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1 the Fact That Contact Between Ancient Israelites and Other Ancient 1 The fact that contact between ancient Israelites and other ancient Near Eastern entities resulted in foreign linguistic elements that entered into the Hebrew language has been recognized since antiquity. For example, Theodore of Mopsuestia in the fourth century stated that “his (Abraham’s) language was corrupted through contact with the Canaanites…. For this reason, we say that the Hebrew tongue was comprised of many tongues. Yet it bears a great resemblance to Syriac.” Theodore at once recognized both the composite nature of Hebrew, and yet the ability to trace its genetic relatedness in some fashion with other Semitic languages such as Syriac, a recognition of both linguistic similarities and oddities that would, in many ways, augur the concerns of genetic linguistics and contact linguists a few millennia later. In the ninth century, Isho’dad of Merv likewise recognized the influence of what he terms “Babylonian” in Syriac: It is after all not surprising that Hebrew is a composite (mknsh) of (several) languages, since we may ascertain that even Syriac has been altered (‘tdwd) and corrupted (‘tblbl) with the changing of times, and the duration of generations. […] In fact, the Syriac language was especially corrupted in Babylon, because of the kings that carried each other (there) as captives, for the stranger and the immigrant never have a pure and polished language (gywr’ wtwtb’ l’ sk mtmrq lshnh). Like Theodore, Isho’dad’s comments about Syriac presage concerns that would later become central to the examination of the Hebrew Bible, namely the role of conquest and power relations in the development of ancient Israelite language and literature. Such considerations would take on new importance with the decipherment of languages from ancient Near Eastern empires themselves, thereby making available the literature of the people who conquered ancient Israel and Judah. Agreement regarding the extent of the influence of Mesopotamian literature on the Hebrew Bible and the method one should employ to explore similarities and 2 differences therein has remained elusive. Scholars such as George Smith took one extreme, seeing as much cultural continuity as possible and going as far as repairing lacunae in Akkadian literature based on supposed literary parallels in the Bible. He states that “the three next tablets in the Creation series are absent, there being only two doubtful fragments of this part of the story. Judging from the analogy of the Book of Genesis, we may conjecture that this part of the narrative contained the description of the creation of light, the atmosphere or firmament, of the dry land, and of plants.”1 On the other extreme, Assyriologists such as Benno Landsberger rightly cautioned against comparative work when a culture had sufficient literary and linguistic information to be understood in its own context. 2 William Hallo proposed a mediating position, arguing that similarities and differences should be observed in the juxtaposition of biblical texts with other ancient Near Eastern literature. 3 Though Hallo’s approach has proven to be influential, he offered more of an openness towards meaningful divergences in comparative work and little in the way of methodological sophistication. What remains lacking after these debates is a rigorous linguistic method for comparative work. 4 It is the purpose of this dissertation to bring such a linguistic method to the study of the Hebrew Bible in its ancient Near Eastern context. This proposal will explain basic elements of contact linguistics which will be the methodological lens through which comparative examinations will be conducted in the dissertation. A test case will be presented, following which implications for biblical studies will be 1 George Smith, The Chaldean Account of Genesis (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1876), 67. 2 Benno Landsberger, “Die Eigenbegrifflichkeit der babylonischen Welt.” Islamica 2 (1926): 355-72; The Conceptual Autonomy of the Babylonian World (translated by Thorkild Jacobsen, Benjamin R. Foster, and Heinrich von Siebenthal; Sources and Monographs, Monographs on the Ancient Near East; Malibu, California: Undena Publications, 1976). 3 William Hallo, “Biblical History in Its Near Eastern Setting: The Contextual Approach” (Scripture in Context ; Edited by Carl D. Evans, William W. Hallo, and John B. White; Pittsburgh Theological Monograph 34; Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1980), 1-26. 4 For a more empirical approach to the literary aspect of borrowing which considers the role of differences between the same literary texts that existed in the periphery and center of Mesopotamian society, see Jeffrey H. Tigay, “On Evaluating Claims of Literary Borrowing,” in The Tablet and the Scroll: Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo (eds. Mark E. Cohen, et al; Bethesda, Maryland: CDL, 1993), 250-55. 3 discussed. Finally, an outline of the aims and goals of the dissertation will be presented, including the data set that will be analyzed. Contact Linguistics Before explaining why contact linguistics is needed for comparative studies between the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamian literature, I will present some of the basic tenants of the method as well as some of the more disputed aspects of the field. Contact linguistics studies what happens when two languages come into contact. What seems like an intuitive statement becomes more nuanced when set in light of the history of historical linguistics: not every linguistic element can be explained genetically, and thus a linguist must be able to determine what is due to internal development versus what is due to foreign contact. A few implications become apparent. First, languages are not reified entities, capable of contact independent from speakers and writers. Contact linguistics is therefore, at least to a certain degree, also concerned with socio-linguistics. Though Sarah Thomason and Terence Kaufman state that their study “is not primarily a socio-linguistic one,” they are nonetheless quick to state that where applicable “sociohistorical circumstances” need to be taken into consideration. Indeed, they claim that “social factors can and very often do overcome structural resistance to interference at all levels,” an assertion which, as will be shown, is pertinent to some debates in biblical studies. 5 Because history, the uses of literature, and social factors play a role in contact situations, such considerations 5Sarah Thomason and Terence Kaufman, Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 15. Note: Thomason was emphatic that social factors need to be taken into consideration in her talk at UC last spring, but denied, against Trudgill, that high-contact situations lead to simplification. Thomason claimed that “high contact” vs. “low contact” were very hard definitions to apply. Moreover, she claimed that there are very few detailed sociolinguistic studies of ongoing contact situations, so generalizing about factors such as relative isolation, low contact, tight vs. loose social network structures, and other issues is dangerously circular. She showed how Ethiopic was in a very high contact situation, but did not simplify overall. Thomason extrapolated on some of her work, arguing that imperfect learning in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) does not inevitably lead to simplification (she cited Birdsong). Thomason’s overall thesis involved the assumption that contact leads to simplification, which she claimed happens but not nearly as universally as some scholars claim. Moreover, “simplification” is tough to define. Some parts of a language might be simple (morphology), but other aspects complex (pragmatics). She quoted Östen Dahl and Kuster’s dissertation (as well as McWhorter). Nichols (1992:193) argues the opposite: contact induced change results in linguistics/grammatical complication. She also addressed the older view of Schleicher (languages grow/evolve to a complexity, and then decay). 4 must be a part of any examination of contact linguistics, even more so as all of these factors are important in the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamian literature. Second, contact linguistics studies not simply the result of contact, but the processes which lead to the contact-induced phenomena under investigation. Related to the issue of socio-linguistics, a highly bilingual or multi-lingual society will process linguistic contact differently than a mono-lingual society. Moreover, issues of technological need, cultural prestige, and politics also affect both the process and result of language contact. Contact linguists have developed borrowing hierarchies which tend to correlate with varying social situations to explain how a given linguistic feature resulted from a socio- linguistic context. The most enduring of these hierarchies, and the one which will be employed in this dissertation, comes from Thomason and Kaufman (table 1).6 This borrowing scale conveys the varying results given certain degrees of cultural contact and mixing. On one end, lighter contact by fewer people in less bi- or multi-lingual societies will result in more borrowing in content (less basic) vocabulary, whereas heavier cultural contact and pressure on the other end can lead to more structural changes. Other scholars such as Frans van Coetsem 7 (table 2) and Yaron Matras 8 (table 3) have constructed similar hierarchies, and Aikhenwald and Dixon have offered sociological considerations for borrowing (table 4).9 It should be noted that this hierarchy
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