HEBREW
178
HEBREW
witness that in the fifteenth century b. c. the peoples
inhabiting the eastern shores of the Mediterranean,
though making use of AssjTian in their official docu-
ments, employed the dialects of Chanaan in current
spoken intercourse. Furthermore, the Egj-ptian rec-
ords, some of which go back to the sixteenth cen-
tury and earlier, contain words borrowed from the
language of Chanaan, though it must be admitted that
these loan words are more frequent in the papyri of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But these
documents, however ancient, do not, of course, take
us back to the origin of the Chanaanitish group; its
beginnings, like those of the other Semitic languages,
are lo.st in the haze of prehistoric antiquity.
In connexion with this problem scholars, assuming that some of the known Semitic languages were de- rived from others of the same family, have tried to discover their mutual relationships of parent stock and affiliation, to determine which was the mother tongue from which the others were derived. Thus Richard Simon accorded the honour of priority to Hebrew, but this view has now no adherents. Nor have the efforts of modern savants in this direction resulted in the general acceptance of any definite theory of derivation. Friedrich Delitzsch (The He- brew Language Viewed in the Light of .Assyrian Re- search) awards the priority to Assyrian, while Mar- goliouth (Hastings, "Diet, of the Bible", Vol. Ill, p. 26) places Arabic in the first place, and contends that the Chanaanitish language was derived from it when already in a classical stage of development. Ob- viously the question does not admit of a clear and ready solution, and there seems at present to be a tendency among Semitic scholars to give up the assump- tion that any of the known Semitic languages were derived directly from any of the others, and to con- sider them rather as sister idioms, all being derived in more or less parallel lines from one original parent stock of prehistoric origin, which survives only in the elements common to the different members of the group. This view of the case wovdd seem to be con- firmed by the results of philological investigation in the field of the Indo-European languages. For a time it was thought that Sanskrit would prove to be the parent stem, but deeper research pointed rather to the existence of a prehistoric language denominated "Aryan", from which Sanskrit, as well as the others, was derived. So also in the case of the Semitic tongues; they probably all go back to an original parent language spoken in a certain locality by the first ancestors of the Semitic race. They became diversified more or less rapidly and profoundly as a result of the successive migrations of the various tribes from the common centre, and according to the circumstances and conditions of the milieux into which the migrations took place. While nothing definite is known as to the precise location of the original home of the Semites, the more common opin- ion of scholars, based on various indications, places it somewhere on or near the borders of the Persian Gulf. From this centre migrations went forth at different epochs, and to different portions of South-Western Asia, where the tribes settled and in the course of time formed separate nations. With this political isolation and independence came also gradual devia- tions from the original spoken idiom, which, in the course of time, became so pronounced as to constitute distinct languages. In this hypothesis it is easy to understand why there are closer resemblances be- tween some of the Semitic tongues (e. g. Hebrew and Arabic) than between others (e. g. Hebrew and Ara- maic), the difference being due to the diversity of conditions in which the respective deviations from the parent stock took place. An obvious illustration of this is furnished by a comparative study of the Ro- mance languages, all of which represent more or less independent and parallel derivations from the parent
stem, Latin. As regards the Semitic group, it is
possible that certain resemblances may be due to
supervening influences of a later epoch. Thus, for
instance, the Chanaanitish may have been affected
more or less profoundly by the official use of Assyrian
during the period of the Tell-el-Amarna letters.
Nothing definite is known as to the antiquity of the primitive Semitic nucleus near the Persian Gulf, nor concerning the date of the migration of the tribes who settled in Chanaan. The Book of Genesis (xix, 37 sqq.) connects with the family of Abraham the origin of the Moabites and -Ammonites. At all events, it seems probable that the migration of these tribes was anterior to the year 2000 b. c. Whether Abraham already spoke the language of Chanaan at the time of his migration thither, or whether, having first spoken Assyrian or Aramaic, he later adopted the language of the country in which he established himself, it is hard to say. But be that as it may, the language spoken by the clan of Abraham was a dialect closely akin to those of Moab, TjTe, and Sidon, and it bore a greater resemblance to Assyrian and Arabic than to Aramaic. Once formed, it seems to have been little affected l)y the intrusion of foreign words. Thus, notwithstand- ing the long sojourn in Egypt, the number of Egyp- tian words that have found a place in the Hebrew vocabulary is exceedingly small. The attempt on the part of some scholars to prove the existence of several Hebrew dialects has not produced any definite re- sults. The analysis invoked to show, for instance, traces in the Biblical writings of a northern and south- ern dialect is so minute and subtle, and often so arbitrary, that it is not surprising to find that the conclusions arrived at by different scholars are chiefly noteworthy for their wide divergencies. On the other hand, there seems to be good ground for assert- ing that, anterior to the period represented by the Biblical Hebrew, the language had already passed through the vicissitudes of a long development and subsequent disintegration. Among the indications upon which this contention is based may be men- tioned: (1) the presence of archaic words or forms occurring especially in poetic fragments of old war songs and the like; (2) the occurrence of certain classical forms which imply the existence of previous forms long since obsolete; and (3) the fact of the analogies between Hebrew and the other Semitic tongues, from which scholars are led to infer the existence, in a more remote antiquity, of analogies closer and more numerous. Such evidences are, of course, subject to sober and cautious scrutiny, else they are liable to be made the basis of hasty and un- warrantable generalizations, but their proving force is cumulative, and they seem to indicate in the He- brew a long process of growth and decay through which it had passed, in great part at least, before the Biblical period. In fact, it is claimed by some that the Hebrew of the Old Testament betrays evidences of as great a disintegration and departure from its assumed typical perfection as does the vulgar Arabic of to-day from the classical idiom of the golden liter- ary age of Islam.
A noteworthy characteristic of the Hebrew of the Biblical period is its uniform stability. All due allowance being made for .scribal alterations whereby archaic passages may have been made more intelli- gible to later generations, the astomiding fact still remains that throughout the many centuries during which the Old -Testament writings were produced the sacred language remained almost without per- ceptible change — a phenomenon of fixity which has no parallel in the history of any of our Western lan- guages. This is especially true of the period anterior to the Capti\'ity, for that great event marks the be- ginning of a rapid decadence. Nevertheless, though from that date onward the spoken Hebrew gave way more and more to the prevailing Aramaic, it still
