Classical versus Late Biblical Hebrew: Two Statistical Case Studies

This piece is based on Moshe Rachmuth, Steven Portnoy, Jacob L. Wright, “Behold-Nå̄, Statistics Is an Effective Tool, Use It-Nå̄,” Journal of Semitic Studies 67.2 (2022),   

This becomes very common as Hebrew develops, especially due to Aramaic influence, but its roots go back to biblical Hebrew. Other examples are term עֵדוּת “testimony/precept,” מִסְכֵּנֻת “poverty,” פְּדוּת “deliverance,” עַבְדוּת “servitude,” יַלְדוּת “youth,” and גֵּאוּת “highness/pride.” For the development of the sufformative ut, as it is called, see Paul L. Joüon and Takamitsu Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 2nd ed., repr. with corr. of 2006 (Editrice Pontifico Instituto Biblico, 2009), 242 [§88Mj].

Early work on this model began with the independent studies of Arno Kropat and Rebecca Corwin, both published in 1909. For a survey of the development of this subfield, see Mats Eskhult, “Traces of Linguistic Development in Biblical Hebrew,” Hebrew Studies 46 (2005): 353–370.

Ian Young and Robert Rezetko, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts, I: An Introduction to Approaches and Problems (Routledge, 2014 [repr. of Equinox, 2008]); idem, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts, II: A Survey of Scholarship, A New Synthesis and a Comprehensive Bibliography (Routledge, 2016 [repr. of Equinox, 2008]). See also, Dong-Hyuk Kim, Early Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Linguistic Variability: A Sociolinguistic Evaluation of the Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts, Vetus Testamentum Supplements 156 (Brill, 2013).

B. Elan Dresher, “Methodological Issues in the Dating of Linguistic Forms: Considerations from the Perspective of Contemporary Linguistic Theory,” in Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew, ed. Cynthia L. Miller and Ziony Zevit (Eisenbrauns, 2012), 19–38.

Robert Rezetko and Ian Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: Steps Toward an Integrated Approach (SBL Press, 2014), 350.

See discussion of the archaizing language of Psalm 113 in, Marc Zvi Brettler, “A Woman’s Voice in the Psalter? A New Understanding of Psalm 113,” TheTorah (2019).

The goal of statistical science is to compare inference procedures, to determine which are best in some sense, based on the sample observations. The statistician can provide advice both about appropriate sampling plans and about choosing inference procedures, but the choice of procedures will depend on the distributional assumptions made, the basis of which needs to be provided by the scholar in the relevant field. The scholar and statistician, therefore, must collaborate to find appropriate assumptions and procedures.

This value is often misunderstood to refer to the probability that the null hypothesis is correct, but note that the model does not specify any distribution for the parameters, pC and pL. Rather it specifies a probability distribution for the numeric outcomes.

These values do not represent anything objective, mathematically speaking. It is just that many people have an intuitive feeling for the likelihood of the occurrence of an event when the probabilities are 1/20 or 1/100.

Avi Hurvitz, Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew: Linguistic Innovations in the Writings of the Second Temple Period, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 160 (Brill, 2014), 36–39.

Eccl 3:14; Esth 4:2, 8:8; Ezra 9:15; 1 Chron 23:26; 2 Chron 5:11, 20:6, 35:15.

Daniel C. Fredericks, Qoheleth’s Language (Edwin Mellen, 1998), 197–198.

Hurvitz, Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew, 37.

For how this was calculated, see our “Behold-Na,” 451–453.