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From Persepolis to Jerusalem: a Reevaluation of Old Persian-Hebrew Contact in the Achaemenid Period

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From Persepolis to Jerusalem: a Reevaluation of Old Persian-Hebrew Contact in the Achaemenid Period Vetus Testamentum 65 (�0�5) �5�-�67 Vetus Testamentum brill.com/vt From Persepolis to Jerusalem: A Reevaluation of Old Persian-Hebrew Contact in the Achaemenid Period Aren Wilson-Wright University of Texas at Austin Waggener 14a, 2210 Speedway C3400, Austin, TX 78712 512-417-4606 [email protected] Abstract This paper examines the effects and mechanisms of Old Persian contact on Biblical Hebrew. I first reevaluate the number and distribution of Old Persian loanwords in the Hebrew Bible. Then I demonstrate that there was direct contact between speak- ers of Old Persian and speakers of Hebrew in the Achaemenid period beginning under Artaxerxes I, before proposing the existence of two Old Persian calques in Biblical Hebrew. The distribution of these Old Persian loanwords and calques strengthens the case for distinguishing between Late Biblical Hebrew and Classical Biblical Hebrew on linguistic grounds. With one exception, these features cluster in well-known Late Biblical Hebrew texts. Keywords late Biblical Hebrew – language contact – linguistic dating – Persian period The administration of the Persian Empire (529-333 b.c.e.) was a multilingual affair. Members of the Achaemenid Court centered in Southeastern Iran and * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew session at the 2011 Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in San Francisco. My thanks go to the members of the audience for their comments and critiques. I would also like to thank Naʾama Pat-El, Noam Mizrahi, Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley, and Yuhan S. D. Vevaina for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper and John Makujina for providing me with a copy of his dis- sertation. Any remaining errors are my own. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi �0.��63/�5685330-��30��9� From Persepolis To Jerusalem 153 its representatives in the provinces spoke Old Persian, a Southwestern mem- ber of the Indo-Aryan family. At the international level, however, they com- municated with their subjects in Aramaic, a Northwest Semitic language. Their subjects, in turn, spoke a wide array of local languages, belonging to several different families. Some of these languages were used for local administrative purposes, often building on established, indigenous systems of administration (e.g., Akkadian in Mesopotamia). To negotiate the linguistic diversity of the empire, the Persian administration employed a large number of translators, interpreters, and ‘cultural experts’.1 These individuals facilitated communica- tion between the different parts of the empire and ensured that the edicts of the king were available to “every province in its own script and to every people in its own language” (Esth 1:22). The Achaemenid period also saw an increase in both general mobility and long distance travel. Royal highways stretched across the Near East, convey- ing people and goods from one corner of the empire to another. An Elamite receipt from the Persepolis Fortification Archive mentions that: “1 woman went from Susa (to) Kandahar. She carried a sealed document of the king, and she received [wine]. Zishandush (is) her ‘elite guide’. Year 22, month ii” (pf 1550).2 Similar documents record trips from India to Susa (pf 1318) and Persepolis to Egypt (pf 1544). What these documents do not mention is the large distances involved: the distance between Susa and Kandahar is 1600 miles; the distances between India and Susa and Persepolis and Egypt are even greater. The speed of travel also increased in the Achaemenid period. With the establishment of way stations and royal stables, Persian express couriers could deliver a letter anywhere in the empire within twelve days (Cyropaedia viii, 6.17-18; see also Herodotus, The Histories viii:98l). The multilingual nature of Achaemenid administration, coupled with increased mobility, fostered language contact on a grand scale. In this paper, I will investigate the outcome of one form of language contact in the Achaemenid period: Old Persian lexical and syntactic influence on Biblical Hebrew. In particular, I argue that the Old Persian loanwords and calques in the Hebrew Bible resulted from increased Persian military and administrative presence in the province of Yehud under Artaxerxes I and his successors and not, as previously thought, from an Aramaic intermediary. Bilingual transla- tors, who facilitated communication between the Judeans and the Persians, were the most likely agents of contact; bilingual scribes may have played a part 1 See for example P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of Persian Empire (Winona Lake, 2002), p. 509 and A. Kuhrt, The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period (London, 2007), pp. 844-48. 2 Kuhrt, The Persian Empire, p. 734. Vetus Testamentum 65 (2015) 152-167 154 Wilson-Wright as well. The distribution of these features strengthens the case for distinguish- ing between Late Biblical Hebrew (lbh) and Classical Biblical Hebrew (cbh) on linguistic grounds. With one exception, the Persian loanwords and calques cluster in well-known lbh texts. 1 Lexical Influence The number and distribution of Old Persian loanwords in the Hebrew Bible is disputed. In their recent book, I. Young, R. Rezetko, and M. Ehrensvärd provide a list of every word in the Hebrew Bible that has been identified as Iranian.3 They do not, however, evaluate the strength of these proposed loans, which leads to uncertainty about the distribution of Iranian words in the Bible. Ten of the twenty-six words they mention are problematic. Most of these less prob- able loans occur in texts identified as cbh. ʾăgarṭāl ‘bowl’, karmîl ‘crimson’, selâ ‘a musical term’, pĕlādôt4 ‘steel?’, and šûʿāl ‘fox’ are unlikely to be Persian because they contain the phoneme /l/, which merged with /r/ in Proto-Indo- Iranian. Although this phoneme remerged as a distinct phoneme in Middle Iranian as the result of dissimilation, it would be quite a coincidence for these loanwords to accommodate in the direction of Persian development, espe- cially when Hebrew /r/ consistently represents Old Persian /r/ in secure loan- words.5 Moreover, the Iranian etymologies proposed for some of these words often do not make sense in context. ʾăgarṭāl refers to a bowl used in temple service (Ezra 1:9), but the proposed Farsi etymon gartāl means ‘leather purse’.6 Likewise Hebrew selâ is an exclamation appearing in hymnic refrains; it does not refer to song more generally like Farsi salā. A second set of suggested loans have Semitic cognates in language that were not in contact with Old Persian. yāšpê ‘jasper’ is cognate with Old Babylonian yašpu, which is attested a full 1200 years before the rise of the Achaemenid empire, while ʾāzēn ‘tool’ is cognate with Ethiopic māʾzen ‘angle, point’, which was spoken outside of Achaemenid 3 I. Young, R. Rezetko, and M. Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts: An Introduction to Approaches and Problems (2 vols.; New York, 2008), pp. 291, 303-9. 4 pĕlādôt, written <pldwt> in the consonantal text of the Bible, may be a scribal error for lapīdôt ‘torches’ written <lpdwt>. This meaning better fits the context of heavenly warfare in Nahum 2:4. 5 Caution is necessary, however, since examples of /l/ survive sporadically in Iranian and Indic dialects. P. Oktor Skjærvø, “Old Iranian,” in The Iranian Languages (ed. G. Windfuhr; New York, 2009), p. 49. 6 M. Ellenbogen, Foreign Words in the Old Testament: Their Origin and Etymology (London, 1962), p. 9. Vetus Testamentum 65 (2015) 152-167 From Persepolis To Jerusalem 155 territory. Likewise zĕmān ‘time’ is cognate with Ethiopic zaman, while šûʿal ‘fox, jackal’ is cognate with Arabic ṯuʿal and Old Aramaic <šˤl>. A final set of proposed loanwords do not have an Old Persian equivalent, but have equiva- lents in other languages that were spoken in the Achaemenid empire: karpas ‘cotton’ corresponds to Indic karpāsa and ʾădarkōnîm ‘darics’ corresponds to Greek dareikos. In this case, there is no need or reason to posit an Old Persian intermediary when trade and contact were so prevalent in the Achaemenid Empire. A revised distribution of Iranian words in the biblical corpus can be found in Table 1 below. table 17 89 Hebrew Gloss Verse Aramaic Persian 1 ʾăḥašdarpān ‘satrap’ Esth 3:12, 8:9, 9:3; ʾḥšdrpn op ḫšaçapāvan Ezra 8:36 (Kent, 181) 2 ʾăḫaštĕrān ‘royal’ Esth 8:10, 14 Ø op ḫšaça + ana (Kent, 181) 3 ʾappeden ‘palace’ Dan 11:45 ʾpdn8 op apadāna (Kent, 168) 4 gizbār ‘treasurer’ Ezra 1:8 gzbr op *ganzabara (Hinz, 102) 5 ganzak / ‘treasury’ Esth 3:9, 4:7; gnz op *ganza / genez 1 Chr 28:11 *ganza + ka (Hinz, 102) 7 Some of the Old Persian loanwords in LBH are directly attested in Achaemenid sources. Others are not, but have a plausible Iranian etymology. In the former case, the Persian antecedent is cited according to R. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon (New Haven, 1953). In the latter case, the reconstructed Persian form is taken from W. Hinz, Altiranisches Sprachgut der Nebenüberlieferung (Wiesbaden, 1975). Aramaic words occur in Imperial Aramaic unless otherwise noted. 8 This word does not appear in Imperial Aramaic, but occurs in Syriac and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. 9 Although Hebrew zan means ‘kind’ and not ‘human being’, Old Persian zana is still the most likely source for the word. In their Old Persian inscriptions, the Achaemenid kings boast of ruling over ‘countries containing all (kinds of ) men’ (dahyūnām vispazanānām) (DNa 10-11; dse 9-10; dzc 5). Such compounds would provide an environment for a Hebrew speaker to interpret zana as ‘kind’. Vetus Testamentum 65 (2015) 152-167 156 Wilson-Wright table 1 (cont.) Hebrew Gloss Verse Aramaic Persian 6 dāt ‘law’ Esth 1:8, 13, 15, 19; dt op dāta 2:8, 12; 3:8 [×2], 14, (Kent, 189) 15; 4:3, 11, 16; 8:13, 14; 9:1, 13, 14; Ezra 8:36 7 zan ‘kind’ Ps 144:14; zn op zana ‘human 2 Chr 16:14 being’9 (Kent, 196) 8 nādān ‘sheath’ 1 Chr 21:27 ndn op *nidāna (Hinz, 175) 9 ništĕwān ‘letter’ Ezra 4:7, 7:11 nštwn op *ništāvan, cf.
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    The Unicode® Standard Version 13.0 – Core Specification To learn about the latest version of the Unicode Standard, see http://www.unicode.org/versions/latest/. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and the publisher was aware of a trade- mark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters or in all capitals. Unicode and the Unicode Logo are registered trademarks of Unicode, Inc., in the United States and other countries. The authors and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this specification, but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein. The Unicode Character Database and other files are provided as-is by Unicode, Inc. No claims are made as to fitness for any particular purpose. No warranties of any kind are expressed or implied. The recipient agrees to determine applicability of information provided. © 2020 Unicode, Inc. All rights reserved. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction. For information regarding permissions, inquire at http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html. For information about the Unicode terms of use, please see http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html. The Unicode Standard / the Unicode Consortium; edited by the Unicode Consortium. — Version 13.0. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-936213-26-9 (http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/) 1.
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