User:Ttocserp/Shibboleth

Origin

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Interpretations

The Hebrew biblical passage is more subtle than appears at first sight, and concerns how the language was actually spoken by the people of the time. Commentators have debated it for more than 2,000 years. The incident occurred at the River Jordan, then as now a language frontier. The reader is taken to know that Ephraim and Gilead spoke different dialects and lived on opposite sides of the Jordan. The men of Ephraim were trying to go home, but their speech betrayed them to the Gileadite guards.

On one reading, the men of Ephraim could not say shibbólet on demand, because their dialect lacked the phoneme sh-.^[1] So the best they could manage was sibbólet. Hence they were put to death. But some scholars have found this too superficial, considering that most peoples can make tbe sh- sound easily enough if called upon to do so.^[2] Further, "it is difficult to reconcile this view with the available facts. We have no knowledge of any West Semitic language that fails to include both [sh-] and [s-] as independent phonemes... they surely would have used the required sound to save their necks. For it was not a sound unknown to them." Scholars have sought a deeper explanation, accordingly.

According to one theory, propounded by E.A. Speiser in 1942, it was not the Ephraimite refugees who had the speech peculiarity, but the Gileadite guards: the Gileadite pronunciation of the word was thibbólet. The phoneme th- was already archaic, and had fallen into disuse in most local dialects of Hebrew, but it still survived in Gilead; it survives in some other Semitic languages to this day: for example, Arabic. It had vanished in the Ephraimite dialect, however. The th- sound is difficult to say by foreigners whose language lacks the phoneme: non-Arabic Muslims today find it hard to pronounce Arabic words that contain the phoneme. Hence the Ephrai men said sibbólet. By the time the anecdote came to be written down in Judges, there was no Hebrew letter for th-, so the redactor used shin as the nearest approximation.

David Marcus wrote that "[Speiser's] explanation has become virtually the norm in current Biblical scholarship". Even so, it has been criticised rather heavily. One criticism is that thibbólet would not be much good as a catchword, since it would not only condemn the men of Ephraim to instant death, but all men of Israel trying to cross the Jordan (unless Gileadites), with whom Gilead had no quarrel.

Sources

Emerton, D.A. (2015). "Some Comments on the Shibboleth Incident (Judges xii 6)". In Davies, Graham; Gordon, Robert (eds.). Studies on the Language and Literature of the Bible: Selected Works of J.A. Emerton. Brill. ISBN 9004283404.

Hendel, Ronald S. (February 1996). "Sibilants and šibbōlet (Judges. 12:6)". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 301. University of Chicago Press: 69–75. JSTOR 1357296.

Marcus, David (1992). "Ridiculing the Ephraimites: The Shibboleth Incident (Judges 12:6)". Maarav. 8: 95–105.

Rendsburg, Gary A. (1988). "The Ammonite Phoneme /Ṯ/". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 269: 73–79. JSTOR 1356953.

Speiser, E.A. (1942). "The Shibboleth Incident (Judges 12:6)". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 85: 10–13. JSTOR 1355052.

^ In the present, non-technical explanation phonemes are approximated by their English transliterations for the sake of simplicity.
^ They can do it even if their native language lacks the phoneme. For example, the brand name Shell is used in Spanish-speaking countries and is routinely pronounced by users even though Spanish lacks the sh- phoneme.

[1] In the present, non-technical explanation phonemes are approximated by their English transliterations for the sake of simplicity.

[2] They can do it even if their native language lacks the phoneme. For example, the brand name Shell is used in Spanish-speaking countries and is routinely pronounced by users even though Spanish lacks the sh- phoneme.

[1]

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