שערי לשון: מחקרים בלשון העברית, בארמית ובלשונות היהודים מוגשים למשה בר-אשר (Sha'arei Lashon: Studies in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Jewish Languages Presented to Moshe Bar-Asher) (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS MyCgwm Mydwhyh twnwClbw tymrab ,tyrboh NwClb Myrqjm :NwCl yroC rCa-rb hCml (Sha‘arei Lashon: Studies in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Jewish Languages Presented to Moshe Bar-Asher). Volume 1: Biblical Hebrew, Masorah, and Medieval Hebrew. Edited by A. Maman, S. E. Fassberg, and Y. Breuer. Pp. wn + 344 + vii + *184. Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2007. Cloth, $37.83. Sha‘arei Lashon is a remarkable collection of articles in all areas of the Hebrew language, in all its periods and traditions, as well as in Aramaic and Jewish Languages. The studies in these three volumes contribute a wealth of knowledge to the study of the Hebrew language. The authors of the articles are colleagues, students, and friends of an outstanding scholar and teacher, Professor Moshe Bar-Asher to whom this book is presented in honor of his retirement from the Hebrew University after forty-four years of research and teaching. The wide scope of the studies in Sha‘arei Lashon is a fitting tribute to Moshe Bar-Asher, who is acknowledged as one of the foremost authorities on the Hebrew language, Aramaic, and Jewish languages. The first volume of Sha‘arei Lashon deals with Biblical Hebrew, Masorah, and Medieval Hebrew, the second with Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic, and the third with Modern Hebrew and the Jewish languages. The first volume of Sha‘arei Lashon begins with speeches in appreciation of Moshe Bar-Asher expressed by his colleagues Zeev Ben Hayyim and Mordechai Breuer, who talk about their personal friendship with Moshe Bar-Asher and discuss his scholarly contribution, his multifarious interests, and his personal attributes. Also included is a survey of Professor BarAsher ’s impressive publications. There are twenty-nine articles in this volume: nineteen in Hebrew, six in English, and four in French. Space does not permit this reviewer to thoroughly examine every article. Therefore, only several studies will be briefly discussed. This volume is divided into three parts. The first part is entitled, “Biblical Hebrew and the Language of the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Articles in this part deal with Biblical Hebrew morphology, phonology, semantics, and lexicography, as well as the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Joshua Blau (“Some Morphological Problems Concerning the Infinitive in Biblical Hebrew,” pp. 3–9) discusses the two forms of the infinitive in Biblical Hebrew: absolute and construct. Blau claims that these two forms of the infinitive were used originally in similar syntactic functions and only later developed in different directions. However, Blau also shows that, although their functions were similar, they are two distinct forms with dif- Hebrew Studies 50 (2009) 390 Reviews ferent origins. In a very methodological manner, Blau provides convincing evidence that the infinitive construct is not a transformation of the infinitive absolute as argued by some scholars. Two studies on the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls analyze phenomena in that language and shed light on its origins. Scholars have debated whether the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls developed directly from Biblical Hebrew or was one of a few dialects that existed side-by-side. These two articles are: “The System of Independent Pronouns at Qumran and the History of Hebrew in the Second Temple Period,” by Matthew Morgenstern (pp. 44–63), and “Nominal Clause Patterns in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” by Tamar Zewi (pp. 64–80). Morgenstern collected and studied all independent pronouns in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in good manuscripts of Rabbinic Hebrew. Based on the study of the different forms and their occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Biblical Hebrew, in the Samaritan version of the Torah, and in Rabbinic Hebrew, Morgenstern concludes that the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls may not be described as a direct development from classical Biblical Hebrew. He does not accept the approach of Kutscher, who had argued that the language reflected in the Tiberian tradition is the standard, whereas other traditions represent the sub-standard language of the Second Temple period influenced by Aramaic and other languages (p. 45). Morgenstern’s data is summarized in a table on page 56. He found that the distribution of the first person singular forms, yˆnSa and yIkOnDa, is the only one that can be said to reflect...