A Handbook of Neo-Aramaic

I just learned of a new Brill book on the fascinating topic of modern Aramaic dialects that will be of interest to those working with Aramaic or Semitics more generally. From the web page:

A Handbook of Neo-Aramaic

Brill's Handbooks in Linguistics, 6

Simon Hopkins and Steven E. Fassberg (eds)

Hardback

ISBN: 978-90-04-72511-9

EUR  €269.00

The Handbook of Neo-Aramaic aims to provide an introduction to, and details of the complex world of Neo-Aramaic. This large family of endangered Neo-Semitic languages is (or until recently was spoken by Jewish, Christian and Mandaean minorities in parts of the Middle East. Most members of these communities now live in various diasporas.

Following a series of general chapters dealing with historical background, classification, salient linguistic features, Neo-Semitic context, contact languages (Kurdish, etc.), manuscripts and printed texts, Neo-Aramaic in the media etc., the book presents grammatical sketches of 15 different Neo-Aramaic dialects (some never described before), followed by a series of maps, illustrations, and a bibliography.

The book hopes to provide material of interest both to the beginner and the more advanced specialist. Contributors are: Werner Arnold, Roberta Borghero, Michael L. Chyet, Eleanor Coghill, Alinda Damsma, Steven E. Fassberg, Samuel Ethan Fox, Charles G. Häberl, Simon Hopkins, Otto Jastrow, Olga Kapeliuk, Geoffrey Khan, Nineb Lamassu, Alexey Lyavdansky, Alessandro Mengozzi, Matthew Morgenstern, Hezy Mutzafi, Yona Sabar, Shabo Talay, Aziz Tezel, and Michael Waltisberg. 

HT Agade

Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew

I just saw that Aaron Hornkohl has published an open-access book on Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew, where he argues that we can see diachronic indications even within the corpus of Classical Biblical Hebrew. He suggests that, on balance, the Pentateuch reflects an earlier stage of Hebrew than the early prophets et al.

Rezetko et al. have published a critical review of the book, where they repeat their criticism of "linguistic dating" as unwarranted, given the complex formation and transmission histories of the texts. In the comments, Ron Hendel provides his own response to the review, which is generally supportive of Hornkohl's approach (if not all of the details of his argument).

I would not claim to be a historical linguist, and I haven't spent a lot of time in the literature. But I guess as a textual critic I have some stake in the argument. I agree, in principle, that it is not safe to just uncritically assume the MT text form for linguistic analysis. Scribes sometimes did update orthography or other linguistic features, and critical comparison of different versions sometimes helps us to restore earlier states of the text. That said, it would be wrong to imagine that updating on the scale of the (in)famous 1QIsa-a was common, when it is rather the exception to the rule. I see very little evidence of any kind of systematic linguistic leveling or updating in the tradition. Most ancient biblical manuscripts are much more conservative in their copying approach, and in general I have been impressed by the way the distinctive linguistic profiles of different works are so well preserved despite many centuries of copying. This is evident in orthography, morphology, lexicon (including loanwords), and even syntax. And bringing in traditions like the Dead Sea Scrolls and Samaritan Pentateuch is unlikely to change much, since these are precisely where we find most of the linguistic innovations, in contrast to the generally more conservative MT. My prediction is that systematic text-critical work will help reverse some linguistic changes and provide improved clarity at points, but that improved resolution will more often reinforce the more established diachronic observations of language typologists than undermine the typological distinctions.

On the question of redaction, no one doubts that many of the texts of the Hebrew Bible had long and complex editorial (pre-)histories. But there are many disagreements and uncertainties on the details of those histories, and I, for one, am hesitant to rely on proposed redactional histories as firm ground truths for dating the texts of the Hebrew Bible. If faced with a choice, I would personally much rather bring historical linguistic typology to bear as an independent control on redaction-critical models than the reverse. Linguistic typology is less dependent upon complex and subjective literary readings, and it is more easily pegged to materially datable evidence in the form of ancient inscriptions and comparative evidence. Of course, this is not to discount dating based on literary criteria entirely, and sometimes internal indications of date may be the best criteria. But too much of the tradition of dating the biblical books has been based on highly ambiguous literary data and is heavily dependent on very speculative redaction-critical theories. So I welcome attempts like Hornkohl's to provide more objective controls on literary-critical speculation. Whether the details of Hornkohl's particular arguments hold up or not remains to be seen.

HT Agade

Scriptura Psalms Resources

Scriptura has just updated their website with exegetical and translation resources on the Psalms. This is an incredibly detailed and helpful site with extensive exegetical and linguistic treatments of many of the Psalms (work still in progress). They also give sustained (if not fully systematic) attention to important text-critical issues in the Psalms. I had the privilege of working with Scriptura for nearly two years and have great appreciation for their contributions to the study of the Psalms. My own exegetical work focused on Psalm 51, and I was also responsible for reviewing most of the grammatical and text-critical analysis done by the individual exegetes. If you haven't used these resources, I highly recommend checking out the website.

Noonan on Non-Semitic Loanwords

Benjamin Noonan provides an interesting overview article based on his book on non-Semitic loanwords in the Hebrew Bible. He suggests that Egyptian loanwords predominate in the earlier texts of the Hebrew Bible, while later texts have much more influence from Greek and Old Iranian.

Free Hebrew Linguistic Resources

In the recent Genizah newsletter, Nick Posegay highlights two important open-access works just published by Geoffrey Khan, which are worth downloading and checking out:

The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1

The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 2

Description:

The form of Biblical Hebrew that is presented in printed editions, with vocalization and accent signs, has its origin in medieval manuscripts of the Bible. The vocalization and accent signs are notation systems that were created in Tiberias in the early Islamic period by scholars known as the Tiberian Masoretes, but the oral tradition they represent has roots in antiquity. The grammatical textbooks and reference grammars of Biblical Hebrew in use today are heirs to centuries of tradition of grammatical works on Biblical Hebrew in Europe. The paradox is that this European tradition of Biblical Hebrew grammar did not have direct access to the way the Tiberian Masoretes were pronouncing Biblical Hebrew. 

In the last few decades, research of manuscript sources from the medieval Middle East has made it possible to reconstruct with considerable accuracy the pronunciation of the Tiberian Masoretes, which has come to be known as the ‘Tiberian pronunciation tradition’. This book presents the current state of knowledge of the Tiberian pronunciation tradition of Biblical Hebrew and a full edition of one of the key medieval sources, Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ ‘The Guide for the Reader’, by ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn. It is hoped that the book will help to break the mould of current grammatical descriptions of Biblical Hebrew and form a bridge between modern traditions of grammar and the school of the Masoretes of Tiberias. 

Links and QR codes in the book allow readers to listen to an oral performance of samples of the reconstructed Tiberian pronunciation by Alex Foreman. This is the first time Biblical Hebrew has been recited with the Tiberian pronunciation for a millennium.

See also the forthcoming:

Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew

Description:

This volume presents a collection of articles centring on the language of the Mishnah and the Talmud – the most important Jewish texts (after the Bible), which were compiled in Palestine and Babylonia in the latter centuries of Late Antiquity. Despite the fact that Rabbinic Hebrew has been the subject of growing academic interest across the past century, very little scholarship has been written on it in English. 

Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew addresses this lacuna, with eight lucid but technically rigorous articles written in English by a range of experienced scholars, focusing on various aspects of Rabbinic Hebrew: its phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics and lexicon. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars of Rabbinic studies alike, and constitutes the first in a new series, Studies in Semitic Languages and Cultures, in collaboration with the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Tiberias Stylistic Classifier for the Hebrew Bible

Joshua Berman has announced the launch of a new stylistic classification tool for the Hebrew Bible/OT: Tiberias Stylistic Classifier for the Hebrew Bible. Tiberias permits comparison of different reference texts (classes) to identify stylistic differences and distinguishability. You can then input a text you want to classify in terms of stylistic proximity to the selected classes. Classification can be done based on specific inflected words, lexemes, morphology, and syntax, allowing for a very complex overview of stylistic differences between corpora. It would probably take some time to get the most out of this resource, but it looks like a promising database for stylistic comparisons.

A Reply to Robert Holmstedt on Eclecticism

Robert Holmstedt recently posted a four-part post on his blog, which he styles as a critique of eclecticism in the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. As this is somewhat of a hot topic these days, I thought I would post a brief response here. Holmstedt's argument rests on two key concerns.

First, he argues that since an eclectically reconstructed text is not an historical artifact, it is of no use to linguists, and in fact only serves to obscure linguistic data. The point is fair enough in one respect. Few indeed would wish to construct new linguistic categories on the basis of undocumented modern conjectures! Yet I think he takes this argument too far. Several points in response.
     First, Holmstedt does not evaluate an eclectic text relative to realistic alternatives. When we realize that the alternative he proposes is continuing to use a morphologically tagged transcription of a single medieval manuscript riddled with scribal errors, ancient emendations, and inconsistencies arising through the vagaries of centuries of transmission, which can in no way be said to be representative of the vast and rich tradition of the Hebrew Bible, an eclectic text doesn't actually seem so bad.
     Second, the vast majority of any well-done eclectic text of the Hebrew Bible will inevitably be documented in ancient sources anyways. The number of undocumented modern conjectures should be quite low (and clearly marked as such in the editions anyways so as not to "obscure" the data), and the number that actually have any significant bearing on larger linguistic questions even fewer. Linguists should have been paying attention to these documented alternatives already anyways, so the only real effect of incorporating them into text editions will be to challenge naive defaults like the Leningrad Codex and force linguists to think more intentionally about their source texts. Either way, a well-done eclectic text is bound to be more linguistically sound than a transcription of a late and convoluted text, where responsible linguists would be forced to weed through the mess of scribal confusion for themselves (which probably few are competent to do) before having a secure data set for their work. The point of an eclectic edition, after all, is not a perfect text, but a better one than what can be found in any given manuscript. Sound linguistic analysis should never be based on a small number of textually problematic cases, regardless of which text is printed. Maybe forcing linguists to recognize the complications underlying their corpus of texts isn't such a bad thing after all.
     Third, Holmstedt seems to undervalue the utility of an eclectic edition. Modern textual critics are almost always forthright in their presentation of their eclectic editions not as historical artifacts, but as scholarly (re)constructions that attempt to approximate a lost textual state that is of some utilitarian interest. Holmstedt contests that this recognized reality invalidates any historical, exegetical, or linguistic usefulness for an eclectic edition. But such a stance rings hollow when we realize once again the even worse alternative that he proposes. The goal of a pure text is obviously forever unattainable, but textual critics try nonetheless to produce editions that are useful to real users. The simple reality is that a well-done eclectic edition is more useful to more users than a diplomatic edition, because more people are interested in ancient states of the Hebrew text than in late medieval Jewish copies. Despite their admitted limitations, skillfully executed eclectic editions provide a more reliable foundation for this type of study than the alternatives. Nothing need be lost in the process, but there is much potential gain. The goal of an eclectic edition is not to replace historical texts with an artificial text, but to present the results of careful text-critical work to non-specialists in a user-friendly way, while still laying out the complex textual tradition before the reader to explore and take into account. All historical, exegetical, and linguistic work on the Hebrew Bible is based on contingent texts, and eclectic texts highlight that reality in a productive way, while still offering users some specialist guidance through the confusing maze of the tradition. No one text is final, and the field will only be enriched by a variety of such voices, rather than silencing them by shoving them to an appendix never to be read by the vast majority of readers. The era of eclectic editions of the Hebrew Bible promises finally to bring to the forefront of everyone's minds that the text we use is always contingent and force us all to be wiser readers, both of the contingent text itself and the broader tradition which it records. This is not a liability, but an opportunity.

Second, Holmstedt makes a practical argument that the level of linguistic sophistication necessary to make informed textual decisions is beyond the grasp of most textual critics and that it is unlikely that any individual can ever possess all of the requisite skills to produce a good eclectic edition. Without wading through the details of his critique of Fox's readings, I am willing to grant Holmstedt the extraordinary complexity of the traditions of the books of the Hebrew Bible and the need for collaborative work, including between textual critics and linguists. Textual critics are dependent upon a thorough knowledge of linguistics, just as much as linguists should be dependent upon a thorough knowledge of their source texts. I too doubt that any one person can ever develop all of the necessary skills to do everything well that is necessary for such vast projects, and I have no doubt that the field will inevitably move towards larger collaborative projects as it develops, much as in other disciplines. But Holmstedt needs to cut us a little slack here in the early stages of the movement. We are, after all, starting out about two centuries behind most of our peers in terms of editorial philosophy. ;)
     I will take this opportunity to put in a good word for my text-critic colleagues, however. In my experience, textual critics actually tend to be some of the most linguistically competent scholars in the Biblical Studies guild, even if not sufficiently theoretical and sophisticated to satisfy Holmstedt. It takes a special sort of person to jump into the deep end of a textual tradition requiring--at a bare minimum--advanced competence in 5-10 ancient languages from numerous linguistic families over a span of over 2000 years and learn to swim, and it would be a rare person who survived this initiation who was not a philologist in the truest sense. I will be the first to admit my own limitations, but everyone's work will have weaknesses at points, without necessarily devaluing the overall work. After all, even after years of study, I am still stuck trying to figure out the Hebrew verbal system. ;)
     Tongue-in-cheek witticisms aside... or perhaps a theoretical linguist would have me call them semantic mechanisms of humor... (note to self: spend a month reading up on Raskin's and Attardo's General Theory of Verbal Humor before it is out of date) In all seriousness, I welcome Holmstedt's invitation to greater collaboration, and I plan to continue learning much from the work of linguistic specialists, but I don't think that is a fundamental flaw of any relevance to the principle of publishing eclectic editions of the Hebrew Bible.

As a final word, while Holmstedt (like many other detractors) brings up realistic challenges to the theoretical coherence and practical feasibility of producing eclectic editions, he does not provide a better alternative. In a world of modern textual scholarship characterized by countless digital texts and endlessly customizable user interfaces, I can understand that a rudimentary eclectic text might feel "barbaric", as Holmstedt's colleague put it. But it remains a valuable scholarly contribution, not as the final word, but as a useful record of informed decisions with a utilitarian purpose. If by his swinging pendulum of textual criticism outside of Biblical Studies Holmstedt is referring to recent trends in Material Philology, I will not hold my breath. I have learned much from scholars working from such a perspective and value many of their contributions as supplementary to traditional text-critical work, but they come up woefully short of providing a full-bodied alternative to eclectic text editing when it comes to large, complex, and important traditions like that of the Hebrew Bible. Eclectic texts, despite their limitations, have been and will continue to be important contributions to the study of ancient literature in most disciplines. Our long-standing reticence as a discipline is not a virtue or forward thinking, but a shortsighted retreat to the familiar and inadequate. A couple of years ago I explained at a meeting of the European Society for Textual Scholarship that some of the world's most important and well-preserved literature is still being studied almost exclusively on the basis of a transcription of a single late and problematic manuscript and a handful of mostly inaccurate and unhelpful footnotes, and not one person stood up to laud our bold disregard for outside scholarly conventions. Some just laughed incredulously, and I think there may be some ESTS members out there who still haven't figured out how deadly serious I was being. Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible is slowly limping into the age of modern scholarly editing, a latecomer for sure, but if the all-star cast working on the HBCE is any indication, it is hopefully off to a good start.

Updating, Emendation, and Linguistic Studies

In my recent studies of the Hebrew verb ויהי, I came across a familiar tension between textual and linguistic studies. In a number of places (1 Sam 10:5; 2 Sam 5:24; 1 Kgs 14:5; 1 Chr 14:15; Rut 3:4), the MT uses the imperfect verb וִיהִי when we would expect the weqatal verb וְהָיָה, which normally precedes fronted temporal clauses in non-past contexts. Textual critics commonly emend these forms to their more common forms, whereas linguists commonly insist on explaining them as the only surviving evidence. In this methodological gridlock, who is right?

First, it is important to note that our corpus and understanding of Biblical Hebrew is comparatively limited, so we must remain open to challenging received wisdom with new linguistic insight. It is all too easy to emend away difficult evidence which, properly understood, might shed light on the language and text. We must remain open to exceptions to our grammatical rules and to new insights from modern linguistic studies. We must not simply create the evidence for our linguistic studies with premature emendations.

That said, we must understand the biblical text in its historic context as a text manually transmitted over a vast period of time by scribes of varying characteristics. Some scribes were careful to preserve the text exactly as it lay before them, whereas others felt free to update the text with contemporary spellings and linguistic conventions. We can see this dynamic even in the examples mentioned above, now that we have the Qumran evidence. 4QSam(a), for instance, apparently reads the expected והיה for the MT ויהי in 1 Samuel 10:5. 1QIsa(a), on the other hand, occasionally changes the older form והיה to the updated form ויהי, as in 29:15 and 56:12. Such changes as proposed above, therefore, did in fact occur in the transmission of the text. Examples like these show that linguists are wrong simply to assume the MT text in their analyses, as many of the unique and exceptional forms may have arisen in the course of transmission. Linguists who do so run the risk of proposing explanations that unrealistically merge different temporal stages of Hebrew into a single incoherent mush.

So in the end, I would say neither approach will be consistently right, but rather that they should mutually inform one another. At times, linguistic research will clarify difficult textual problems. At other times, examination of ancient manuscripts, the transmission of the text, and the historical development of the language will provide linguistic studies with a more solid evidentiary basis. The two should always remain in a cooperative tension.

Linguistics and Textual Criticism

Lately I have been engaged in a linguistic study of the verb וַיְהִי "and it came to pass..." and its role in understanding macrostructure and narrative strategy in Biblical Hebrew narrative. I have noticed a few tensions between linguistics and textual criticism that need to be addressed. It seems that often the two are pulling in opposite directions. Textual critics are given to emending unique or problematic texts to alleviate difficulties, whereas linguists tend to latch on to exactly these unusual texts as some of the most significant.

As an example, Christo van der Merwe has argued that וַיְהִי can sometimes be used to mark climatic elements in a story. I came independently to a similar conclusion in a paper in 2007 based on the pattern-breaking וַיְהִי of Genesis 5:23. Later I noticed that Ron Hendel rejects this reading in favor of the normal form וַיִּהְיוּ with the support of the Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint. Robert Longacre also lamented how often grammarians emended וְהָיָה forms to וַיְהִי.

Obviously, in any given situation, only one of these solutions can be correct. But this example shows the need for a cooperative dialogue between linguistics and textual criticism. Biblical scholars cannot afford to be ignorant of either linguistics or textual criticism. The one-method scholar is likely to be led astray at some point.

Leviticus 1:17 and the Intersection between Textual Criticism and Linguistics

Robert Holmstedt has an interesting discussion on the blog Ancient Hebrew Grammar on the intersection between textual criticism and linguistics here. In particular, he argues that linguistic study of the use of demonstrative pronouns as non-verbal copulas in Hebrew may explain a textual variant in Leviticus 1:17.