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10. רענ versus הרענ with Feminine Singular Referent

  • Aaron D. Hornkohl (author)
Chapter of: Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew(pp. 167–176)

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Title10. רענ versus הרענ with Feminine Singular Referent
ContributorAaron D. Hornkohl (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0433.10
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0433/chapters/10.11647/obp.0433.10
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightAaron D. Hornkohl
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-11-11
Long abstractThe chapter focuses on the peculiarity of the Hebrew of the Tiberian Torah, the written component of which generally refers to both ‘young male’ and ‘young female’ by means of the form נער. The corresponding reading component, by contrast, distinguishes masculine נַעַר and feminine נַעֲרָה, like the combined Tiberian written-reading tradition of the rest of the Bible and ancient Hebrew sources more generally. The consonant-vocalic dissonance sets the CBH of the Masoretic Torah apart from that of the Prophets and Writings. The potential explanations for this phenomenon centre around whether the differences in the Tiberian Torah are primarily orthographic or linguistic. An orthographic explanation posits that the spelling reflects anomalous archaic final-defective spelling conventions, with the Masoretic Torah retaining older forms. Conversely, a linguistic interpretation suggests that the written form נער functioned as an epicene term in ancient Hebrew, initially lacking distinct gender markers, but later developing into the more differentiated forms seen elsewhere. Ultimately, the chapter proposes that both ancient linguistic features and later developments influenced the Tiberian texts, indicating that the distinction between the written forms in the Torah and those in the Prophets and Writings may represent a combination of historical language preservation and subsequent standardisation practices during the Second Temple Period.
Page rangepp. 167–176
Print length10 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Aaron D. Hornkohl

(author)
Associate Professor in Hebrew at University of Cambridge
https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/people/dr-aaron-d-hornkohl

Aaron D. Hornkohl (PhD, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012) is University Associate Professor in Hebrew, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on ancient Hebrew philology and linguistics, especially historical linguistics and ancient Hebrew periodisation; the components of the standard Tiberian Masoretic biblical tradition; and that tradition’s profile in the context of other biblical traditions and extrabiblical sources. This is his third single-author monograph after The Historical Depth of the Tiberian Reading Tradition of Biblical Hebrew (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2023) and Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Book of Jeremiah (Leiden: Brill 2014). He has also co-edited several volumes and written numerous articles.