Patterns Of Linguistic Forms In The Masoretic Text: The Preposition מן ‘From’ (2013)

Patterns of Linguistic Forms in the Masoretic Text: The Preposition מן “From”*

Ian Young

1. Introduction

All scholars agree that there is linguistic variety in the Hebrew Bible. The dominant explanation of the distribution of linguistic forms in the Maso-retic Text (MT) of the Hebrew Bible in modern scholarship has been in terms of a simple equation between the language of the MT and the lan-guage of the “original author” of the text in question. Current scholar-ship on the textual transmission of the Hebrew Bible, however, makes this explanation only one out of several—and not one of the more likely ones.

In this study I will discuss the patterns of distribution of the preposi-tion מן “from” in different grammatical contexts. On the one hand, there is the case where מן stands before a noun1 without the definite article. In this context, the normal situation is where the nun of מן assimilates to the fol-lowing word, for example, ממלך “from a king.” In modern scholarship on the Hebrew language it is the pattern of distribution of the exceptions to this that have received the bulk of attention. The nonassimilated form (מן from a king”) is very rare throughout the Hebrew Bible. Chronicles is“ מלךthe book that stands out from the rest, having by far the most examples of

* I am pleased to dedicate this paper to David Clines. I am particularly hon-ored to represent the University of Sydney, where the Clines story began. In 1960 he completed a BA at Sydney University with First Class Honours in Greek, and First Class Honours and the University Medal in Latin, before leaving Australia, initially for Cambridge. David has always kept his link with Australia, which has included an ongoing involvement with the University of Sydney, and I am particularly grateful for his interest, help, and support for my own scholarly efforts.

1. Or other features such as another preposition, e.g., מלפני “from before.”

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unassimilated forms before nouns in the Bible (54), as well as by a signifi-cant margin the highest proportion of unassimilated to assimilated forms (16.6 percent).2 This fact is the reason that scholars have suggested that the unassimilated form of מן is a feature of Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH), often suggested to be the Hebrew characteristic of the postexilic era, and hence this linguistic feature is a staple of standard treatments of the language of the Hebrew Bible. Robert Polzin, for instance, who started with the assumption that the language of nonsynoptic Chronicles was the purest example of LBH,3 naturally concluded that unassimilated מן was a key fea-ture of LBH, which he attributed to Aramaic influence.4 However, outside Chronicles, it is only Daniel among the core LBH books (Esther−Chron-icles), or indeed the “late” books in general, that shows the slightest trace of a higher proportion of this form.5 Remarkably, if this is a key feature of LBH, neither core LBH Esther nor core LBH Ezra has a single e xample, and core LBH Nehemiah has only one. The LBH status of this feature has therefore been questioned.6 One alternative explanation is that the unas-

2. Robert Rezetko, “Dating Biblical Hebrew: Evidence from Samuel–Kings andChronicles,” in Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (ed. Ian Young; JSOTSup 369; London: T&T Clark, 2003), 230–31. Full preliminary data is presented in idem, “Source and Revision in the Narratives of David’s Transfer of the Ark: Text, Language and Story in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 13, 15–16” (Ph.D. diss.; 2 vols.; University of Edinburgh, 2004), 2:420–22; later published with a brief summary in idem, Source and Revision in the Narratives of David’s Transfer of the Ark: Text, Lan-guage and Story in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 13, 15–16 (LHBOTS 470; London: T&T Clark, 2007), 100 n. 69. Given the large number of examples in the Hebrew Bible, it is difficult to arrive at definitive figures, but I have verified that these figures seem to be close to correct.

3. Robert Polzin, Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward an Historical Typology of BiblicalHebrew Prose (HSM 12; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976), 1–2.

4. Ibid., 66. See also, e.g., Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls(HSM 29; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 30–31, 92; Angel Sáenz Badillos, A History of the Hebrew Language (trans. John Elwolde; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 119, 143.

5. And in Daniel this is only 3 unassimilated as opposed to 28 assimilated forms(9.7 percent).

6. E.g., Rezetko, “Dating Biblical Hebrew,” 230–31; Ian Young, “Late BiblicalHebrew and the Qumran Pesher Habakkuk,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 8, article 25 (2008): 9 (online: http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_102.pdf); Ian Young, Robert Rezetko, and Martin Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (2 vols.; BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2008), 1:108, 122 (henceforth LDBT).

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YOUNG: PATTERNS OF LINGUISTIC FORMS 387

similated form is a stylistic peculiarity of Chronicles and Daniel, rather than a feature of diachronic linguistic development. But the question that we will return to is: whose style? The original author of Chronicles?

2. “From” (מן) before a Noun with the Definite Article

There is, in fact, another category of linguistic variation involving the preposition מן. This is where מן stands before a word with the definite article. Here the normal situation is for מן to remain separate from the graphic unit that follows, for example, מן־המלך “from the king.” Inter-estingly, while the first case has been extensively studied, the second has received relatively little attention.

The following table gives the distribution of מן before a noun with the definite article, giving the relative proportions of the assimilated to the nonassimilated form.7

Book Unassimilated ִמן ַה־

Assimilated ֵמַה־

Percentage Assimilated

Genesis 49 1 2.0

Exodus 48 0 0.0

Leviticus 75 0 0.0

Numbers 45 0 0.0

Deuteronomy 27 0 0.0

Joshua 32 5 13.5

Judges 32 6 15.8

7. The figures were generated using Accordance and Bible Works, and then all forms manually checked. This procedure does not guarantee that an occasional form has not somehow been overlooked, but it means that the figures are likely to be close to exhaustive. Note also: (1) The number of unassimilated forms for Samuel includes the Kethib of 1 Sam 24:9; the Qere has the assimilated form (not counted in the “Assimi-lated ֵמַה־” column to the right). (2) The total of assimilated forms includes Gen 6:20; Josh 1:4; 2:23; 3:1; 8:7; 20:4; Judg 1:36; 14:14; 17:8; 20:15, 31, 42; 1 Kgs 7:7; 17:4; 18:5, 26; 20:41; 2 Kgs 4:40; 17:27, 28; Isa 1:29; 19:5; Jer 19:14; 33:5; 52:7; Zeph 1:10; Ps 41:14; Ezra 3:8, 12; 6:21; 8:35; 10:9; 1 Chr 5:22; 2 Chr 2:7; 3:17; 7:1; 20:1; 25:20; 29:34; 34:13. For Samuel and Ezekiel see below, nn. 9 and 10.



Samuel 38 34 47.2

Kings 50 8 13.8

Isaiah 8 2 20.0

Jeremiah 31 3 8.8

Ezekiel 40 20 33.3

Hosea 2 0 0.0

Joel 2 0 0.0

Amos 3 0 0.0

Obadiah 0 0 –

Jonah 2 0 0.0

Micah 2 0 0.0

Nahum 0 0 –

Habakkuk 0 0 –

Zephaniah 2 1 33.3

Haggai 5 0 0.0

Zechariah 4 0 0.0

Malachi 1 0 0.0

Total XII 23 1 4.2

Psalms 9 1 10.0

Job 6 0 0.0

Proverbs 0 0 –

Ruth 6 0 0.0

Song of Songs 8 0 0.0

Qoheleth 9 0 0.0

Lamentations 0 0 –



Esther 1 0 0.0

Daniel 11 0 0.0

Ezra 10 5 33.3

Nehemiah 22 0 0.0

Chronicles 55 8 12.7

Total 635 94 12.9

The greatest concentration of the assimilated form (מה־) falls in the core Early Biblical Hebrew (EBH) book of Samuel, and Samuel certainly stands far above the rest in its proportion of the assimilated form. The core LBH books of Ezra and Chronicles have a number of examples of the assimilated form, but the other core LBH books of Esther, Daniel, and Nehemiah join most of the pentateuchal books in having only examples of separate מן ה־ (34 total). There seems no obvious chronological expla-nation of the distribution, therefore, if one is thinking in terms of the standard chronological model of linguistic change in Biblical Hebrew.8 It is interesting to speculate, however, whether some chronological con-clusions would be drawn if it were Chronicles and not Samuel involved. Samuel’s preference for this form is very prominent and far greater than Chronicles’ preference for unassimilated מן before an anarthrous noun. Yet scholars have paid almost no attention to this pattern, presumably because it cannot be fitted into the chronological theory. Quite apart from questions such as whether the chronological theory is right, this example demonstrates that the attempt to view the data of the MT through the lens of a presumed chronology has led to the overlooking of important linguis-tic phenomena in it.

It is interesting to observe that the distribution of the two forms is uneven throughout the book of Samuel. Up to 2 Sam 3:37 the assimilated form מה־ actually predominates 29–18 (61.7 percent). From the next occurrence in 2 Sam 4:11 to the end of the book, however, the assimi-lated form is decidedly in the minority, 5–20 (20 percent).9 There is thus

8. Cf. LDBT 2:104.9. Nonassimilated (מן ה־): 1 Sam 1:1; 2:20; 4:16, 16; 7:11; 9:5; 11:5; 13:15; 14:11;

17:40, 50; 24:9 (K); 28:9, 13; 30:19; 2 Sam 1:2, 4 (bis); 4:11; 5:9; 7:8, 11; 11:17; 12:17; 15:24; 18:13; 19:10, 25, 43; 20:2, 5, 12, 13, 16; 21:10; 23:19, 23; 24:15b. Assimilated



a noticeable increase in the proportion of the standard form as the book progresses and a corresponding decrease in the proportion of the non-standard form. Since this seems to cut across commonly suggested source divisions in the book of Samuel, a scribal explanation seems most likely, such as that a scribe, at some stage in the MT tradition, with lessening or growing efficiency changed forms from one sort to another. Another interesting pattern is observable in Ezekiel, the only other MT book to have more than a single-figure number of the assimilated forms. Here it is noticeable that of Ezekiel’s 20 assimilated forms, 16 of these are found in a sequence unbroken by nonassimilated forms stretching from 40:7 through 43:15. Beginning at 43:23, MT Ezekiel then has an unbroken sequence of 14 nonassimilated forms.10 Again, a scribal explanation of this peculiarity seems likely.

The high proportion of unassimilated מה־ is therefore a clear feature of the language of the MT book of Samuel.11 But where did this pattern come from? The original author of Samuel?

3. Assumptions by Language Scholars about the Text of the Hebrew Bible

The simple equation that the language of the MT represents in detail the language of original authors is evident in almost any sampling of the clas-sic work on the Hebrew language up to the present day. As an illustrative example, note Mark F. Rooker’s discussion of the spelling of “David”:

In the Book of Ezekiel, while the name ָּדִוד occurs only four times, it is significant that one of these spellings is plene, identical to the pattern in the post-exilic works (34:23). Ezek 34:23 provides an early attestation to

Sam 4:12; 9:3, 25; 10:5; 14:4 (bis), 28; 15:21; 16:13, 18; 17:34; 18:9; 24:8; 25:14 1 :(מה־)(bis); 26:22; 28:3, 23; 30:17, 22 (bis), 25, 26; 31:3; 2 Sam 1:15; 2:21, 27; 3:22, 37; 12:20; 16:1; 17:21; 23:13; 24:15a.

10. Before Ezek 40 the figures are 4 assimilated to 26 nonassimilated (13.3 per-cent). Nonassimilated (מן ה־): Ezek 1:4, 13; 5:6 (bis), 7; 10:19; 11:17 (bis); 16:34; 20:34, 41 (bis); 23:48; 25:7 (bis); 28:25; 29:13, 15; 34:13 (bis), 25; 36:24; 39:10 (bis), 22, 27; 43:23, 25; 44:31 (bis); 45:1, 3, 4, 14, 15 (bis); 47:2, 12, 15, 17. Assimilated (מה־): Ezek 1:10; 14:7; 15:7; 25:9; 40:7, 8, 9; 41:20, 25; 42:5 (bis), 6 (tris), 9 (bis), 14; 43:6, 14, 15.

11. And to a lesser extent MT Ezekiel.



this trend, and we conclude that this tendency to write the name of ָּדִויד as plene was beginning to increase in frequency in the exilic period.12

In other words, the MT of Ezekiel, even down to details such as the plene and defective spelling of individual words, reflects the exact wording that left the pen of Ezekiel himself.

A more recent example is found in Gary A. Rendsburg’s article on the language of the newly discovered Hazon Gabriel inscription. Here Rendsburg wonders: “Does the author of Jer 26:18 utilize the ‘long’ spell-ing [of ‘Jerusalem’ ירושלים], since the passage quotes Mic 3:12 with the ‘short’ spelling [i.e., ירושלם]?”13 In other words, the MT represents even the spelling choices of preexilic authors.

I have deliberately chosen two examples dealing with spelling, since one can easily infer that if even the orthography of the MT represents the original text that left the author’s pen, then obviously the more signifi-cant language features would be similarly assumed to do so as well. This assumption is very easy to document. Note how E. Y. Kutscher’s seminal study of the language of 1QIsaa from Qumran takes the MT as simply “the Bible,” which may be contrasted with Qumran and other biblical texts.14 It is clear from his discussion that the language of “the Bible” (MT) is in detail the language of the time of the authors. Hence, for example, Kutscher can tell when the same linguistic form is being used as an archaism or as a late Aramaism because he knows that some compositions like Genesis, Deuteronomy, or Samuel are the oldest biblical writings, while other com-positions like Daniel are later, and in detail the language of the MT reflects the language of the original forms of these biblical compositions. As one example out of hundreds, note the simple statement: “The words מלה ,מלל are native Hebrew—we already find them in Gen. xxi 7 and II Sam. xxiii 2.”15 This statement makes no sense at all except on the assumption that not only are Genesis and Samuel “early” writings that predate the time that

12. Mark F. Rooker, “Dating Isaiah 40–66: What Does the Linguistic Evidence Say?” WTJ 58 (1996): 306.

13. Gary A. Rendsburg, “Hazon Gabriel: A Grammatical Sketch,” in Hazon Gabriel: New Readings of the Gabriel Revelation (ed. Matthias Henze; SBLEJL 29; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 66 n. 23.

14. E. Y. Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) (STDJ 6; Leiden: Brill, 1974), 50.

15. Ibid., 26.



Kutscher suggests such “Aramaisms” could be ascribed to actual Aramaic influence, but that the specific details of those written texts have not been changed since that early time.16

4. General Text-Critical Considerations

Language scholars, as shown, commonly work from the assumption that the MT provides detailed evidence of the linguistic forms used by the original authors of biblical compositions. This assumption is diametri-cally opposed to the current consensus of textual critics (and indeed most mainstream biblical scholars) as to the composition history of the Hebrew Bible.

The major experts agree substantially on the main points of a model of the emergence of the Hebrew biblical text, which I shall illustrate from two recent treatments of the question of the “original text” of the Bible.17 In contrast to the linguists’ assumption that the details of the MT reflect the details of the original text composed by an original author at a locat-able time, current scholarship views the quest for an original text, even in macrofeatures, never mind small peripheral details such as language, as an impossible task. Thus a recent detailed review of scholarship on the

16. For further discussion of Kutscher’s text-critical assumptions, see Ian Young, “‘Loose Language’ in 1QIsaa,” in Keter Shem Tov: Collected Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Memory of Alan Crown (ed. Shani Tzoref and Ian Young; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, forthcoming).

17. Extensive documentation of the scholarly consensus is provided in Robert Rezetko and Ian Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: Steps Toward an Integrated Approach (SBLANEM; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, forthcoming). Contrast this with the recent claim that the text-critical consensus we present is our own idiosyncratic view, in Ziony Zevit, “Not-So-Random Thoughts Concerning Lin-guistic Dating and Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew,” in Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew (ed. Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé and Ziony Zevit; Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic 8; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 466–73. Zevit provides here his detailed views on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, which are at odds with the work of text-critical specialists like Ulrich (471 n. 13) and Tov (see n. 19 below), for example, suggesting that the earliest manuscript from Qumran, 4QSamb, is a proto-MT text and hence that it “reflect[s] a stable type, the wording and orthography of which were set, for all practical purposes” (470–71, quote from 471). But consultation of the pub-lished edition reveals that this view is incorrect: 4QSamb has 43 nonorthographic vari-ants from the MT in 293 words, or one every 6.8 words (for these and other figures, see Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics).



question by Hans Debel concludes: “Textual critics are bereft of all hope to be able to reconstruct an ‘original text,’” and “[a]s a consequence, the traditional conception of textual criticism as reconstructing the ‘original’ text of the Hebrew Bible appears as an ill-fated undertaking—a vain quest for a holy grail which one can never hope to find.”18

One of the scholars discussed in Debel’s review is Emanuel Tov, the third edition of whose authoritative standard handbook on Textual Criti-cism of the Hebrew Bible has recently appeared.19 Tov’s book is therefore a particularly important representative of the scholarly consensus that Debel has outlined. Tov writes:

[T]he textual evidence does not point to a single “original” text, but a series of subsequent authoritative texts produced by the same or differ-ent authors … the original text(s) remain(s) an evasive entity that cannot be reconstructed. … Some biblical books, such as Jeremiah, reached a final state more than once … the original text is far removed and can never be reconstructed … the Judean Desert scrolls [our earliest biblical manuscripts] reflect a relatively late stage of the textual development.20

In other words, the pluriformity of the textual evidence indicates the like-lihood that all biblical texts in our possession are the products of previous and currently undocumented stages of literary growth.

It seems evident, therefore, that the Hebrew Bible comes from a world where the precise copying of texts was not the norm.21 Instead, the text-critical consensus, based on solid evidence of real manuscripts, indicates that whereas some core elements remained the same, the outward textual form of the biblical writings was in constant flux. If biblical books were composed like modern books, at one time, and thereafter remained basi-

18. Hans Debel, “Rewritten Bible, Variant Literary Editions and Original Text(s): Exploring the Implications of a Pluriform Outlook on the Scriptural Tradition,” in Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period (ed. Hanne von Weissenberg et al.; BZAW 419; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 83, 84–85.

19. Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (3rd ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012).

20. Ibid., 167–69.21. For detailed substantiation of this point in regard to the first-millennium

b.c.e. Mesopotamian evidence see, e.g., Russell Hobson, Transforming Literature into Scripture: Texts as Cult Objects at Nineveh and Qumran (BibleWorld; Sheffield: Equi-nox, 2012); and see further below, section 6.



cally the same, it is obvious that one might expect to detect a chronology in the way language is used in various books. In the context of the text-critical consensus, where texts were written and rewritten over centuries, the idea that there is a “date” when a biblical book was written is anachronistic. So too, since every biblical text contains within it a chronology of earlier and later composition, the idea that biblical books or chunks thereof represent the language of one particular time (and place) appears to be extremely unlikely. Rather than the default position being the assumption that the language of the texts reflects the language of an original author, the burden of proof is squarely on anyone who would make such a claim.

I have talked so far only about large-scale differences between biblical books. Language is definitely one of the most peripheral and hence most changeable aspects of these texts. Even texts that do not vary greatly in macrostructure from the MT still commonly have a great deal of linguistic variation. The most famous example is 1QIsaa, the nearly complete Isaiah scroll from cave 1 at Qumran. In my earlier work on textual variation, I made a fairly conservative definition of a linguistic variant, yet even so I discovered that some columns of 1QIsaa have a linguistic variant on aver-age every seven words (by which I mean Hebrew graphic units).22 Simi-larly, the Qumran Song of Songs manuscript 4QCantb23 has a linguistic variant every 7.4 words on average.

In fact, almost any textual variant is a potential linguistic variant. Word order variants relate to syntax, word substitutions and additions potentially involve so-called LBH lexemes, and so on. When viewed in this way, the fluidity of the biblical text on a linguistic level is even more staggering than the previously cited figures would suggest. Parallel texts in the MT itself provide us with valuable extratextual evidence to supple-ment the important but fragmentary evidence supplied by our non-MT textual witnesses. It is appropriate in this context to mention the important work of David Clines in this area. Clines has undertaken a very sobering investigation of the parallel text 2 Sam 22//Ps 18. Of the 382//394 words in this text, Clines discovers that over a hundred vary between the MT parallel texts. In addition, Clines surveys the evidence for the text from the Qumran fragments and ancient versions like the LXX and comes up with another 73 variants. This leads him to conclude that on average, even

22. Ian Young, “Biblical Texts Cannot Be Dated Linguistically,” HS 46 (2005): 349.23. Ian Young, “Notes on the Language of 4QCantb,” JJS 52 (2001): 122–31.



based on our limited textual evidence, nearly one word in two is textually open to question.24

That a text which exhibits so much fluidity in its fragmentary, late-attested witnesses (not to mention what went on before this time) could be used as fairly precise evidence of the language of an original author some hundreds of years earlier seems wildly implausible.

5. Text-Critical Considerations Relating to “From” (מן)

5.1. Before Nouns without the Definite Article

The pattern of distribution of the unassimilated form of מן before a noun without the definite article has been taken as significant for telling us about the Hebrew being used at the time of composition of each of the biblical books. In particular, it is said that Chronicles’ significant minority use of this form gives us important information about the Hebrew of the author of Chronicles, and hence about LBH. What I have said above about the textual history of the Hebrew Bible indicates already that we need to view such claims with a great amount of caution. Because of the very fragmen-tary nature of our early textual evidence for the books of the Hebrew Bible, we do not have a great amount of data in regard to any one particular lin-guistic issue. However, there are abundant clues about the fluid nature of the language of the biblical text in transmission.

Some of this evidence relates to מן. In regard to מן before a noun with-out the definite article, there has already been some work on variations in non-MT manuscripts. For example, the MT of Song of Songs presents the EBH assimilated form some 25 times, but the LBH unassimilated form just once (4:15). This is a very distinct preference for the more regular form, which places Song of Songs in line with those EBH books that have unas-similated forms only occasionally. In contrast to this, of the eight certain examples of “from” preserved in 4QCantb, seven of these represent the LBH unassimilated form of מן against just one case of the EBH form with

24. David J. A. Clines, “What Remains of the Hebrew Bible? Its Text and Lan-guage in a Postmodern Age,” ST 54 (2001): 76–80; updated with special attention to 4QSama in David J. A. Clines, “What Remains of the Hebrew Bible? The Accuracy of the Text of the Hebrew Bible in the Light of the Qumran Samuel (4QSama),” in Studies on the Text and Versions of the Hebrew Bible in Honour of Robert Gordon (ed. Geoffrey Khan and Diana Lipton; VTSup 149; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 211–20.



assimilated nun.25 This represents a much higher proportion of unassimi-lated to assimilated nun than any Masoretic biblical text whether EBH or LBH. The MT and Qumran manuscripts present very different linguistic profiles in regard to this feature. Which (if either) pattern of this linguistic form is evidence of the language of an original composition? In any case, with regard to this feature we have evidence of significant change in the linguistic profile of our texts during their transmission.26

5.2. Before the Definite Article

We saw above that the book of Samuel in its MT form stands out from the other books of the Hebrew Bible in the proportion of cases of assimi-lated “from” before the definite article (מה־). Naturally the question arises whether this feature of MT Samuel stems from the original stage of com-position of Samuel, as is commonly assumed by language scholars, or whether it came about during the book’s transmission. The fragments of the Qumran Samuel manuscript 4QSama (henceforth 4Q) provide us with some evidence to consider this question.27

Consider the following variants:

• 4Q מן [הא]רץ; MT מהארץ “from the land” (1 Sam 28:23). • 4Q [הבקר] מן מהבקר MT ;אז until morning” (2 Sam“ אז

2:27).• 4Q [ערים]ה .from the cities”; MT minus (2 Sam 10:6)“ מן

Although not paralleled in the MT, the plus in 4Q exhibits the form מן ה־.

• 4Q ויבקש [דוי]ד מן האלוהים; MT ויבקש דוד את האלהים “and David sought (from) God” (2 Sam 12:16). As part of the larger issue of the coordination of the verb בקש with prepositions, the 4Q variant exhibits the form –מן ה.

• 4Q האהבה .than (the) love” (2 Sam 13:15)“ מאהבה MT ;מן Both texts have the regular Biblical Hebrew form, but the

25. Young, “4QCantb,” 122–23.26. For evidence regarding variations between the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) and

MT Pentateuch in this feature, see LDBT 1:349.27. Note that the SP has the standard, nonassimilated form in Gen 6:20, the MT

Pentateuch’s only case of מה־.



important point is that 4Q does not have the assimilated form with the definite article.

It is noteworthy that in each of these variants 4QSama presents the stan-dard MT Bible form ה־ with unassimilated nun, even in those cases מן where MT Samuel has the assimilated form. In addition, note the follow-ing cases where 4Q and MT agree on their readings, all of which are cases of 1 :מן ה־ Sam 2:20; 2 Sam 1:4; 4:11; 5:9; 12:17; 19:10. It is an indication of how fragmentary 4Q is that these eleven are the only preserved cases of followed by a definite article.28 It is striking, however, that contrary to מןthe distinctive feature of MT Samuel, where there is an even mix of assimi-lated with nonassimilated forms, 4Q has an 11–0 preference for the non-assimilated form, even where the MT parallel has the assimilated form. Although fragmentary, the data suggests that 4Q had a radically different linguistic profile in this feature to the MT.

An additional line of argument might strengthen this suggestion. Samuel shares common (synoptic) material with Chronicles. This common material is shared either because Samuel and Chronicles were based on a common source or because Chronicles was based on a form of Samuel.29 It is interesting to note therefore that in the common material where Samuel and Chronicles share a form with מן plus definite article, Chronicles each time has the form (0–6) מן ה־, even when MT Samuel has the assimilated form 30.מה־ One possible way of interpreting this data is that Chronicles attests a form of Samuel that did not exhibit the high proportion of assimi-lated מה־ so distinctive of MT Samuel.31

28. It is an indication of how extremely fragmentary the other Qumran Samuel manuscripts (1QSam, 4QSamb, 4QSamc) are that they do not preserve a single verse in which מן plus definite article is attested.

29. Rodney K. Duke, “Recent Research in Chronicles,” CBR 8 (2009): 23–25. The form of Samuel used in this theory is understood to be an earlier form of Samuel than is found in the MT, that is, a Vorlage that was closer to the Old Greek and 4QSama than to the MT of Samuel.

30. The verses are: 1 Sam 31:3 (מהמורים)// 1 Chr 10:3 (מן היורים); 2 Sam 5:9// 1 Chr 11:8; 2 Sam 7:8// 1 Chr 17:7; 2 Sam 23:3 (מהשלשים)// 1 Chr 11:15 (מן השלושים); 2 Sam 23:19// 1 Chr 11:21; 2 Sam 23:23// 1 Chr 11:25.

31. However, we must also consider that MT Chronicles similarly had a long pro-cess of transmission from this hypothetical earlier text.



6. Conclusion

Scholars have considered it important that Chronicles has a significant minority of cases of unassimilated nun of מן with an anarthrous noun. Less has been made of Samuel’s even more significant proportion of assim-ilated nun of מן with the definite article. Do we have evidence of a distinc-tive linguistic practice by the “original authors” of Chronicles and Samuel? It may be possible that the tendency to use the forms less well attested in the MT Bible was a feature stretching back to the composition of the texts. However, the examples of variation involving these features in non-MT texts would indicate that it would be prudent not to base any conclusions about historical linguistics on this assumption. The tendency to use the less usual forms, or at least to use them in the proportions currently found in MT Samuel and Chronicles, could just as easily be a feature of the later scribal transmission of the texts.

How could we decide between these options? One weighty argument relates to the general considerations about the fluidity of the biblical text in the b.c.e. period. This fact makes it very unlikely that any of the texts in our possession provides access to one particular stage of the development of the Hebrew language. Much more likely is the suggestion that all of our texts are made up of linguistic features introduced at various times in their textual history. If they entered at various times, it is therefore quite likely that on occasion they reflect the historical development of the Hebrew language. But how could we tell what is early and what is late in these composite texts?

Investigation of other languages where a linguistic chronology can be reconstructed with some success, ranging from Akkadian to English, reveals that what is required is a large corpus of nonliterary texts that are securely localized in time and place. In regard to the size of the corpus, Akkadian is attested in literally hundreds of thousands of documents, spanning more than two millennia, a great many of them being precisely datable.32 Our

32. Guy Deutscher, Syntactic Change in Akkadian: The Evolution of Sentential Complementation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 18. See also, e.g., N. J. C. Kouwenberg, “Diachrony in Akkadian and the Dating of Literary Texts,” in Miller-Naudé and Zevit, Diachrony, 433–51; along with Michael Sokoloff, “Outline of Ara-maic Diachrony,” in Miller-Naudé and Zevit, Diachrony, 379–405; and Joseph Lam and Dennis Pardee, “Diachrony in Ugaritic,” in Miller-Naudé and Zevit, Diachrony, 407–31.



comparable material for ancient Hebrew is tiny by any measure. Accord-ing to the most recent suggestion of David Clines, the corpus of Hebrew inscriptions is only equivalent to about 2 percent of the Hebrew Bible in size.33 The need to use nonliterary texts for linguistic chronology is also stressed in study of these other languages. The downfalls of literary texts are that the language “is highly stylised and at a remove from the spoken language,”34 and as I have sketched in this article, the language of literary texts has usually been subject to change during scribal transmission.35

In the case of the Hebrew Bible, however, we are largely dependent on late, scribal copies of literary texts. It is primarily working with these that scholars have attempted to construct a chronology of ancient Hebrew. Investigation of the extrabiblical sources is hardly encouraging for current theories on linguistic chronology of Hebrew. For example, the preexilic Arad ostraca evidence a significant accumulation of supposedly postex-ilic LBH linguistic forms, a greater accumulation, in fact, than led some scholars to date certain biblical texts to the postexilic period.36 Or, some texts from Qumran, in the postbiblical period, exhibit a very low accumu-lation of LBH linguistic features, much less than the preexilic inscriptions, for example.37 Examples from other languages such as Akkadian illustrate ways it might be possible to talk about linguistic chronology on the basis of ancient texts, and demonstrate clearly why the Hebrew evidence thus far has proved completely inadequate for the task.38

In regard to the specific forms of the preposition מן, the inscriptions seem to back up the suggestion that the overall statistics of the MT reflect older stages of Hebrew. The assimilated form of מן without the definite

33. DCH 8:9–10.34. Deutscher, Syntactic Change, 23.35. Note, e.g., the relatively high incidence of linguistic variation even in the “tex-

tually stable” first-millennium b.c.e. Akkadian Gilgamesh text documented in Ian Young, “Textual Stability in Gilgamesh and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria: Proceedings of the Conference Held at Mandelbaum House, The University of Sydney, 21–23 July 2004 (ed. Joseph Azize and Noel Weeks; Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement 21; Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 173–82.

36. LDBT 1:163–71.37. LDBT 1:250–79; 2:89; Young, “Pesher Habakkuk.” The Qumran scrolls them-

selves are of course scribal copies of literary texts.38. For the contrast between the way historical linguistics is conducted in other

fields of study, e.g., English, with current methodologies in Biblical Hebrew, see the discussion in Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics.



article (ממלך) is very common, and yet the unassimilated, supposedly LBH form (מן מלך) is also attested.39 So too the regular MT form with the definite article (מן המלך) is the most commonly attested, but there is also evidence for the assimilated form (מהמלך).40 However, while this perhaps indicates the general plausibility that the MT’s sort of Hebrew represents ancient forms of Hebrew (which was hardly in doubt), the evidence is insufficient for us to say anything about the significance of the unusual patterns in MT Samuel and Chronicles.

Comparison with other languages shows us how far we are from being able to unravel the complex mixture of different linguistic strata in the Hebrew Bible. One day, with further discoveries, we hope to be able to say more, but in the light of our current evidence that day is far away.

39. Using the concordance of F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp et al., Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), as an indication of current scholarly readings, I found over eighty examples of assimilated, and one of unassimilated: Arad 26:2, on which see LDBT 1:166–67.

40. Again according to Dobbs Allsopp et al., Hebrew Inscriptions, the form מן is found in Arad 3:2; 8:2; and Siloam Tunnel 5, while the usual reading of Ketef ה־Hinnom 1:10 is מהרע “from the evil.”


Patterns Of Linguistic Forms In The Masoretic Text: The Preposition מן ‘From’ (2013)

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