Linguistic Changes Affecting the Pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew 2000 B.C.E.

Ver. 16.0

June 10, 2010

A Note on Epigraphic Hebrew

by David Steinberg

The recovery of the phonetic shapes of Hebrew words attested in inscriptions from the biblical period is often confounded by uncritical retrojection of Masoretic orthoepy onto ancient spellings.

Quoted from Andersen 1999 p. 5.

Epigraphic Hebrew (EH) is the term used for Hebrew inscriptions, largely from the pre-exilic Kingdom of Judah mostly dating from the late eighth century BCE until the end of the kingdom in 586 BCE. It is probable that Judahite Epigraphic Hebrew (JEH) represents a sub-literary governmental administrative register of Judahite Hebrew while CBH represents its literary register. Linguistically, JEH is rather closer to CBH than to PCBH though it has a number of features shared with neither[1]. Scribes trained in Jerusalem 730-586 BCE were likely the authors of the bulk of surviving JEH e.g. Siloam Inscription, Lachish ostraca, Arad ostraca. The same circles were likely the composers and/or transmitters of most of the pre-exilic biblical texts.

We are fortunate in having a fine grammar cum lexicon of the corpus of EH (JEH and IEH) inscriptions as well as a number of scholarly collections of the material and a reconstructed vocalization[2]. JEH documents have been preserved in their original language and orthography and, within limits, can serve as a guide to the original orthography of CBH.

On the negative side, the fact that scholars of the highest caliber such as (in alphabetical order) Anderson, Blau, Barr, Muraoka, Pardee, Rainey, Richter and Sarfatti are in contention about aspects of the vocalization of Epigraphic Hebrew makes it clear that the information required to make definitive decisions about areas of dispute is simply not there. On the one hand, recreating the phonetics of dead languages is impossible beyond a certain point. This is compounded by and the lack of almost any internal vowel letters in EH (see Matres Lectionis in Hebrew and Matres Lectionis in the Biblical Text). On the other hand, the extreme paucity of epigraphic materials found to date means that we are working with a miniscule basis of written evidence. This contrasts with, for example, Latin and Akkadian scholars who have mountains of vocalized epigraphic remains.

Two issues in the vocalization of JEH, and hence of EBHP, have occupied me:

· whether a case could be made that the historic diphthongs written in JEH <w> and <y> could have already contracted to [ô] and [ê] respectively? and,

· what, if any final vowels were not represented by vowel letters?

· the pronunciation of the 3ms. pronominal suffix written <h> in JEH.

a. See Did Word-Final Short Vowels Exist in EBHP and Were All Word-Final Vowels Marked by Vowel Letters?

b. See Heterogeneous Diphthong Contraction