An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

that the author/compiler used a modernized text type of the Pentateuch, one in
which the outmoded constructions of the original were replaced by constructions
current in the Chronicler’s time. 32 The textual tradition represented by the
Samaritan Pentateuch reflects a further modernizing of the text. 33
g The linguistic problems of archaizing and modernizing are complementary. An
archaizing text records the work of author/compilers trying to use forms of speech
not their own; the results of these efforts may confuse the linguist investigating
those forms of speech. A modernizing text records the work of compiler/copyists
trying to make an old-fashioned text look or sound current. If the linguist
describes the updated text as if it were in pristine form, the description will err in
not allowing for the very changes in the language that the compiler/copyists were
most conscious of.
h In addition to archaizing and modernizing, the process of smoothing may
overtake a text, leveling out unusual features and patterns. The transmitters of the
received text of scripture tended to level the text to a more or less common
standard. This operation[Page 13] skews the evidence regarding the grammar of
the literature as it was first written down. Some smoothing, especially of a
phonological sort, would have been entirely unconscious; we shall discuss the
reliability of the Masoretic Text below (1.6). Other aspects of smoothing are
entirely conscious, for example, those involving word choice. Morphological
smoothing falls between conscious and unconscious extremes. An example from
American English may clarify this matter: linguistically untrained students will
record spoken participles and gerunds as ending in -ing (IN), whether or not the
nasal is pronounced as velar (N) or dental (n). They write the -ing because they
know the spelling conventions of the written language and because they know that
“dropping the g” is an “improper” thing to do, even though the g is frequently
dropped in the spoken language. Morphological leveling may have been similarly
stimulated in the transmission of the text of the Hebrew Bible. The transmitters of
32 G. Gerleman, Synoptic Studies in the Old Testament (Lunds Universitets Årsskrift
1144; Lund: Gleerup, 1948). Kenneth A. Kitchen has shown that modernizing can
also be demonstrated in extrabiblical ancient Near Eastern sources. See his Ancient
Orient and the Old Testament (Chicago: Inter-Varsity, 1966) 142–43; “Egypt,” The
New Bible Dictionary, ed. J. D. Douglas (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962) 337–53, at
349–51.
33 B. K. Waltke, Prolegomena to the Samaritan Pentateuch (Harvard Dissertation,
1965) 285–94; summarized as “The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Text of the Old
Testament,” New Perspectives on the Old Testament, ed. J. B. Payne (Waco, Texas:
Word, 1970) 212–39, on modernizing, 213–17; cf. J. E. Sanderson, An Exodus Scroll
from Qumran (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986).