Ver. 7.6

March 30, 2009

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Some Political, Social and Linguistic Developments in the Pre-Exilic Period

c. 1000-586 BCE

Israelite Political Development	Social	Linguistic N.b. It is clear that these changes took place, their approx. order listed is probable, their absolute timing is an educated guess.
Iron I c. 1200-c. 1000 BCE – No political center.	Israelite population in small unfortified highland villages. Oral culture with little, if any, literacy except in shrines.	Phase 2 Ø Loss of case endings of noun-adjective and mood ending of prefix conjugation of the verb. Ø Possible loss of consonantal status of yod י ending consonantal cluster at end of words due to loss of short vowels, Egs./bikyu/ > /biky / > /bikiː/[1] בכי = “crying”[2] Ø Possible loss of consonantal status of word and Syllable final Glottal Stops Pronounced in BH? א = ʾ [ʔ]). Eg. /ˈḫiṭ’u/ > /ˈḫiṭ’/ > /ˈḫeːṭ/ חֵטְא = “sin”
Iron II		Phase 3
c. 1000-c.730 BCE – United Monarchy followed by separate Kingdoms of Israel and Judah until the Assyrian destruction of the Kingdom of Israel in stages from 740-722 BCE.	Jerusalem becomes seat of monarchy and a major religious center. The court, its nobles and officials become context for literacy and literature. Probably founding of schools for training royal scribes. Classical Biblical Hebrew crystallized probably soon after 800 BCE and showed little change until the Babylonian exile.	Ø Mixing of dialects Ø Fem. sing. noun suffix [at] > [aː] e.g. “mare” /sūˈsat/ > /sūˈsaː/ Ø 3rd person fem. suffix of perfect tense [at] >> [aː] Ø e.g. “she spoke” /’aˈmarat/ >> /’aˈmaraː/ Ø Second person feminine pronominal suffix for singular nouns /iki(ː)/ > /ik/[3] Ø Second person feminine singular independent pronoun /ˈ’atti(ː)/ > /ˈ’at(t)/[4] and the parallel change in the perfect tense form /qaˈtalt(ː)/ to /qaˈtalt/
c. 730-586 BCE Kingdom of Judah as Assyrian (c. 740-c. 609 BCE) then Egyptian (c. 609-c. BCE 605) then Babylonian (c. 605-c. 588 BCE) vassal state. Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem (586 BCE) and exile of most of the population.	Massive flow of population into Judah and Jerusalem. Deuteronomic reform.	Ø Northern traditions brought to Jerusalem Ø Mixing of spoken dialects. Probably major but unknown impact of Samarian dialect on spoken Jerusalem and other Judean dialects. One possible item is the replacement of relative אשׁר by שׁ . Ø Probably reduction of unstressed diphthongs Ø Three changes related to pronouns: - Third person masculine pronominal suffix for singular nouns /ahu(ː)/ > /ô/; for singular nouns /ayhu(ː)/ > /aːw/[5]

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[1] Reconstructed pre-exilic pronunciation. beki and bəki are the Tiberian forms.

[2] Other examples.

[3] This changes could have taken place earlier but not later than the time indicated in this chart.

[4] These changes could have taken place either earlier or later than the time indicated in this chart.

[5] These changes could have taken place either earlier or later than the time indicated in this chart.