The biblical shibboleth story in the light of late Egyptian perceptions of Semitic sibilants: reconciling divergent views.

• Author: Woodhouse, Robert

1. INTRODUCTION

   There are currently three treatments of the phonetics of the shibboleth incident of Judges 12:6 (1) deserving of serious consideration. Hendel (1996) and Faber (1992) present attractive arguments that do not depend on problematic assumptions of differences in the number of sibilant phonemes preserved in the two dialects in question, (2) as so many other explanations of the story have done, (3) including Rendsburg (1988a; 1988b; 1996: 511; 1997: 69f.), whose theory, though ultimately untenable, (4) nevertheless poses a question deserving of an answer (2.5 below).

   Both Hendel and Faber rely on no more than a difference of pronunciation of the same inherited Proto-Semitic (PS) phoneme, namely traditional */s/, sin or [S.sub.1], both make other substantive contributions connected with the problem, and although they come to diametrically opposed conclusions regarding the phonetic details, a comparison of the two reveals worthwhile possibilities of reconciliation and harmonization of the best each has to offer. We begin with this comparison.

2. A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF HENDEL (1996) AND FABER (1992)

   2.1. Hendel believes that the Gileadite sin was deceptively similar to the Ephraimite samekh. The Ephraimites cleverly substituted samekh for sin in order to pass the test, but not cleverly enough for the Gileadites, who could tell the difference.

   Hendel supports his scenario by reinterpreting a parallel, first developed along some-what different lines by Rendsburg (1998a: 257f.; see 2.5 below), between the shibboleth case and a similar Cisjordanian misinterpretation of a Transjordanian name, namely the Masoretic spelling ba'alis (Jeremiah 40:14)--with final samekh--of a sixth-century royal name that appears on an Ammonite seal impression written b'lys'--with sin corresponding to the samekh of the Masoretic text. As Herr (1985: 172) observed, the erstwhile presence in the Hebrew text of the stem-final 'ayin of the name, which is clearly lost in the Masoretic text, is vouched for by the final -a of the Septuagint form belisa (Jeremiah 47:14).

   Although one could cavil that Ammonite phonetics need not necessarily be the same as Gileadite, it is hard to regard this parallel as other than convincing despite the interval of around five centuries separating the shibboleth incident from the reign of the Ammonite king. The principle that stable differences of pronunciation between mutually intelligible forms of speech can remain intact over several centuries is demonstrable by reference, e.g., to the difference between Northern British [[??]] and Southern British [[??]] in the stressed syllable of English words like bucket, mother, etc.--which has remained stable for the best part of four centuries (cf., e.g., Dobson 1957: 552 note 6). Moreover the precise phonetics of the situation in each dialect need not have remained totally static for the whole five centuries (see n. 13 below).

   2.2. Faber proposes that the sound change that converted the original narrow-groove PS phoneme sin or [S.sub.1] into wide-groove /s/ in various Semitic languages (5) was underway in Hebrew at the time of the shibboleth incident in such a way that the Gileadites already had the wide-groove sin /s/ while the Ephraimites still had the narrow-groove version. According as they were oblivious to or aware of this difference, the Ephraimites either (a) persisted doggedly with their narrow-groove sound or (b) substituted for it [S.sub.2] /s/, either/both of which is/are represented as samekh in the extant version of the tale.

   Against Faber's second alternative (substitution of /s/) is the fact that there is no basis for believing that the recorded interpretation of the substituted sound as samekh originated with anyone other than the original, surviving witnesses to the events, i.e., the Gileadites. The old argument (cf., e.g., Marcus 1941: 149; 1942) that samekh in the text is simply a makeshift to overcome the lack of a distinctive symbol for /s/ (or indeed /t/, as required by Rendsburg and others) is not convincing because there are other ways of indicating differences not signaled by an orthography (6) and, prior to the later coalescence of samekh and sin, there is no obvious reason why samekh should have been used to represent a sound that was not samekh. Under this hypothesis therefore the Gileadites would have to have heard the substituted Ephraimite sin as samekh, which implies an unwarranted and unnecessary assumption about the similarity of Gileadite samekh and Ephraimite sin.

   Faber appears to support her basic scenario with an assertion (1992: 2) that "if sbolt underwent anomalous developments, it must have been in Gileadite, since that is the only way that the Gileadite initial sound in sbolt would have been absent from the Ephraimite phonological repertory. Alternatively, divergent phonological developments affecting the initial sound in sbolt could have given rise to a sound in Gileadite that was totally absent in Ephraimite." The alternative offered here seems to be between anomalous developments limited to the test word in Gileadite and divergent phonological developments affecting only the initial sound of the test word in Gileadite, in other words perhaps one of Blau's (1977) "weak" (i.e., anomalous) phonological changes versus a more regular set of changes affecting Gileadite generally. It is just possible that the expression "divergent developments" conceals a reference to possible changes in Ephraimite as well, but the use of the plural for the "anomalous developments" (7) which are explicitly restricted to Gileadite leaves this open to doubt. This doubt seems to be confirmed by Faber's eventual decision (1992: 8f.) to regard Ephraimite as conservative while holding the critical change on which the story is based to be a general phonological development within Gileadite. This change is not anomalous but is certainly divergent with respect to what is held to be happening, or rather not happening, in Ephraimite. It is perhaps worth emphasizing that, even adopting the direction of Faber's interpretation, the divide need not be between a dialect with and a "dialect without s." Both dialects, after all, are still held to have possessed the independent phoneme sin. It is only necessary in Faber's terms that the Gileadites perceive the Ephraimite version of this phoneme as (a) audibly different from their own and (b) having sufficient auditory similarity to the Gileadite samekh to satisfy the recorded details of the tale. While this scenario may seem to yield the most straightforward interpretation of the biblical story, Hendel's work has shown that it is not binding.

   What Faber has neglected here is the possibility that phonetic change may involve not just the acquisition of a new phone, but just as easily, the loss of an old one, even though her earlier work has repeatedly drawn attention to this latter possibility. (8) It is this neglect that makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that Faber has provided no real argument in favor of her particular version of events as opposed to Hendel's.

   Can a defense of Faber's view of shibboleth phonetics be based on the fact that Egyptian transcriptions of samekh as an affricate appear to continue down to the Twenty-fifth Dynasty (9) (eighth to seventh centuries B.C.)? This, after all, might well suggest that the Cisjordanian Ephraimites substituted affricate samekh for Gileadite fricative sin, yet the Transjordanian Gileadites must have heard this as their own fricative samekh if they imagined that this sound could be substituted for another fricative. Hence, if the Gileadites had a more advanced kind of samekh than the Ephraimites, they would surely have had a more advanced kind of sin as well? Indeed they might; but Faber's (1982: 90) demonstration that fricatives can be perceived as affricates (and, by implication, vice versa), which is so necessary to the first two premises of this argument, just as surely destroys its basic conclusion. In other words, the question of who had fricative and who had affricate samekh is of absolutely no importance to the interpretation of the story and therefore cannot be used to support Faber's thesis (or, for that matter, to attack it). (10)

   We could argue this point in more detail using the same four-way opposition between /s/- and /s/-sounds as Faber has employed elsewhere (e.g., 1982: 82f.), i.e., based on the contrast of apical s with laminal s and wide-groove s versus narrow-groove s (and similarly for the affricates c, c, c, and c). We could set up two hypothetical dialects--a more conservative dialect A with, say, sin /s/ and samekh /c/ (11) and a more progressive dialect B with, say, sin /s/ and samekh /s/--and show that whichever way we assign A and B to the two dialects involved in our story we get much the same result, (12) one assignment corresponding to Faber's interpretation, the other to Hendel's. (13)

   We are forced to conclude that no convincing argument has as yet been put forward in support of the detail of Faber's interpretation.

   2.3. By contrast, apart from the convincing Ammonite parallel (2.1 above and 2.5 below), there are two other points that lend further support to Hendel.

   2.3.1. The first of these is the more telling because Hendel could not have adduced it or even been aware of it himself. This is because it depends on Faber's reconstruction of Semitic sibilants, which Hendel misunderstands and therefore rejects (2.4 below), since he has read no more than Faber's 1984 and 1992 papers (despite explicit warnings in both, cf. 1984: 189 and 1992: 8). Intriguing it is, then, that in terms of Faber's theory, Hendel's interpretation, with its more s-like Gileadite sin, i.e., the more archaic form according to Faber, agrees with the suggestion of Gileadite conservatism put forward long ago by Speiser (1942: 12f.) on the basis of cultural differences and dialect geography.

   2.3.2. The other point in favor of...