Ver. 16.0

June 10 2010

 

To print use PDF file here

 

 

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/

Return to Table of Contents

A Few Introductory Words

Box 1 - Sense and Nonsense from Robert Alter

Box 2 - Wordplay in the Hebrew Bible

Box 3 - The Functions of Puns

 Box 4 - The Three Orthographic Elements in the Masoretic Text

 

I The Purpose of this Web Page

II The Pronunciation of Hebrew Changed Substantially Between EBHP and the Time of the 8th-11th CE Masoretes Who Vocalized the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible

1. Biblical Skeleton, Changing Script and Orthography, Medieval Vowel Signs, Modern Pronunciation

 

A Few Introductory Words

“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.

Even the cultural products much closer to our period require this sort of treatment. For example, the attitudes to women displayed by Verdi and Dickens have more in common with the following famous song from Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) than they have with attitudes in our own society.

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.

Unlike the society of eighteenth century France, we have only miniscule sources of information about the societies of ancient Israel and Judah that produced the earlier texts in the Hebrew Bible. Our few sources of information – the biblical text, a handful of inscriptions, archaeology - are not only sparse but ambiguous and reflect the reality or hopes of different groups, in different situations at different periods. In addition, all of the earlier texts underwent a change of script and orthography and possibly some degree of editing in later periods.

It is interesting to consider the interpretations likely placed on the following quotes from the Psalms (adapted from the New Revised Standard Version):

Ø Between the Assyrian siege that failed to capture Jerusalem (c. 701 BCE) and the first Neo-Babylonian conquest of the city (c. 597 BCE). During this period the Kingdom of Judah remained the sole Israelite state under the seemingly divinely guaranteed rule of the ancient Davidic dynasty;

Ø In the 597-586 BCE when a king of the Davidic dynasty, selected by the king of Babylon, was still enthroned in a Jerusalem conquered, controlled and partially depopulated by the Babylonians;

Ø In the Babylonian Exile (c. 586-516 BCE) when longing for a restoration of Zion (see Ps. 126);

Ø In the early Second Temple period (c. 516-400 BCE) when descendents of the Davidic dynasty were still in evidence and there remained hope for their restoration to power;

Ø In the late Second Temple period (c. 200 BCE-70 CE) when it was no longer remembered who was descended from the Davidic dynasty and messianic ideas were rife many of which involved a political liberation from foreign rule under a scion of the House of David and some of which (see War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness) were apocalyptic;

Ø In the early post-Second Temple period (c. 70-200 CE) when messianic ideas were fundamental to Jewish eschatology.

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….

 

I The Purpose of this Web Page (detailed explanation below)

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 1

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[4]

 

Step 1 */EBHP/[5]

Step 2 *[EBHP][6]

 

caˈdaː waiˈlaː šˈmacn qoːˈliː

naˌšay ˈlamk haʾˈzinna(ː) ʾimraˈtiː

kiː ˈʾš haˈragti(ː) lpiˈciː

wˈyald lạḥabbuːraˈtiː

kiː šibcaˈtaym yuqˈqam ˈqayn

wˈlamk šibˈciːm wɐšiˈbcaː

 

ʕɐˈdɐː wɐ̆ɪˈlɐː šәˈmɐʕn oːˈliː

nɐšˌɛy ˈlɐmk hɐʔˈzɪnnɐˑ ʔɪɐˈtiː

kiː ˈʾš hɐˈɾɐgtiˑ lɐpɪˈʕiː

wɐˈyɐld lɐɐbbuːɾɐˈtiː

kiː šɪbʕɐˈtɐymˈɐm ˈɐyn

wɐˈlɐmk šɪbˈʕiːm wɐšɪˈbʕɐː

 

MP3

sound file

of [EBHP]

 

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[7], is vital to appreciating the meter of biblical poetry[8] and to detecting word play[9] etc.  

Word Play – See Bibliography on Word Play in the Hebrew Bible and Other Ancient Near Eastern Literature

 

Box 2

Wordplay in the Hebrew Bible

“…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.”[10]

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 // = kh [x]. However, to his ear /ḫ/ [x] may have more closely resembled /k/ [k] = 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.  = /ś/ [ɬ] clearly sounded similar to both  צ= /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 וְאֵיבָה “hostility” (Gen. 3:15) and חַוָּה “Eve”. However, that this is not the case is shown by the fact that in EBHP, ואיבה would probably have been pronounced something like /waʾayˈbâ/ [wɐʔɐyˈbɐː] or [wɐʔɛyˈbɐː] with only the final vowel in common with /ḥawˈwâ/ [ħɐwˈwɐː] “Eve”. The development of the pronunciation of ואיבה would have been something like /waʾayˈbâ/ (EBHP) > /waʾˈbâ/, which might have been completed as early as the 6th century BCE, which developed into TH /wәʾẹˈba/ [ʾːˈvɐː] by the ninth century CE. The development of the pronunciation of חוה from [ħɐwˈwɔː] [TH] to [xɐˈvɔ], and ואיבה from
[wәʾ
ːˈvɐː] [TH] to [wәʾˈvɐ],would have taken place in Europe in the Middle Ages at least 1,500 years later.

(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