חן חסד and חבה against each other because, in each case, he would have
pronounced the ח as ḥ [ħ]. He
could similarly play off החביא and נוח against each other because, in each case he would have
pronounced the ח as /ḫ/ = kh
[x].
However, to his ear /ḫ/ [x] may have
more closely resembled /k/ [k] = כּ than it would have resembled /ḥ/ [ħ].
Likewise, to the biblical writer /ḥ/ [ħ] may have
more closely resembled /h/ [h] = ה than it would have resembled /ḫ/
[x]. (2) Puns
on similar sounding words requires and understanding of what did, and what
did not sound the same. שׂ = /ś/ [ɬ] clearly
sounded similar to both צ= /ṣ/ [ṣ] and ס = /s/ [s] and
eventually merged into the latter. E.g. שׂחק = צחק and סתם = שׂתם but never שׂחק = שׁחק. Thus we should watch
out for these similarities in looking for word play. (3) General resemblances of words. Due to
the distortion of modern pronunciation one might think that there is a play
on words between word וְאֵבָה = “hostility” (Gen. 3:15) and חַוָּה = “Eve”. However, that this is not the case is shown by the
fact that in the pre-exilic Hebrew, ואיבה would probably have been pronounced something like /waʾayˈbā/ [waʾayˈbā] or [waʾeyˈbā]
with only the final vowel in common with /ḥawˈwā/ = (4)
Assumption for common root meaning. a) There
were two roots, both spelled עלם but pronounced distinctively differently in the
First Temple period. עלם (see) √ġlm – root meaning = to be agitated, strong.
This is probably the root of the nouns עלם/עלמה = boy/girl. עלם = √clm – root meaning = to conceal Although
one might postulate, on the basis of TH and modern pronunciation, that all children are
devious and conceal what they can, this would have no basis in historical
linguistics. b) בָּחוּר occurs in Eccl. 11:9 with the meaning of 'young man' and in
Ps. 89:20 as the passive participle meaning 'chosen'. One might think that
there was an association i.e. that בָּחוּר in Eccl.
11:9 refers to a select or favored youth. However, it is probable that the two are unrelated
and would have constituted a Minimal Pair in
pre-exilic Hebrew i.e. */baˈḫūr/ : */baˈḥūr/
meaning respectively youth and chosen[8]. c) In the Hebrew Bible נַחֲלָה = “inalienable, hereditary property”, נַחַל = “stream, wadi”, and possibly date palms”. Given the
fundamental importance of water for fertility one might associate the two
words. However, historically they were unrelated. In pre-exilic Hebrew the
first was pronounced /naḥaˈlā/
and the second /ˈnaḫl/ [ˈnaḫl]
or [ˈnaḫәl]. |
Box
The Functions of Puns
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The literary impact of a pun is based on its
perception as a linguistic anomaly. On account of its striking phonetic or
semantic characteristics the pun stands out against the coherence of the
"main" text, attracts the attention of the audience, and itself
becomes a medium of communication A pun, therefore, is a menace to the
textual coherence of the “grammatical” text (the main text) on the one hand,
but may generate a new text on the other. The coherence of this new text is
based on the kind of pun, whether of the semantic or phonetic type[9]. With
regard to the intention of the utterance, this text competes with the
grammatical text. In some cases, the sense of the "pun-text" even
may superimpose the sense of the grammatical text. The
following functions of puns can be distinguished: (1) emphatic; (2) exegetic;
and (3) symbolic. In the first case—the emphatic function—the pun is
arbitrary and only underlines the sense of the main text in which it is
embedded. In the second case—the exegetic function—the pun creates a new semantic
level. In the third case—the symbolic function—the pun-text is the symbol of
a non-linguistic phenomenon. …the
emphatic pun is a literary device used to shape the "main text."
The exegetic pun, by contrast, creates a second literary level, a new text,
which competes with the main text. The textuality, of this pun-text is
created by distinctive semantic or phonetic features that appear as
deviations from the norm of the main text. These deviations separate the
pun-text from the main ("grammatical") text and constitute the
pun-text as an independent text. The
sense of the pun-text does not follow the rules of a grammatical text, namely
the rules of syntax, but is founded only on phonetic links (in the case of
sound-based puns) or on semantic links (in the case of sense-based puns). It
seems clear, that the possibilities of such links normally are much fewer
than the possibilities of creating a grammatical text. Quoted from "Between
Science and Magic: The Function and Roots of Paronomasia" in The Prophetic Books of the Hebrew Bible
by Stefan Schorch[10] pp. 206, 207, 211. |
1. Biblical Skeleton,
Changing Script and Orthography, Medieval Vowel Signs, Modern Pronunciation
The Three Orthographic Elements in the Masoretic Text
|
"Of
the three distinct orthographic elements in the MT. the consonantal text (including graphemes for
consonants which quiesced in the course of time), the m.l., and the vowel points, the third was the last to he added to the text. While
the first two elements were certainly combined by the 3rd century B.C.E., as
evidenced by the proto-Massoretic text types found at Qumran[11],- the vowel points were not added before the 6th century
C.E.[12] The relative
lateness of these signs does not indicate that the tradition of pronunciation
which they were intended to record and preserve originated in the period of
the Massoretes themselves. The text without vowel signs was read orally long
before the diacritical marks were invented to indicate vowels. The vowel
signs were intended to guide readers in the correct pronunciation of the
words according to traditions known to the different schools of Massoretes.
As A. Dotan indicates (Masorah, cols 1401-82, Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 16,
Keter, Jerusalem, 1971: ref. is to col. 1409)[13]: … the notes concerning the text of
the Bible and the instructions for its proper pronunciation and its exact copying were handed down orally from generation to generation
before they were set down in writing. It may be assumed that these comments could be written down and were
committed to writing ... aparently in the sixth or seventh century C.E. Therefore, one must differentiate quite
clearly between the oral Masorah which is endless and cannot be defined even though there are
allusions to it and evidence
thereof, and between the written Masorah
whose notations were written in the margins of the codices and which
is simply called "the Masorah." This
of course does not imply that the massoretic traditions
accurately reflect the manner in which these texts were pronounced by their
authors. Nevertheless, the traditions do reflect an archaic phonology.
Investigations of Qumranic and Mishnaic Hebrew (ca. 50 B.C.E.-200 C.E.)
indicate that postbiblical Hebrew phonology was different than that of
biblical Hebrew; e.g., the laryngeals ’ and h and the pharyngeals c and ḥ became
weakened (Kutscher 1974: 505-7; 1971: cols. 1586, 1595-96). Massoretic vocalisation indicates that
these were not weakened or leveled in the reading tradition, but that they
were preserved (Kutscher 1974: 510-11)." Quoted from Zevit 1980, p. 9. See also Did the Tiberian
Masoretes Simply Encode Tradition of Did they "Do Grammar"? |
When the
Hebrew Bible is read, the reader is usually unaware that he/she is combining:
(a) The consonantal skeleton
of Biblical
Hebrew (c. 850-550 BCE)
i.e. letters representing consonants and some
vowels written in a script
and orthography very different from that used when the texts were originally
written down. (See
Phonemic Structure of Hebrew);
(b) The
superimposed pointing of the Tiberian
Masoretic tradition[14] i.e. the vowel
signs and stress
accents of the Masoretic Text representing the extinct
pronunciation tradition of the Masoretes of Tiberias (c. 850 C.E.) which
they used in reading the biblical text.
Hoffman (p. 76) concludes his analysis of the
Masoretic system with a somewhat different appraisal. “We must therefore
conclude that the Masoretes had at least two goals: preserving antiquity and
establishing a standard. While some of what the Masoretes gave us may
represent older Hebrew[15], we cannot simply rely on TH to give us an indication of
what older Hebrew was like.”; and,
(c) A modern pronunciation tradition – usually current Israeli[16] or a version of Ashkenazi. Other, historically important, pronunciations exist (Yemenite,[17] Sephardi, Samaritan) but are rarely encountered by the student. The fact that almost all English and German speaking learners approach Biblical Hebrew through the pronunciation of Israeli Hebrew is particularly unfortunate in the case of vowels where pre-exilic Hebrew has more in common with English and especially German that it has with Israeli Hebrew. In particular Biblical Hebrew, as does German, Arabic, and to a lesser extent English, maintained phonetic and phonemic distinctions of vowel length (see Vowel and Consonant Length). This sharply contrasts with Israeli Hebrew (see Vowel System - Modern Israeli Hebrew) in which vowels of a given quality do not significantly vary in length. The patterning of long and short vowels and consonants, a characteristic going back to proto-Semitic would have been important in the language's sound structure and rhythm. Thus the distinction between long and short vowels and consonants is a clear requirement if we are to fully appreciate biblical poetry word play.
2. Phases
of Biblical Hebrew and its Antecedents (BHA) and the Development of the
Biblical Hebrew Reading Tradition of the Tiberian Masoretes[18]
(For
more detail see the examples in Excursus 2
and Excursus 3.
For various opinions see Linguistic
Changes Affecting the Pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew 2000 B.C.E. - 850 C.E.
According to Various Scholars)
1. BHA Phase 1
- Proto-Northwest
Semitic
Time Period - Commenced c. 2000 BCE when the dialects that
would develop into the Canaanite languages and Aramaic
languages underwent the sound shift of word-initial [w] >
[y] which distinguishes them from the other Semitic languages. Phase 1 ended c. 1200 BCE with the establishment of
a uniform penultimate word stress. Middle-Late Bronze Age.
Geographical Coverage - Southern Levant.
Languages/Dialects in Contact - Egyptian in extreme south, proto-Arabian in east, non-Semitic languages
in extreme north, Akkadian in extreme northeast. In the Canaanite heartland the only foreign language heard would have
been that of the Egyptian
administrators and soldiers. Akkadian familiar to chancery scribes (see Amarna
Letters).
Political Situation - many city states. No large political units which could have crystallized one
or more widely used standard literary language(s). Egyptian dominance
in the center and south, Mittanian and then Hittite dominance in the north. Akkadian used as language of diplomatic correspondence (see Amarna
Letters).
Stress - This is the earliest period for which stress patterns can be deduced.
There are two views regarding stress in this period:
1. Stress was on the penultimate
syllable, if it was long closed or containing a long vowel, and otherwise on
the antepenult.[22]
OR,
2. If:
(a) a word contained one or more long vowels, then the
stress was on the long vowel most closely preceding the case and mood endings;
OR,
(b) if the word contained only short
vowels, then the syllable preceding the case or mood ending is stressed.[23]
Phonemic System - During this period vowel and consonant quality and
length were phonemic . Since it was the presence or absence of long vowels
or long syllables, and if present, the location of the final long vowel or
syllable of the word, that determined stress, the place of stress was not phonological. These conditions still pertain to most
varieties of colloquial Arabic today.
Important Linguistic Developments -
- Canaanite shift [24]- Stressed
[ā] shifts to [ō] (This
continued into phase
2.). This is the isogloss that separates proto-Canaanite (including
proto-Hebrew) from proto-Aramaic).
N.b.
We have very little evidence regarding this phase of the language. Some of
the linguistic developments listed under phase 2
may have taken place or commenced in phase 1.
b) BHA Phase 2 - Proto-Hebrew (PH)[25]