35.2099, Review: Linguistic and Philological Studies of the Hebrew Bible and its Manuscripts: Beiler and Rubin (eds.) (2023)

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Subject: 35.2099, Review: Linguistic and Philological Studies of the Hebrew Bible and its Manuscripts: Beiler and Rubin (eds.) (2023)

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Date: 24-Jul-2024
From: Jorik Groen [f.j.groen at vu.nl]
Subject: General Linguistics, Ling & Literature: Beiler and Rubin (eds.) (2023)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.3652

EDITOR: Vincent D. Beiler
EDITOR: Aaron D. Rubin
TITLE: Linguistic and Philological Studies of the Hebrew Bible and its
Manuscripts
SERIES TITLE: Studia Semitica Neerlandica
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Jorik Groen

SUMMARY

The current volume is a Festschrift to Gary A. Rendsburg, one of the
leading scholars in the field of the study of Biblical Hebrew. It
contains 25 contributions by Rendsburg’s colleagues and (former)
students. The sheer size of the book (434 pages) and the list of
high-profile scholars contributing to it testify to the honoree’s
respected status. This is a picture that also emerges from the
biography in the volume’s Preface (pp. xii–xvii). Those that prefer
figures over feelings to assess one’s achievements can refer to the
extensive enumeration of over 300 publications by Rendsburg
(pp. xxvii–xxxvii).

The contributions are divided into three parts, reflecting Rendsburg’s
research interests: the Hebrew language, the Hebrew Bible as it is
written in that language, and the manuscripts that transmitted the
text (and the language) through history.

Part 1 contains eight chapters on “Hebrew Language.” These are
linguistic studies, most of them on Biblical Hebrew, but some on the
relation or comparison of Biblical Hebrew with other Semitic
languages.

Chapter 1, “On Third Person Masculine Plural Pronouns in Hebrew” by
Steven E. Fassberg, lists the different forms of said pronoun, both
independent pronouns and suffixes. He focuses on Biblical Hebrew, but
adds forms of other Hebrew corpora for comparison. There is quite some
variation and several forms exhibit unexpected outcomes. Fassberg
mentions different explanations from the already existing literature,
but refrains from hard conclusions. A minor remark concerns the
unlikeliness of analogical influence from less frequent to more
frequent and basic forms (see, e.g., Groen 2021, 84–5); therefore,
alternative developments (which are generally at hand) are to be
preferred in cases where an analogical development on the basis of the
feminine or dual equivalent is proposed.

Edward L. Greenstein shows in Chapter 2 (“Out of the Sweet Came Good:
A Study in Semitic Etymology”) how some words meaning ‘good’ in
various Semitic languages can be traced back to an earlier meaning
‘sweet’, thereby showing that in Semitic thought, “‘goodness’ is a
metaphorical extension of ‘sweetness’” (p. 21).

In his well-constructed chapter “Hebraisms in Mandaic” (Chapter 3),
Charles G. Häberl falsifies the “scholarly commonplace” that the
Classical Mandaic language, classified as Eastern Aramaic, is free
from influences of Greek or Hebrew. Such influence is typical for
Western or Palestinian Aramaic. Häberl presents several words with a
Hebrew origin that are not attested as such in other Eastern Aramaic
varieties, and thus suggest direct contact between Mandaic and the
Jewish language.

Geoffrey Khan (“The Phasal Narrative Function of Long yiqṭol and
weqaṭal in Biblical Hebrew”; Chapter 4) explains very clearly how a
habitual meaning as complete (bounded) events without temporal
anchoring can be used as contextually dependent perfective. We see
this, e.g., with the so-called historical present in English. In a
similar (but not identical) way, indicative uses of (long) yiqṭol can
express bounded events (perfective aspect) in the past, when the time
frame is set by verb forms or particles in the context. This “phasal
narrative function,” as Khan calls it, is also found with
weqaṭal-forms, which are by themselves also unmarked for tense or
aspect.

In Chapter 5, “Windows, Walls, and Terebinths: The ‌‑ōn Morph in
חַלּוֹנֵינוּ ḥallōnēnū (Jer 9:20) and Beyond,” Frank H. Polak
identifies חלונינו ḥlwnynw (Jer 9:20) as חֵיל ḥel ‘rampart, forewall’
with a suffix ‌‑ōn, which is found as plural marker in other Semitic
languages. (The term “individualizing plural,” which Polak takes over
from Goetze, is reminiscent of the paucal category attested in
Classical Arabic (see, for instance, Bettega and D’Anna 2023).) The
same suffix, he argues, can be found with individualizing function
also in אֵלוֹן ʔēlōn ‘a particular terebinth’ (vs. אֵל/‌אֵלָה ʔēl/ʔēlā
‘a terebinth’ and אֵלִים ʔēlīm ‘terebinths’). However, it is unclear
to me why the first form חֵילוֹנֵ֫ינוּ ḥēlōnḗnū is translated as a
plural ‘our (individual) ramparts’, while in the case of the terebinth
it is a singular.

Aaron D. Rubin, one of the volume’s editors, compares in Chapter 6
(“On the Biblical Hebrew Preposition min”) the figures of
n‑assimilation of the preposition מִן min-. The lack of assimilation
before the article is “a regular sounds rule” (p. 94), where the first
n‑assimilation crossing a morpheme boundary (*han‑ > haC-) prevented a
second one. Most of the 94 counterexamples are in marked contexts
(including code-switching, archaisms, and a Late Hebrew generalization
of me‑/mi‑ in all contexts).

Azzan Yadin-Israel (Chapter 7, “Historical Linguistics and Language
Change: The Rabbinic Hebrew Deponent”) dives into historical
linguistic theory and introduces Mufwene’s “evolutionary” approach
that, among other things, breaches the boundary between internal
linguistic development and external change through language contact.
Yadin-Israel uses this to solve the debate on the emergence of the use
of the passive participle with active meaning in Rabbinic Hebrew.

Zion Zevit (Chapter 8) closes the first part with “The Etymology and
Meaning of Kuntillet ʿAjrud: An Experimental Inquiry.” He traces the
name back to the Hebrew of the 9th–8th c. BCE (when the site was
constructed) and reconstructs *Kantil ʿAgrud ‘the circumvallated
place/‌garden/‌wine press of a locust,’ probably in reference to the
site’s characteristic shape. There Zevit’s study is thorough, although
there are some loose ends along his line of reasoning (as he himself
acknowledges), such as the unexpectedly non-assimilated n and the lack
of an actual attestation of the reconstructed *ʿgrd ‘locust’.
Additionally, the “feminized” form and gemination of the /l/ in
Kuntillet remain unexplained.

Part 2 is called “Hebrew Bible,” and contains studies on the content
and context of the text of the Hebrew Bible. Nonetheless, most of them
deal also with its language, whether it concerns the meaning of words,
the influence of neighboring languages and cultures, or language as a
multifunctional device in poetry.

In Chapter 9, “שֵׁדִים šēḏīm: Shades of Difference between ‘Demons’,
Deity, and שַׁדַּי šadday,” Debra Scoggins Ballentine investigates the
term שֵׁדִים šēḏīm, which she labels “a dynamic lexical item.” It is
shown that its two occurrences refer to foreign gods (gods that are
not Yahweh), and that they involve group identity and a hierarchy of
divine beings. Because this is grounded in ancient cultural and
theological categorizations, later Christian, Jewish, or
“Greek-writing Jewish” (i.e., the text of the LXX) interpretations
like ‘devils,’ ‘idols,’ δαιμόνιον do not match the category that was
originally referred. Though Scoggins Ballentine does provide a short
literature research on the relation between שֵׁדִים šēḏīm and the
divine epithet שַׁדַּי šadday, any conclusions are lacking: after the
description of the occurrences of the latter, she observes that it
does not occur anywhere near שֵׁדִים šēḏīm and she subsequently goes
on to describe the attestations and interpretations of that word.

Adele Berlin (Chapter 10: “Greek Eros in Song of Songs 8:6–7”) draws
the attention to Song of Songs 8:6–7 as a showcase for the integration
of Hellenistic influence on Jewish culture. The most prominent
features are the opposition of love with jealousy, the fiery arrows of
love (like those of Eros), and the image of love as a divine flame.
These elements from v. 6 are then blended with ancient near Eastern
images of the cosmic sea in v. 7, showing the assimilation of Greek
and Jewish cultures in antiquity.

Christian M. M. Brady writes about “Month Names in the Bible” (Chapter
11), distinguishing between simple ordinal numbering (“in the sixth
month”), Phoenician, and Babylonian month names. The first is the
default, and in this the Hebrew calendar is distinct from what we know
of neighboring cultures. Brady shows that the Phoenician (always
explained in the native ordinal system) and Babylonian names are
confined to their respective cultural contexts (in 1 Kings 6–8 and
post-exilic texts, respectively), indicating a form of
style-switching.

Chapter 12, “Further Reflections on Egyptian Influence on the Early
Hebrews—Priestly Matters” (James K. Hoffmeier) presents evidence for
Egyptian influence in the sphere of Israelite priesthood that must
stem from an early period (before the 8th c. BCE). On the basis of
these personal names, clothing, attributes and cultic objects,
Hoffmeier not only rejects a late composition date for (parts of) the
Pentateuch, but presents them as evidence for the historicity of the
Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the exodus. The alternative
possibilities that the Egyptian elements in the Bible are the result
of a foreign sojourn of just the Levites (as argued by Friedman 2017,
whom Hoffmeier also cites) or of the political involvement of Egypt in
Canaan in the Bronze Age (in line with the position held by, among
others, Naʿaman 2011; 2015), are not refuted in this contribution.

In the following chapter, “The Akedah in a Different Voice” (Chapter
13), Aaron Koller discusses gender roles in the patriarch stories. The
absence of Sarah in the story where Abraham is going to kill their son
has been discussed by various (feminist) commentators. Engaging with
different perspectives, Koller concludes that Abraham had to
incorporate the feminine voice rather than blindly sacrifice Isaac.

Craig E. Morrison provides examples that support the decision to
include “Targum Jonathan in the Critical Apparatus of the Biblia
Hebraica Quinta in 1 and 2 Samuel” (Chapter 14). As one of the editors
of that publication in preparation, he shows some cases where the
Targumic translation offers an alternative interpretation of the
Masoretic text from a Jewish perspective. This places other ancient
translations (Septuagint, Peshitta) in a broader context.

Chapter 15, “Hidden Waters: The Sounds of Sinking in the Song of the
Sea” by Scott B. Noegel, walks through the Song of the Sea from Exodus
15 and identifies cases of paronomasia, where the poet deliberately
has chosen words or forms that echo either the words מַ֫יִם máyim (or
modifications of it) and יָם yām, or the sound of water (with
voiceless sibilants and other fricatives). Noegel does not directly
address the issue of dating, but the deliberate sound play does
explain some of the presumed archaic features, such as the pronominal
suffixes and prepositions ending in ‌-mō. Noegel shows how the sounds
of the language support the message, though it would have been helpful
to put things in perspective: just how aberrant is the use of m and
sibilants in this text? He identifies the frequent syllable ‌-mō as a
form of the word for ‘water’, but this is not attested in Hebrew.
Additionally, one also needs to consider the original pronunciation of
the Song of the Sea at the time of composition; the spirantized
realization of כ (considered a voiceless fricative), for instance,
most likely postdates the composition (although the exact date of this
sound change is a moot issue; cf. Steiner 2007).

In a similar vein, Elizabeth Robar investigates “Sound Play in the
Song of Hannah” (Chapter 16). She counters the critique that it does
not fit in the narrative context by referring to “stock imagery”:
common themes Hannah alludes to. Robar provides a useful partitioning
of this song on the basis of the verb forms used, before she
identifies connections on the basis of similar sounds. Internally, the
sound play enhances the song’s structure and cohesion, while
externally, it connects the song to the surrounding narrative.

A short intermezzo in between studies on poetry is William M.
Schniedewind’s “Northern Refugees in Jerusalem: The Case of Menaḥem,
Son of Yawbana” (Chapter 17). The author briefly discusses the influx
of refugees in Jerusalem from the kingdom of Israel at the time of the
Assyrian conquest. Through the case of Menaḥem, whose name appears on
a number of seals, we get a glimpse of how these refugees brought
their administrative knowhow to Judah, while through the spelling of
his father’s name we may be seeing a developing and fusing cultural
identity.

Combining the topics of Israelite influence and Biblical Hebrew
Poetry, Benjamin D. Sommer studies Psalm 20 in Chapter 18,
“Transformation and Continuity in Liturgical Poetry: The Case of Psalm
20.” After a critical commentary on the Masoretic text of the psalm,
Sommer compares it to the version found in a papyrus from Egypt (Pap.
Amh. 63). Though clearly similar, both versions witness differences
(developments from an unattested original) that demonstrate how
existing poetry could be modified to serve anew in the cultic,
theological, or political order of the day.

Jeffrey H. Tigay shares “Two Notes on the Rescue of Moses in Exodus
and in the Dura-Europos Synagogue Mural” (Chapter 19). The first
concerns a philological study on תֵּבָה tēḇā, which shows that it was
a chest or a box, and not a basket, in which Moses was placed in the
Nile, in line with the depiction of the Dura-Europos synagogue mural.
Secondly, Tigay suggests that an unidentified female figure on the
mural portrays Jochebed’s servant; strikingly, she is not mentioned in
the Masoretic text of Exodus 2:3, but does appear in the Dead Sea
Scrolls, indicating that the mural’s artist was familiar with such a
text.

Isaiah 15:9, the topic (and title) of Chapter 20, is a challenging
verse. H. G. M. Williamson analyzes it text-critically, generally
opting to stay close to the Masoretic text instead of the several
alternative readings that have been suggested. He does argue for a
regrouping of the cola of vv. 8–9, and associates this passage with
“the mixture of views about Moab elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible”
(p. 331).

Ian Young compares different witnesses of Daniel 7 and 8 in Chapter
21, “The Joy of Secondary Texts: The ‘Little Horn’ in Masoretic Text
and Old Greek Daniel 7–8.” Whereas many scholars use secondary texts
to approach the original (in which the Greek can sometimes disclose
developments in the Masoretic text, as in Daniel 7:8), Young draws
particular attention to “the joy” of reading each version on its own,
asking how each text was understood by its readers.

Part 3 contains a few chapters on the carriers of the Hebrew Bible:
Hebrew manuscripts (a more recent research interest of the volume’s
honoree). The four contributions treat the history and authenticity of
manuscripts and its contents.

The first volume editor, Vincent Beiler, asks the question “Who Wrote
Acrostic Signatures in Early Masoretic Bibles? The Case of Ḥananya
ha-Levi ben Shelomo” (Chapter 22). First, he reconstructs a collection
of manuscripts as a single codex of the Former Prophets on the basis
of their contingent content and similarity in their Masora magna.
Secondly, he is able to identify the owner (and not the scribe, as was
thought before) through acrostics in that Masora magna as Ḥananya
ha-Levi, who is also referred to in the initial colophon he attributes
to this codex.

In Chapter 23, “Christian Scholarship and Jewish Prayer in
13th-Century England: Oxford, ms Arch. Selden A. 3”, Judith
Olszowy-Schlanger argues on several grounds that the referenced
manuscript from the library of the 17th-century scholar John Selden is
indeed an exceptional case of an English Jewish production that goes
back to before the expulsion of English Jews in 1290. The Latin
glosses and idiosyncratic grammatical paradigms reveal that it was
used by Christian scholars to interact with Jewish liturgical texts.

Chapter 24 presents “The Curious Case of the Corresponding Colophons
in Codex Cairo 3” (Chapter 24). The manuscript itself is inaccessible
for study, and Benjamin M. Outhwaite relies on a study of the
microfilm of the manuscript to assess the authenticity of the three
colophons in it. On the basis of their appearance (layout, and to some
extent also handwriting) and content (linguistic features, the names
of individuals, etc.), Outhwaite concludes that only the proofreading
colophon can be safely assumed to be authentic; for the two dedication
colophons, he suggests a skeptical attitude towards their
truthfulness, pointing towards similarities with (other) forged
colophons in the collection of Abraham Firkovich.

In the final chapter (Chapter 25, “A Letter from the Chief of the
Samaritans, with a Little Present”), Stefan Schorch traces back the
history of the 14th-century Samaritan Targum manuscript M, as far as
it is still available across collections in Europe. His search is
initiated by the finding of a folium between the pages of a
19th-century book, and its history can be retrieved through a letter
by Jacob esh-Shelaby pasted into the back of the same book, indicating
the folium was a present. Subsequently, Schorch presents what is known
about the transmission history of other fragments of this manuscript,
most of which can be traced back to Jacob esh-Shelaby, “the chief of
the Samaritans.”

EVALUATION

The concept of a Festschrift has its advantages and drawbacks. It
provides an occasion for scholars to present results from their
research that do not fit in other publication types. In certain cases
in this volume, the contribution reflects a line of thought or an idea
that has not been fully worked out yet, or an overview of the data of
or literature on a particular topic, and its publication allows others
to interact with it. Especially with scholars as prominent as the
contributors to this volume, this is for the benefit of many scholars
in- and outside of the field.

On the other hand, without a common theme, Festschrifts often display
a lack of coherence. The editors acknowledge this when they say “no
cohesive volume could cover the breadth of Gary’s scholarship”
(p. xvii). Limiting the scope of the contributions to the (Biblical)
Hebrew language and its literary tradition provides a certain unity.
This applies especially to Part 2 where there are recurring topics
across the chapters, such as text criticism, sound play, the study of
Hebrew poetry, and the diversity of cultural influences—not by chance
all research interests of Rendsburg. Such coherence is generally
lacking in the first part with linguistic studies. That topics jump
from one to another will bother few, though, as most readers will not
read it as a single entity (perhaps with the exception of just the
honoree and the reviewer).

The chapters are generally quite concise (the shortest spanning less
than 10 pages), some treating very specific topics. Remarks on
individual chapters have already been made in the summary above.

The volume is well-edited with consistent formatting. All Biblical
Hebrew text is provided in Hebrew script as well as in
transliteration, while Medieval Hebrew quotations in the third part
are not always transliterated. A minor sloppiness of style is that
quotations in right-to-left scripts (Hebrew and Syriac) are generally
left-aligned. Indices to the volume are lacking; to a certain extent,
the diversity of topics covered makes a subject index less relevant,
but at least an index of biblical references would have been a
valuable addition contributing to the unity of the book.

Overall, this Festschrift to Gary Rendsburg is a collection of most
interesting studies by world-class scholars, each of which is a
celebration of the honoree. It contains valuable research outputs and
interesting overviews that undoubtedly contribute to the study of the
Hebrew Bible, its language, historical context, and transmission.
Scholars in these fields need to be aware of this publication, as it
is most useful and relevant for their research—if not as a whole, then
most certainly through the individual contributions.

REFERENCES

Bettega, Simone, and Luca D’Anna. 2023. Gender and Number Agreement in
Arabic. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics 109. Leiden:
Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004527249.

Friedman, Richard Elliott. 2017. The Exodus. New York, NY: HarperOne.

Groen, Jorik (F.J.). 2021. “Frequency, Analogy, and Suppletion: √hlk
in the Semitic Languages.” In New Perspectives in Biblical and
Rabbinic Hebrew, edited by Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan, 75-96.
Semitic Languages and Cultures 7. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.
https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0250.04.

Naʿaman, Nadav. 2011. “The Exodus Story: Between Historical Memory and
Historiographical Composition.” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern
Religions 11(1). 39-69. https://doi.org/10.1163/156921211X579579.

Naʿaman, Nadav. 2015. “Out of Egypt or Out of Canaan? The Exodus Story
Between Memory and Historical Reality.” In Israel’s Exodus in
Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and
Geoscience, edited by Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider, and William
H.C. Propp, 527-533. Cham: Springer.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04768-3_42.

Steiner, Richard. 2007. “Variation, Simplifying Assumptions and the
History of Spirantization in Aramaic and Hebrew.” In שערי לשון: מחקרים
בלשון העברית בארמית ובלשונות היהודים מוגשים למשה בר־אסר / Shaʿarei
Lashon: Studies in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Jewish Languages Presented to
Moshe Bar-Asher, edited by Aharon Maman, Steven E. Fassberg, and
Yochanan Breuer, 1:*53-*65. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik.
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12202/7774.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jorik (F.J.) Groen is a PhD Candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
Faculty of Religion and Theology. His PhD research focuses on motion
verbs in Biblical Hebrew from a cognitive semantic perspective. Next
to this synchronic approach of the language, a main research interest
is the diachronic study of Ancient Hebrew and closely related
languages. He has published on several different features in the
history and prehistory of the (Northwest) Semitic languages.



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