Journal of Semitic Studies XXXIV/2 Autumn

'DETERMINATION' AND THE DEFINITE ARTICLE IN BIBLICAL HEBREW

JAMES BARR
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD Downloaded from jss.oxfordjournals.org at catholic university of america on February 15, 2011

The definite article in the Semitic languages formed the subject of one of Edward UllendorfPs early contributions to linguistics.1 In it he pursued the elusive theme of the earliest form of the article, and in so doing he reached far out into comparative Semitics, with a special emphasis on the Arabic evidence. He expressly left aside, however, the question of 'the various means of rendering a noun definite'. This present contribution in his honour will follow his lead in entering into the apparently simple, but in fact very tricky, territory of the definite article. But it will approach the subject from a quite different point of view. It will confine itself almost entirely to Biblical Hebrew and will for the most part leave other Semitic languages alone; and it will have nothing to say about the form of the article, whether its original form or the form that it has in historical times, and will concern itself entirely with Mat function of the article. Some might say that this is perfectly plain and that no fresh discussion is needed. But, as Ullendorff found with the form of the article, so with its function there is a great deal that requires to be reconsidered and clarified. It seems to be usually supposed that the central function of the Hebrew definite article is fairly plain and easy to understand. 'The definite article of Hebrew corresponds closely to the definite article of English in usage and meaning', we are told in the modern and widely-used grammar of Lambdin (p. 5). Similarly the more advanced and detailed grammar of Gesenius-Kautzsch: 'the article is, generally speaking, emE. Ullendorff, 'The form of the Definite Article in Arabic and other Semitic languages', published in the Gibb Festschrift (1965) and also in E. Ullendorff, Is Biblical Hebrew a Language? (Wiesbaden 1977), 165-71. His note 1 (p. 165 of the latter) makes it clear that the principal arguments of the paper had been advanced by him much earlier, no doubt around the early forties.
1

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ployed to determine a substantive wherever it is required by Greek and English' (Gesenius-Kautzsch 126d, p. 440). 'Determination' or 'making definite' is the standard foundation for accounts of the matter. Thus melek is 'king', a king, any king, but ha-melek is the king, the one already definitely identified and known about (following a common modern transliteration style, the gemination of consonants after the article is ignored in these pages). The 'determined' status that attaches to hamelek belongs also to nouns with a pronoun suffix [malko 'his king', which therefore does not have the article), and to those in typical construct chains {melek ha-'ares 'the king of the country', where the article is attached to the last member of the phrase but not to the word 'king' itself). These principles are very essential for the initial learning of Hebrew but fortunately they are easily learned and they work well enough in thousands of cases, indeed no doubt in all that the beginner is likely to have to cope with. A modern grammar like that of J. F. A.
Sawyer, A Modern Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (London

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1976), pp. iyf., continues the accepted tradition: 'The prefix [= article] makes the noun definite: it is not dabar "a word", "any word you like" (indefinite), but ha-dabar "the word, the one we have been thinking about, the one just mentioned" (definite)'. As a strategy of approach to the language this works excellently. The trouble begins when we seek to make more detailed and exhaustive statements, including different types of nouns, texts of different sorts and periods, marginal cases and apparent exceptions. Grammars for beginners can hardly be expected to go into these difficult areas. Among the more exhaustive reference grammars the two important German works of Bergstrasser and of Bauer and Leander were never completed and thus failed to handle, the topic: for grammars, which normally handle the form of the article at an early stage, customarily consider its function to come under 'Syntax', which is relegated to a later section. Among the treatises which consider our subject in some detail we may mention: GK 126, pp. 404-10; Joiion 137, pp. 420-8; Brockelmann, Hebrdische Syntax 20-21, pp. 17-19; R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax 82-93,
pp. 19-21; Lettinga, Grammatica van het bijbels Hebreeuws 68, pp. 157-9; a ^ s o n * s corresponding French edition Grammaire de Ihe'breu biblique 68, pp. 158-60. Of these the most detailed seems to be Joiion. J. Blau, A Grammar oj Biblical Hebrew', has
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only a very brief allusion, 84, pp. 93f. An older work is A. B. Davidson, Hebrew Syntax (2nd edn., Edinburgh 1896). The classic treatments of our subject contain various difficulties and unclarities, as follows:
1. Ir 'determination' {determination, Bepaaldheid) a linguistic cate-

gory or a logical? The article, we are told, marks or indicates determination. Determination must therefore be a sort of meaning, a logical feature which can be explained in logical terms. But when we ask 'What is determination anyway?' we all too often seem to receive the circular answer: when a noun has the article, then it is determined. Expressions like rvird determiniert are actually used to state the fact that a noun of such and such a kind has the article. Similarly, whole sections of the grammar may be found to have the title 'Determination by means of the Article' (so GK and Brockelmann, and in part also Joiion), and this well symbolizes the problem: unless the logical feature of determination, and the presence of the Hebrew article, coincide exactly, the section should have either the article as its theme or determination as its theme. Lettinga here does better, entitling his section simply 'the Article' (Het ~Lidwoord). For it must be obvious, even from the most traditional of treatments, that determination and the use of the Hebrew article do not coincide. This present study will argue that the Hebrew definite article is not strictly, but only loosely and generally, related to determination. Although determination is extremely important and highly characteristic as a function, it is cut across by a number of quite other considerations and factors, historical, stylistic, syntactic and (probably) lexical. The attempt to account for the many different usages in terms of determination as the sole guiding principle can therefore only lead to confusions of statement. Thus Brockelmann tells us (his 21c a, p. 18) that words like 'sun' or 'earth' are in their nature unique and thus are 'in themselves determined' {an sich determiniert) and therefore have the article. Lettinga, by contrast, tells us that words like tebel 'universe' or t'hom 'ocean' count as proper names, 'which are already determined in themselves', and therefore do not take the article (his 68c, p. 158). What kind of criteria can there be for assessing such statements, whichever of them may be right? And what value can there be in establishing a principle such as

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Brockelmann's when - as he well knew - 'sun' is particularly often without the article anyway? Problems of this kind recur again and again in the classic treatments. On the one hand there is a haphazard mingling of logical and linguistic arguments and categories; at other points one has to fall back on the vague assurance that it is all much the same as having the article in English (Greek, Dutch, French etc.). The classic works tend to select and interpret the evidence in such a way as to make it appear to point towards determination as the governing principle; and when they come to evidence that points in another direction they sometimes try to interpret it as if, though the word is not determined, the Hebrews thought of it as based on determination. As will be shown below, many of the examples traditionally cited are actually cases of minority usage and are thus contrary to the main linguistic pattern of the Bible. Dependence on logical notions can be seen in GK i26m,n, where it is explained that abstract nouns and the names of materials like 'silver' have the article because they represent whole classes of attributes or states. Yet 'silver' without article is very common, and not only in poetry, where it is recognized that the article is often omitted: which brings us to our next main point. 2. Non-use of the article in poetry is doubtless recognized by all writers, though some say little about it, and probably all would agree with Blau that poetic usage represents an older stage of the language. But none of the standard treatments seem to notice the obvious and necessary consequences. They handle the phenomenon as if the article had the function of determination but that in poetry it was frequently omitted. But, if the article can be simply 'omitted' in large sections of the Bible, the effect is to break any rigid link between the article and determination. In these sections nouns are determined, it seems, without article. This is no mere 'omission': on the contrary, it may mean, perhaps indeed it must mean, that an entirely different system is operative from that which we know on the basis of the 'normal' usage centred on determination. For example, in poetry, if nouns can be determined without having the article, perhaps they can equally have the article without being determined? Or, still more seriously: if there were texts in which nouns were determined (in meaning) without having the article, what is the function of the article
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when it does appear in such a text? Remarkably, such questions are normally not even raised. Poetic usage is treated as if it constituted no more than a series of omissions of the article that in prose is normal. As already stated, it would be agreed that the poetic usage comes from an earlier stage of the language. And it would probably be agreed that this older usage has left its traces in classical prose in various particular words and phrases, for instance in 'earth and heaven' (both without article, Gen. 2:4) or 'to the rising of the sun, i.e. to the east', where we can find femes 'sun' without article at Deut. 4:41, 47; Judg. 11:18, 20, 43, but with article in similar texts at Josh. 1:15, 12:1, 13:5; Judg. 21:19, etc. The older usage crops up within the newer: both forms are possible, article is optional, and determination plays no part in the choice between its presence and its absence. But this, if true, means that the article calls for a historical account of itself, when what we have been offering has been the reverse of historical. We have talked as if the classical usage was the point of origin, from which poetry diverged by its 'omissions', when in fact poetry might provide for us the keys to peculiarities of the prose usage. For, if we may accept that there was at some time a Hebrew in which determination was not marked by the article, how did one get from this to the stage familiar in classical Hebrew where determination is (shall we say?) normal with the article? One can hardly suppose that someone decreed that all determined nouns were to have the article, and that this was to be extended to all adjectives accompanying these nouns, producing at times these strings of three or four articles that we now see. There must have been some feature or features, in the forms which later came to be our article, which developed into this primary role of marking determination. There is thus, at least in principle, room for something like a history of the article that would start from poetic usage and move downwards to the position found in classical times. Moreover, a task of this kind does not depend purely on philological reconstruction, for it seems that the Bible itself contains valuable material for such work. Poetic usage is not an unmarked chaos in which the rules of classical prose are neglected: on the contrary, a study of the article in poetic texts quickly reveals a high degree of difference in the degree to which the article is used. Some Psalms have far more articles
3"

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than others do, and some have articles of one type much more than others (more on this below). As far back as 1898, Mayer Lambert noted that the Song of Songs, though unquestionably a poetic book, uses the article in just the same way as the prose books do, and that this is true also of certain Psalms, which may well be latish.2 Before we can embark on a census of the number of articles in poetic texts, or an analysis of the sorts to which they belong, we have to consider certain other matters which will be mentioned shortly. For the present we simply reiterate the historical role of the older and poetic stratum in generating the practices of classical prose.
3. The article seems, by any sensible evaluation, sometimes to go with clear non-determination, and even in prose.

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The central case is the well-known Amos 5:19: 'It is as if a man fled before ha-'ari (the? lion) and was met by ha-dob (the? bear), and went into the house and leant his hand on the wall and the (?) snake bit him.' Enormous explanatory ingenuity is required in order to make this into a case of determination. 'Peculiar to Hebrew', write GK i26q, p. 407, 'is the employment of the article to denote a single person or thing (primarily one which is as yet unknown, and therefore not capable of being defined) as being present to the mind under given circumstances.' And Amos 5:19 is the first example given. Another is Amos 3:12: 'as the shepherd saves from the mouth of the lion (fragments of a sheep)'. The person, animal or thing, as yet unknown, is 'determined' in the sense that the storyteller or prophet knows that it is going to appear in his story or comparison. Something similar may be found in very colloquial usage in English, especially perhaps among children, with the demonstrative this:1 'I was just walking through the woods, and this dog jumped out at me.' 'What do you mean by "this dog"? You haven't mentioned any dog.' 'Well, obviously, the dog-I'm going to tell you about, the dog in my story.'
2

M. Lambert, 'L'article dans la poesie hebrai'que', Revue des Etudes Juives

(1898), 203-9; quotation from p. 203. 3 It is interesting that E. Osty in his French translation of the Bible, commenting on 'the' lion of 1 Kgs. 20:36 (his p. 70m.), says: '"le lion", comme dans nos contes populaires "la bete", "le loup", etc.'. 312

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Will this sort of 'story-telling intention' account for the Hebrew article in the cases cited above? And, if so, will it explain why Noah sent out from the ark 'the' raven and 'the' dove (Gen. 8:7, 8)? Will it explain why 'the' survivor escaped to tell Abraham of the battle of the kings (Gen. 14:13)? Will it explain why a prophet, telling a man that a lion would kill him, gives this lion an article (1 Kgs. 20:36); similarly, again with lion or bear, at 1 Sam. 17:34, 36, 37? Before we go further a distinction must be made. Certain cases can be explained through assumption of the existence of something: thus 'words that are presupposed as given by the situation' (Brockelmann, 21b, p. 18) or 'to specify persons or things, which are so far definite as to be naturally thought of in connexion with a given case, and must be assumed accordingly to be there' (GK i26g (g), p. 405). Thus in Gen. 18:7 Abraham, receiving his angelic visitors, runs and takes a calf and gives it to 'the' servant (ha-na'ar), though no such servant has been mentioned. One can accept it as obvious that Abraham would have a servant. Similarly, where someone saddles an ass for a journey and the article is used although the animal has not been mentioned before, e.g. Exod. 4:20 of Moses and his family. The servant and the ass can certainly be presumed. Similarly, in modern English 'he got the children into the car and went off: even if the person has not been mentioned as having a car, car ownership is a cultural presupposition. But this explanation will not work for the instances we have just been discussing. The nouns with article designate elements that are characteristically novel in the situation: certainly so the survivor who arrived at Abraham's camp, or the man who was told he was going to be killed by a lion; certainly, again, at Amos 5:19 the lion, the bear and the snake were unexpected to the hearer and not to be assumed on the basis of the circumstances. We cannot help noting, in addition, how many of these cases concern sudden interventions of animals in human affairs. Another case to consider under the idea of cultural assumption is ba-seper 'in writing, in a book or document'. When someone writes something down, and though there has been no previous mention of a book or document which would 'determine' the noun, we nevertheless find that it is written with article, and never as b'-seper without article: so for instance Exod. 17:14, Num. 5:23, 1 Sam. 10:25, Job 19:23. (The element b'-seper does of course occur, as part of a

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construct chain, as in 'in the book of the law of Moses', but that does not count for our purposes). We cannot suppose that it was culturally assumed that all these people would have a book or a writing document with them. Nor can we seriously follow the story-telling explanation that argues: 'He wrote it in the book.' - 'What book?' - 'Why, the book I'm just going to tell you about.' Still more, add Isa. 34:4: the heavens are to be rolled up like 'the' seper. Why the article? Did the writer mean: like the scroll, i.e. the one that was in my mind when I made up my simile? Hardly. It is much easier to go in the opposite direction, and agree that the article with seper in these cases does not mark determination at all. One may say: it is like English 'he spoke to me on the phone', not 'on a phone'. Possibly so. But that comes to the same result: the article does not indicate a known book, or a particular book: in spite of the article, the meaning is 'in a writing', 'in a book'. It therefore becomes easier to accept that a case like Amos 5:19 is indeed an example where the article is used, but is unrelated to determination. The traditional explanations fail to provide a proper account of the passage. Even if the prophet has them in his mind as the matter of his simile, the lion, the bear and the snake are still really undetermined. They are not particular animals about which we are soon to hear more: rather, they are animals momentarily conceived for the sake of a comparison. Any lion, any bear and any snake will have the same effect. Moreover, if the lion, the bear and the snake deserve an article because they have a place in the simile and in that sense are (even if only in the writer's mind) 'determined', why is the man himself, who is equally part of the simile and who is about to suffer from all these beasts, not himself equally 'determined' by the presence of an article? He remains just V/'a man'; why not ha- 'is 'the man', like the other elements in the sentence? It is really far easier to say that the article here accompanies non-determination. It was never anything other than 'a lion', 'a bear' and 'a snake': theories that tried to explain this as some kind of 'determination' have been sophistries. Another possible approach might be to explain the terms like 'lion' as essentially collectivities, which would then have the article on the analogy of names of plagues and illnesses, which normally have the article in Hebrew (see further below), as in English with familiar terms ('he's got the mumps', 'he died of the German measles'). Some interpreters have taken David's 314

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speech in i Sam. 17:34ff. in this sense, David having quelled successive attacks by the lion family and the bear family. Maybe: though I doubt it. But in any case, even if this is a possible explanation, it does not lead to determination in the usual sense. It leads to the genus of lion or of bear, not to the specific lion or bear. Moreover, this interpretation introduces an element that is ill supported from usage elsewhere, for a word like 'lion' is well enough evidenced in prose texts and is manifestly subject to the usual 'determination' by article: e.g. in 1 Kgs. 13:24 'a lion' (without article, since not yet known of) meets and kills the old prophet, but thereafter it (this individual lion) is with article throughout, correctly obeying the traditional rules. Lions, unlike diseases, are subject to normal determination; but there are cases where the article does not imply determination, such as Amos 5:19 and others. In any case, whatever applies to animals, the refugee of Gen. 14:13 is in a different category. It is not insignificant that translations into other languages which have an article of some kind have generally used an indefinite article in such cases. Unsophisticated in modern terminologies as they may have been, the translators could see that the persons, animals and things were unspecified. Thus even a rather literal English version like KJV, which one might have expected to use the English definite article to represent the Hebrew definite article, does not do so. Thus it has: 'As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him' (Amos 5:19); or 'And there came one that had escaped' (Gen. 14:13); or 'Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear' (1 Sam. 17:34); or 'As soon as thou art departed from me, a lion shall slay thee. And as soon as he was departed from him, a lion found him, and slew him' (1 Kgs. 20:36). Naturally, translations in themselves do not prove anything. But they do indicate something, and all the more so with the rather literal style of KJV, which would have been at pains to follow any indications of the text if it perceived them. The translators have seen that - to use a modern terminology unknown to them - the 'definite' article here belongs to the surface structure of Hebrew (and hence is 'peculiar to Hebrew', as GK put it). For some reason, which we may not yet understand, a definite article was placed here in Hebrew; but determination, which is the common meaning of
3M

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that article, did not belong to the deep structure of meaning. And so likewise in KJV Noah sent out 'a raven' and 'a dove'. Naturally, not all translations agree at each point. Some may be literalist, and consider that, if there is an article in Hebrew, there must be an article or other sign of determination in English or whatever other language it may be. At each point there may be differences of interpretation. Thus the fine modern version of the Jewish Publication Society of America, The Torah (Philadelphia, 1962), tells us that Noah 'sent out the raven' and 'sent out the dove', giving determination in English to fit the Hebrew article. But at Gen. 19:7 we read in the same version that Abraham 'gave it to a serving-boy', in other words abandoning determination at a point where it could easily be well justified, as seen above: and similarly at Exod. 4:20, where it tells us that 'Moses took his wife and sons, mounted them on an ass, and went back to the land of Egypt'. An ass? Just any ass? Should we not assume, on the grounds of the Hebrew article, that this was Moses' own personal ass? Of course it was. The question could be pursued through a variety of versions, in French, Spanish, and Greek as well as English: but enough has been said to give foundation to our remarks: although at one point or another interpretative wiles may support a different interpretation, translations in general have accepted that in certain cases, ill-defined no doubt, the presence of the article in Hebrew was no certain indicator of determination in the customary sense. And in this, I think, their judgement, based on no thorough philological or logical analysis but on the normalities and common-sense suggestions of the context, was often rather sound. There are a goodly number of cases in important places, in which, for reasons still undetermined, the Hebrew article is used and yet the natural meaning must be non-determination. Common sense, as distinct from literalist grammatical rigidity, makes it clear. The article is used, in classical Hebrew, in a smallish but irreducible and significant number of cases, with nouns which in meaning are not at all 'definite' or 'determined'. Even if we cannot offer a clear reason for it, the fact is so. 4. Abstract nouns. The use of the article with abstract nouns is another area that is misrepresented in many textbook accounts: on the whole, these exaggerate the extent to which the article is 316

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used with abstracts. It is little short of extraordinary to perceive how the classic accounts cite and emphasize the cases where abstracts have the article, while concealing the fact that with the same words the article is much more often omitted. The reason for this, once again, appears to lie in theoretical, pseudo-logical, notions. Thus GK i26n (c) tell us that the article is used 'for the expression of abstract ideas of every kind, since they are likewise used to represent whole classes of attributes or states, physical or moral defects, &c'. This is part of their endeavour to classify all possible usages as a kind of determination, since classes, they think, are 'closely circumscribed, and therefore well defined'. Brockelmann under his n c y, p. 18, says that the abstracts of properties and activities take the article, while abstracts 'which are designated according to their individual manifestations' {die nach ihren einyelnen Erscheinungen be^eichnet werderi) remain 'undetermined', i.e. do not have the article. It is difficult to know how this very theoretical distinction can be upheld, or even be understood. Consider a few examples. Hiram from Tyre was full of wisdom, understanding and knowledge (hokma, t'buna and da'at) at i Kgs. 7:14, and each word with article, a case cited by Brockelmann, 2ic y, p. 18, in favour of the use of the article with abstract terms. But the value of this is much reduced when we note that Bezaleel, an equally prominent craftsman doing exactly the same sort of work, is filled with exactly the same qualities, in the same order of words, in Exod. 31:3, 35:31, plus two of the same three at Exod. 36:1, and all of these without article. The dominant usage is without article. Similarly, GK 1260 (n), p. 407, cite Prov. 25:5 ba-sedeq 'in righteousness', but fail to remark that this is an exceptional use for this noun: it is in fact the only instance of this phrase with the article, while b'-sedeq without article occurs thirteen times and sedeq without preposition is massively without article. Some other traditional examples may well not belong to the category that they are used to exemplify. For instance, a case very commonly quoted is Gen. 19:11 'and they smote the men with blindness (ba-saniverim)': this is supposed to be a prime case of the article with an abstract noun. See GK 126n (c); Brockelmann, p. 18 under y; Lettinga p. 158 (Dutch) and p. 159 (French). But this heavily-worked example is probably not in this category: for samverim cannot plausibly be counted as an abstract noun at all. It does not mean 'blindness' but must 317

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be the name for a defect or pathological state, like glaucoma or cataract, or just dazzlement or spots before the eyes, and for all such words the article is common: thus all the defects and plagues listed in Lev. 26:16, Deut. 28:22, have the article. Of course the effect was blindness but the word itself cannot be treated as a real abstract. Another type often cited is the phrase to 'bring evil upon someone' etc., with article. 1 Kgs. 21:29 is often quoted: 'in his son's days I will bring evil upon his house': cf. Brockelmann, 2ic Y > p-18; Lettinga, 68e.2. Joiion is more correct in perceiving the limits of this (his 137J, p. 424 where he says that the article is used 'sometimes', parfois, and points to the case just above, 1 Kgs. 21:21, where the same expression is used without the article). But even here Joiion does not perceive the real connection. At 1 Kgs. 21:21 God through the prophet announces 'I will bring evil [without article] upon you', but later on, because Ahab has humbled himself, he postpones 'the evil', i.e. the evil already mentioned. It is a straight case of determination. The noun is with article not because it is an abstract but because it, like any other noun, may be in a determined expression where the article is required by the common prose rules. It is remarkable that scholars who, as has been suggested here, in general exaggerated the centrality of determination in their account of the article, nevertheless at times tended to offer a different, and less good, account of it when determination would have worked very well; and this is notably the case with abstract expressions. Thus the familiar somer ha-b'rit w'-ha-hesed at Deut. 7:9 may be understood as 'keeping the covenant and the (i.e. the consequent) faithfulness'; hesed is overwhelmingly without article except where determination is probable, plus a handful of other cases. At Isa. 32:17 ma'ase ha-s'daqa is 'the work of righteousness', the entire phrase being determined but the article being attached as is normal to the last noun. Apart from a double case of determined phrase in this verse, the only case of s'daqa with article is at Dan. 9:7. The masculine sedeq, just mentioned above, has three cases of a phrase with determination as in 'the city of righteousness' at Isa. 1:26, and apart from these the exceptional Prov. 25:5 is the only case with article as against a large number without. It is difficult to generalize without a large and detailed 318

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survey; but, at least with many relevant words, the use without article is greatly dominant. Where abstract nouns do have the article, unless it can be explained as normal determination, or through other factors some of which will be mentioned shortly, it is probable that the article makes no material difference: an abstract with the article is just the same as the same word without it. But, since the use without article is greatly dominant, there is no sense in connecting abstracts with determination through the argument that abstracts denote classes and classes are by their own nature in themselves determined. Since abstracts are dominantly without article, except under rules that apply to other nouns as well, the same argument should logically have led in the opposite direction: it should have meant that the article, in the case of abstracts, usually had nothing to do with determination. Grammars tend, innocently, to emphasize the use of article with abstract nouns as an aspect of difference from 'our languages'. Thus Lettinga, 68e.2, p. 158, registers this as 'afwijkend van het Nederlands', which may well be right for all I know. But the paradox in it is richly illustrated by the French edition of the same work, which mentions this tendency as something that is 'a la difference de ce qui est le cas dans nos langues' {ibid., p. 159). In fact the normal use of the article with abstract nouns is a very conspicuous feature of French, and one that sets it at the other extreme from English, in which it is used very little in this context. As our argument has shown, biblical Hebrew is in this respect considerably closer to English than to French. In general, then, the matter of abstract nouns, far from confirming the approach of the standard textbooks, encourages us to look in some different direction altogether. 5. Vocative functions. The use of the article in vocative expressions is much mentioned in the standard works. GK i26d (e), p. 405, say that it is so used 'very often'; so Brockelmann, io, p. 7, 'meist durch den Artikel determiniert', though contrary examples are given. R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax 34, 89 (pp. 11, 20f.) says it is 'regularly' with the article; Lettinga has a brief note under 2jd, p. 51. The most eloquent, and also the most revealing, is Joiion, who gives far more examples and a more detailed theoretical discussion (his i37g, p. 423). A person or thing addressed in the vocative, he says, is always 319

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determined and therefore ought always to have the article. In fact however the article is fairly often omitted, especially in poetry or in lofty prose. The article is generally present when it is a matter of persons who are present; when the persons are not present, or are more or less imaginary, the article is often lacking. In fact, Joiion admits, there can be great freedom in the inclusion or absence of the article. The evidence makes very feeble the connection between vocative, determination and article. For one thing, some of the most quoted cases may very likely be explained in another way. The commonly-cited hamelek 'O King!' (i Sam. 17:55, 2 Sam. 14:4 are usually quoted) should be understood as an abbreviated form of the fuller phrase '"doni ha-melek 'my lord the King!' which seems to be much commoner; and if this is so the truly vocative element is the ''doni, determined by the pronoun suffix, to which ha-melek is in apposition. Common vocatives like 'Father!' or 'Son!' are done in the same way, 'abi, b'ni etc., not with ha-'ab, ha-ben or the like. Ha-sar 'commander!' (2 Kgs. 9:5) would be the same as with 'king'. The loss of this prime example series greatly weakens the traditional explanation. And there are just so many cases where, in vocative expressions, the article is not used: Joiion does something to make this clear, but many more examples can be added. The old prophet addresses the altar as mi^beah mi^beah, twice without article, in 1 Kgs. 13:2, and the bad boys similarly call twice upon Elijah as qereah without article, 2 Kgs. 2:23. In both cases one might have expected the article to fit quite well, but it does not appear. And these are not poetic texts in which 'omission' of the article was always accepted. But in poetry too we have so many cases where the same vocative expressions exist both with and without the article: 'give ear, O heavens, and listen, O earth', with double article at Deut. 32:1, and with no article at Isa. 1:2, as Joiion himself sees. As a whole, therefore, it is difficult to be sure until one has made a survey of all vocative expressions in the Bible, but I suspect that the dominant use, in prose as well as in poetry, is that without the article. Surely it was absurd to set up the principle that the vocative usage should have the article, and then have to go on to recognize that the actual grammar does not work this way at all. Moreover, even by the traditional logic which Joiion and other authorities use, it must be evident that ambiguity is
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present and the same argument can go in two different and opposite directions. One can say: vocative expressions are by nature determined, and therefore have the article (though it is frequently omitted, it ought to be there). But one can also say: vocative expressions are by nature determined, and therefore do not need the article; in this respect they are very similar to personal names which, as everyone knows, never have the article. Greek, a language with express vocative forms, used no article with them. The dilemma is similar to that already touched upon above, p. 309^ concerning lexemes that are supposed to be 'naturally' determined. With the same logic one can, perhaps, go either way, establishing either that the article is in principle required or in principle avoided. When the actual language, however, presents an undistinguishable and irremediable mixture of both, the best conclusion is that the principle of determination has no part in the matter at all. The traditional works, then, have probably exaggerated the extent of use of the article in vocative functions, and they have done this in part because they thought that it supported a connection with determination. In fact, far from supporting a connection with determination, the vocative uses suggest that there is no connection with it at all. The presence or absence of the article in vocative functions has little or nothing to do with determination, and an explanation has to be looked for in some quite other direction. Might the ha- in vocative functions be more a particle of deictic character, a particle of recognition, address, or introduction, rather than one of determination ? Thus even if the vocative uses are separate from any basis in the principle of determination, they may be very significant for our subject. It is precisely those usages which are not founded upon determination that may offer traces of earlier functions of the article out of which the dominant determinative usage of classical times arose. Scholars have been agreed that in Hebrew, as in many languages, the article had some sort of relationship with demonstrative elements. Most standard works mention this (GK i26a, p. 404; Joiion 35, p. 83; Brockelmann, by implication, 2ia, p. 17; Lettinga, iyf, 21a, pp.40, 42f.; Blau, 16.1, p. 43, and 84.1 with note, p. 93); but they make little use of it except to illuminate some limited and special cases (e.g. ha-yom 'today'). Modern linguistics have made much more sophisticated studies of deixis, as this realm is now called. Of one stage in the development of the deictic elements, John
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Lyons writes: 'We can think of this deictic as meaning something like "Look!" or "There!"'. 4 The vocative usages of the Hebrew article could thus lead back to an older stage anterior to the dominance of determination, familiar in the classical period. In spite of our earlier statement that matters of comparative philology would be largely left aside, one facet of it will be touched on here. In an article of 1959 K. Aartun discussed the origins of the 'emphatic state' forms in Aramaic.5 He stated that 'In Aramaic determination and vocative go hand in hand', cf. malkd which is both 'the king' and 'O King!' He suggested that the original Aramaic termination had the form *-jd- and that it was 'not impossible' that this was the same element as the Arabic vocative prefix yd. I do not feel able to comment on the likelihood of these suggestions for Aramaic; but they are interesting simply as a contact with, and an illustration of, the sort of thinking which has been developed above. And, of course, it would not be out of the way to mention the similarity to the Hebrew ha- of the first element in the Arabic demonstratives hddhd, hd'uld'i, and of the last element in the vocative form 'ayyuhd. I build no conclusions upon these points but consider them to be suggestive for our discussion as a whole. To sum up, then, the vocative functions fit badly with the treatment proposed in the standard works, and must point in another direction, even if it still remains obscure what that direction is. 6. The relative article. This term, though not widely used, is used by R. J. Williams and perhaps others and seems to be a very good designation; cf. Williams, 82, 90, pp. 2of. What is meant is the article with participle, the type like Ps. 18:33 ha- 'el ha-m''as^'reni 'the God who girds me'. As will be shown, this type has several special features about it and is of considerable importance. Most traditional grammars have some mention of it but it is not well integrated with the other remarks about the article and it is not clear how the two are related. Cf. Brockelmann 2id, p. 19, and 73b, p. 68; Joiion, 137I, p. 425. GK u6q, 126k have an obscure discussion, concentrating on the
J. Lyons, Semantics (Cambridge 1977), p. 648. K. Aartun, 'Zur Frage des bestimmten Artikels im Aramaischen', Ada Orientalia 24 (1959), 5-14; quotations from pp. 13f.
5 4

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question whether the relevant elements are subjects or predicates, a question that probably interests them because it may affect the question whether this sort of article can be subsumed under determination or not. None of the textbooks seem to cite the sort of examples that are most important, especially in the poetic literature. The relative article is important for our subject in several ways. First of all, here again it seems possible, or indeed probable, that the article has a function other than that of determination. Collocated as it is with a word that is not a normal noun but a partially verbal (participial) form, the article has a role more like that of a relative pronoun or relative particle: its function is to take up a word that is a constituent of an existing sentence and make it into the subject of a subordinate clause or phrase. One can see that this may often come close to determination, but it is not quite the same thing. Many cases with the relative article may be in fact determined, but it is not the relative article itself that makes them determined. We would surely have to recognize that in biblical Hebrew one could say:
wayyar*yladim ha-m'sahaqim ba-gan 'and he saw children who were playing in the garden' the children being 'undetermined' in the conventional terminology of Hebrew grammar. True, in a certain sense one may say that 'children', though originally undetermined, becomes in the further mention determinate: it is 'children' whom he saw, who were then indeterminate, who become 'the' (determined) children for the following clause. Yes, but this does not alter the situation: it was children, not 'the' children, who were the subject. A good biblical case is Jer. 27:3: b'-yad mal'akim haba'im 'in the hand of messengers who came'. This phenomenon was seen as a possible difficulty by the Scottish Hebraist A. B. Davidson, who wrote: 6 Rem. 1. Of course the ptcp. with art. is not to be used as an ordinary rel. clause after an indef. noun, only after def. words as pron., proper name, or other defined word. In later style exceptions occur: Jer. 27:3; 46:16; Ez. 2:3; 14:22; Ps. 119:21; Dan. 9:26, though in most of these cases the preceding word is really def. though formally undetermined.
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A. B. Davidson, Hebrew Syntax (2nd edn., Edinburgh 1896), p. 133.

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All these arguments are special pleading, based on the strong insistence that the article must go with determination. With this type of article it is simply not so. The usage of Jeremiah or even Ezekiel is not to be depreciated as 'later style'. The suggestion that the preceding word is 'really definite', though not marked as such, is an evasion of the problem. In the relative article, then, we have a usage that is not primarily concerned with determination: it is not like the difference between 'king' and 'the king'. It may certainly be attached to undetermined nouns. It may well indeed have a certain consequent determining effect. But that is just the point. We are interested in usages that began outside the dominance of determination and yet may in some respect have led towards it. The second reason why the relative article is important is that it forms an important group numerically within the poetic literature, and notably within those (probably earlier?) poems in which the article is quite rare (on the degree of rarity see further below). For instance, Ps. 103 has only a handful of other articles in the entire poem of twenty-two verses, but it begins with a series of five relative articles in vv. 3-5, starting with ha-soleah 'he that forgives'. On the other hand the relative article can easily alternate with participles without article, and also with other verb forms like imperfects. Thus in Ps. 104 the verses 2-4 have a series of participles all referring to God: v. 2
'ote, note; v. 3 ha-m'qare, ha-sam, ba-m'hallek; v. 4 'ose. The first

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two and the last are without article; the middle three have the article. The article reminds of the antecedent subject and brings it to expression; but it does not define any more than the other participles define. Psalm 136, by contrast, though a poem which uses a much larger number of articles than many others, gives us a long string of participles all referring to God, and yet not one of these has the article; but they are interspersed with purely verbal forms like perfects and imperfects. It is very likely that these marked differences in proportion betoken some kind of diachronic shifts in the language. As a matter of research strategy, it means, among other things, that instances of the relative article must be noted and counted separately from other uses of the article. Relative articles, and in prose, can have a kind of conditional element in their meaning. 2 Sam. 14:10 ha-m'dabber 'elayik, literally 'he that speaks to you', means 'if anyone says anything

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to you' (RSV). The article is not here because of definiteness, but because it is syntactically necessary at this point in the construction. In respect of definiteness the meaning is very much the same as is to be found in participles which have no article (Gen. 9:6; 1 Sam. 2:13). To sum up, then, the relative article has a main function other than that of normal determination; it is frequent in some poetic texts in which the usual article is rare; and it may possibly suggest a path which leads from an older state of the language, in which determination by the article was unusual, to the classical state, in which such determination was central.
7. The article in prepositional phrases. The writer has for a time

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been making a survey of the use of the article in the poetic literature, taking the Psalms as a basis, including the poems embedded in the historical works (e.g. Gen. 49; Exod. 15; Deut. 32, 33; Judg. 5) and going on to Job, Song of Songs, Lamentations etc. One thing was immediately and overwhelmingly evident, namely the high proportion of cases in which, in the Masoretic text, the article occurs in one-word prepositional phrases with the 'prefixed' or 'inseparable' prepositions h, k and /. And this is particularly noticeable in poems which appear to be of earlier date. Thus in the Song of the Sea, Exod. 15, we are not surprised to find many nouns without article: mayim v. %\yam vv. 8, 10; 'eres v. 12; 'qyeb v. 9. In fact, where it is the subject of a sentence, as in 'the enemy said' or 'the waters were piled up', it appears that in this poem the article is not used at all, or hardly so: or, to put it into graphic terms, the letter h of the definite article is nowhere to be seen. But this is not the end of the story: there are a number of articles in the poem; and all occur, quite clearly, in the position that has been specified: where the noun in question is collocated with one of the three prepositions b, k and /. So bayam 'in the sea', vv. 1, 4; ba-koah 'in strength', v. 6; ka-qas'iX\Ye straw', v. 7; ka-'operet 'like lead', v. 10; ba-'elim 'among the gods', v. 11; ba-qodes 'in holiness', v. 11; ka-'eben 'like a (the?) stone', v. 16. In this type of phrase the article is almost as regularly present as in other types it is absent. There are, however, cases without the article: b'-m'solot 'in the depths', v. 5. The longer, non-prefixed, preposition form k'mo- is not followed by the article, vv. 5, 8, nor does it appear after the phrase b'-leb 'in the middle of, v. 8 (and cf. similar cases in 325

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Ps. 46:3, Prov. 23:34, 30:19, and a series of six in Ezek. 27-28). Where the noun has an adjective with it, no article is found: b'-mayim 'addirim v. 10, in other words where it is not a oneword prepositional phrase but a longer one. And these tendencies, though present in a very marked form in Exod. 15, reappear in a number of Psalms and other old poems. Psalm 18, for instance, a longish poem of fifty-one verses, has three cases of the relative article as defined above, has three cases of ha- 'el 'God' plus one of ha- 'ares 'the earth'; but it has seven of one-word prepositional phrases with b, k or /. Ps. 68, also surely an ancient text, seems to have two articles only in which the consonant h is written and no preposition is prefixed, but seven in one-word prepositional phrases. Not all poems have this sort of pattern: we have already suggested that there was a development within poetry. But this pattern in the Psalms and other old poetic texts is very marked. The importance of the pattern is even more clearly seen if we note, not the number of articles in each poem, but the distribution of articles and article-less forms word by word in representative lexemes as used especially in the Psalms. For instance, yam, absolute without article, is quite common, and we also have the articled form ha-yam. But with the prepositions b, k and / there are simply no cases without article: there are about twenty-two of ba-yam with article, and similarly four of ka-yam and five of la-yam. In spite of the frequency of yam without article meaning 'the sea', there are no cases at all of b'-yam. With the prepositions min 'from' and 'ad 'as far as', on the other hand, we have many cases without article. With the local suffix -a {he locale),yamma ('towards the sea, to the west') is found more often without article, but also with, and within the same strata (e.g. geographical lists in Joshua). Another common word is samayim 'heaven'. Use without the article is common, e.g. in Isaiah and Psalms. But the locution b'-hmayim 'in heaven', without article, does not occur: all cases are ba-Iamayim with article, twelve in the Psalms, seven in the Prophets. With the other preposition / there are five, all with article. When we take cases with 'from', on the other hand, there is a goodly crop of mi/samayim without article though some cases with min plus article do occur. With the local suffix -a all cases seem to be ha-famayma with article, eleven in all. Similarly, 'eres 'land, world' is common without article, with something approaching sixty in the Psalms in this sense. But 'in 326

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the land, in the world' is always with article, and similarly la- 'ares. Unlike the case of samayim, however, 'arsa with local suffix is always without article. I have collected data for many other relevant nouns but it would be tedious to present more of it here. Let it be stated as a useful generalization that a number of fairly common nouns appear in poetry without article, but when combined with the prepositions b, k and / they are found to be very largely with article. This fact in itself at once makes it very unlikely that determination is the basis for the presence of such articles. Now part of this evidence was taken into account in the traditional accounts, but it was classified in an incorrect way. They tended to classify it as something that happened in comparisons. And it is true that comparisons do form part of this evidence: mayim is mostly without article except where a particular body of water was meant, but in the expression 'like water' there are only three cases without article in the Bible but nineteen are ka-mayim with article, of these four in Psalms, four in Job and one in Lamentations. But comparison essentially had nothing to do with the matter: the same happened with any of the three inseparable prepositions, and in many words it is most conspicuous with b 'in'. Undoubtedly the stressing of comparisons was once again motivated by what were thought to be logical considerations. Thus GK 1260, p. 407, saying that the article is much used in comparisons, give the reason 'since the object compared is treated not (as usually in English) individually but as a general term'; cf. similarly Joiion 1371, p. 424; Lettinga, p. 158 ey. article used in comparisons, but not when an adjective is added to the noun, and thus ka-seleg 'like snow' with article, but k'-'es satul 'like a tree planted', without article, a point further exemplified by Joiion. All this, as has been stated, had nothing to do with comparisons, for the same happened with the other inseparable prepositions: it was, it appears, a syntactical matter, depending on collocation with this or that particular preposition. Or was it? For this brings us to one of the central questions of all attempts to cope with the article. What if many of these articles, in ka-seleg or ba-samayim or other like expressions, simply were not there at all in the Hebrew of biblical times but were created later by the reading tradition? A trace of this problem is visible in the textbooks, which sometimes point out that, where a noun has the article but in collocation with the
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preposition b, k or /, the presence of the article is made visible only by the Masoretic pointing. Where the noun has no preposition, by contrast, the h of the article is visible in the consonantal text. According to a possible hypothesis, the reading tradition later inserted 'articles' (in effect, the vowel adjustments which produced articles) into many of these short phrases beginning with the preposition b, k and /. With phrases where the noun had a following adjective, like mayim rabbim, mayim 'addirim, or ces satul, they could not do this, because it would have required an h for the article element on the adjective, and the insertion of new consonants in this way was beyond their power. Similarly, with other prepositions such as min or k'mo, no article could be introduced without the insertion of an h, and so the phrases with these prepositions remain without article for the most part. These ideas are not new by any means. The writer had taken little account of them until he had already done a great deal of study of the article, out of which the facts forced the problem upon his attention. But the article of M. Lambert in 1898 had already expressed amazement (p. 208) at the 'prodigious' use of the article in poetry when with the prepositions b, k and /, and explained this as the result of a change in the traditional pronunciation, noted all too faithfully by the Masora, an alteration which had introduced the vocalization of prose into poetry in so far as the consonantal text permitted it. But this revocalization of the poetic texts was done in a very inconsistent manner, producing many contradictions, some of which are listed on Lambert's pp. 208 f. The existence of an article, Lambert concludes, cannot be considered certain unless it is attested by the consonantal text. A similar position was taken by Julius Ley in a slightly earlier article, which Lambert himself had not seen (his note 1 on p. 203).7 Ley from the beginning confidently asserted that the later punctuators had made no distinction between poetry and prose and that, as a result, no cases of 'articles' created through the vocalization of b, k and / could be taken seriously. Only those marked with h could be relied upon. Working in this way, he could quickly assert that 44 of the 150 Psalms had not a single article in them. Most of the poems embedded in 7 J. Ley, 'Ober den Gebrauch des Artikels in der rhythmischen Poesie
der Hebraer', in Neue Jahrbiicher fur Philologie und Paedagogik (also known as
jahrbiicber fiir classische Philologie), 2te Abteilung, vol. 144, (1891), 541-51.

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the prose texts have none either. Standard expressions like bayom, kol-ha-yom are special cases and do not count either. Another large group of poems have no more than a single article in them. Many chapters of Job had none, or next to none; even Lamentations had extremely few. These articles have not remained unknown: GK mentions them in a footnote. But the standard works on syntax seem not to have drawn from them the consequences which they imply. Perhaps they were counted as somewhat marginal. Ley's argument is, moreover, put forward as part of the demonstration of his metrical theories, and grammarians may have refrained from citing his work because they did not wish to suggest acceptance of these ideas. But both articles indicate something that is of central importance for any serious study of the Hebrew article, and description of the functions of the latter cannot proceed until some account is taken of the questions then raised. For it may mean, if taken seriously, that the article cannot be properly described on the basis of the Masoretic text. In it there may be many, possibly hundreds, of 'articles' which were never there in ancient times and to which therefore we cannot ascribe meaning or function of the same kind as was possessed by those articles that were present and functioned within the Hebrew of biblical times. Poetry, it seems, differs from prose not only in that it 'omits' articles that by customary rules ought to be there, but that it also may contain in the text hundreds of articles that were never part of this same poetry. A goodly number of the examples customarily cited may become uncertain. What it means, if right, is that one of the most fundamental grammatical mechanisms of Hebrew cannot be correctly described on the basis of the signs devoted to the marking of it. Some sort of diachronic spectrum, covering a series of different levels, will become necessary. Or is there an alternative? The alternative is this: that the peculiar configurations, some of which we have described, such as the plentiful attachment of the article to words with the prepositions b, k and /, when these same words are commonly without article in the same texts when not attached to these prepositions, should be capable of explanation in terms of historical linguistics. Can an account of them be given other than one depending on the sheer vagaries and chaotic inconsistencies of the reading tradition and of the punctuators? 329

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An answer to this question will certainly not be given, or even attempted, within the limits of this article. But one or two points may usefully be made, points that might suggest an approach through historical linguistics as an answer to these questions. First of all, although we cannot assume that every 'article' marked upon a preposition b, k or / in early poetry was 'really' there, it is unwise scepticism to suppose that none of them were really there or that only those marked with the consonantal h can be taken as actual. Many early poems show evidence of some articles, marked with h: if they had some, then they could have had others, which are not marked with h. Though the reading tradition was not always 'right', this is not an adequate reason for supposing that in this respect it was always wrong. Secondly, the reading tradition and the Masora should not be treated as a sack of unintelligibility into which we thrust things that we cannot explain. An account of them has to be given. If, for example, as Ley maintains, they treated the poetical literature by the rules applicable for prose, why did they not do this more consistently? How did a process of revision, even an unconscious one, lead to the numerous inconsistencies some of which are listed, for instance, by Lambert? Thirdly, part of our argument has been to show that the rules and practices of use of the article, even in the central biblical period, were more fluid, varied and illogical than traditional explanation has suggested. The use of the article was in a process of change during - perhaps one should even say 'throughout' - the biblical period; and I have said nothing of the post-biblical usage, which certainly deserves to be taken into consideration here as well. This could mean that some of the reconstitution of patterns in the later reading tradition was in continuity with processes that were taking place during biblical times; it could even mean that some of this reconstitution was already under way within the formation of the Bible. Central to the questions of this order, however, is that of the article with nouns with the prepositions b, k and / in poetic texts. Is this purely a creation of the later reading tradition, or is there something in the configuration of the evidence that may suggest that such phrases - or some of them - could indeed have developed the use of the article earlier than the 33

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same nouns did when in another context? Is there a clue in the fact I have noticed - and now see noticed by Lambert long ago - that many such cases involve short words: jaw, tob, etc.? Is there any path from the deictic foundation of the article towards an explanation? For the moment I am content to leave it here. There are, however, a number of possibly relevant analogies in Hebrew usage, which ought to be mentioned. The first and most obvious is the case of 'the sixth day' or 'the seventh day', where some passages have the diction yom ba-Iilsi or yom ha-s'bi'i, with article on the adjective but not on the noun 'day' (e.g. Gen. 1:31; 2:3; Exod. 12:15 (twice)) but, as GK and other authorities rightly notice, when the preposition b is present all cases have article on both the noun and the numeral adjective (e.g. Gen. 2:2). It would be reasonable to suppose that the usage with article on the adjective only is the older, and was eventually replaced by the classical pattern where both noun and adjective have the article. Where the preposition b was present it was revocalized to include the article element, but where it was not present the article could not be inserted without the addition of the necessary h to the consonantal text, and therefore the modification was not made. Another example which will occur to the reader is the ethnic term 'Philistines'. It is well known that this word is overwhelmingly used without article: but, where prefixed by the prepositions b, k or /, it is in all cases (nearly twenty) provided with the article. This again looks very similar to our problem with the article in other words. In spite of these parallels, it remains somewhat difficult to believe that the reading tradition simply insisted on imposing the article upon so many phrases with the prepositions b, k and /. One can of course say that they would have done the same to an even larger range of examples, but in other cases were prevented because they could not do so without inserting the characteristic consonant h of the article. But the same argument works also in the opposite direction. From the many cases without the preposition, the reading tradition must have known that these same words were very frequently used without article. They knew it very clearly, for instance, of samayim or of mayim, even in classical prose. And, if the reading tradition inserted articles, why did it not do so more consistently? Why did it insert it once in ba-sedeq (Prov. 25:5) but

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leave it out in thirteen other cases of b'-sedeq? Why did it not vocalize for an article in be-'emet 'in truth'? Hosek 'darkness', when without preposition, massively prefers to be without article (over forty cases), and of the small handful with article some can be explained as normal determination, as when God divides between 'the' darkness, i.e. the darkness just mentioned, and the light just mentioned. With the preposition 'in', however, all cases have the article, sixteen or so in number. But how can the reading tradition be supposed to have imposed these sixteen articles, as if an article was necessary at these points, when it itself ex bypothesi knew of the massive representation of the same word without article? The case of 'the sixth day' or 'the seventh day' seems to me to be valid: most probably the older Hebrew applied one article to a phrase of this kind, and not two (double, triple and multiple articles are notably lacking in poetry). The application of vocalization for article to jom after b was an assimilation to normal classical usage. The case of 'Philistines' is less clear and more peculiar. Certainly the dominant usage is without article, apart from the cases prefixed with the prepositions b, k and /, but it is difficult to explain the articles with prepositions exclusively as the consequence of a language change, since the article written with h does also occur, though much less commonly, and in the same ancient texts (e.g. five times in i Samuel); and the existence of the article in that ancient stage is plentifully attested by the universal use of article with the singular 'the Philistine'. The case of 'the Philistines' is indeed very likely to be suggestive for the problem of the article, but it seems also to be a very anomalous case which may not be typical of all developments. Kasdim 'Chaldaeans' is informative, but in a different way. Here we have practically no cases with b, k and /, but we do have good evidence about the article, and especially so from Jeremiah, who was speaking about his contemporaries. Exact figures are of little use, since some examples may be counted as a geographical name rather than the name of persons. But Jeremiah seems to use the form with article more commonly, and it is represented especially in chs. 32, 37, 38-41, while the form without article is well represented in chs. 50-52. Naturally, it remains a question just when these chapters were edited into their final form; but, in so far as these gentilics are
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significant for the history of the article, the data of Jeremiah on this word is certain to be of importance. Finally, one remark of a general nature may be useful. The definite article in Hebrew, when combined with one of the prepositions b, k and /, may well be unusual through its being a mark of considerable importance and highly pervasive throughout the language, which nevertheless has no indication of any kind in the unpointed or consonantal text. Moreover, depending on the exact pronunciation of Hebrew being used, and depending on the phonetic shape of the relevant noun, there may often have been rather little phonetic difference between the form with the article and the form without it. These facts may be relevant for the history of the matter. 8. Linguistic summary. The Hebrew Bible displays the article in the course of a process of change. Its dominant role as a marker of determination has still not become universally established, and lies alongside a variety of other usages and functions. In some words, as is well known, the article had never become established at all; in others, of which the most conspicuous is 'olam 'remotest time, eternity', it is used but its presence seems to make no difference ('ad ha-'olam means nothing different from 'ad 'olam). Uses with the introduction of novel narrative elements, with abstract nouns, in vocative functions, and in the 'relative article' with participles, all show aspects that differ from the traditional notion of determination but may go back to features that helped to establish it. Some very unusual cases may be evidence of experimentation with the article in directions that were not followed up: thus the he-hal'ku 'who went' of Josh. 10:24 and the he-'aleba 'that which was upon it' of 1 Sam. 9:24, if these are textually sound. 9. Hebrew and Greek. As one who has written so much about the relations between language and thought, and been much stimulated in so doing by my long friendship with Edward Ullendorff and the great widening of my linguistic knowledge that I gained from him, I cannot leave the subject without a note of more general and philosophical character. The following remarks are not intended to prove anything about the languages concerned: they are made simply because they appear to be factually true. When one measures against the scale of a variety of the
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world's languages,8 nothing is more striking or more evident than the close similarity between Hebrew and Greek in their patterns of definite article. Both languages have a definite but not, in effect, an indefinite one. In Greek, as in Hebrew, the definite article was a relative newcomer on the scene. Both belonged to language families which provided no explicit article type. In both the article has morphological relations with demonstratives and relatives. In Greek, as in Hebrew, the older and poetic usage employed the article rather little, and determination did not require the article. For noun plus adjective, both languages could repeat the article on both elements: rot opT] rot u(j;7)Xa etc. A usage similar to the Hebrew relative article was common in Greek and characteristic of it: 6 TCOUOV etc. If the be-'aleha of i Sam. 9:24 is genuine Hebrew, it is very similar to a construction common in Greek. On the scale of typological possibilities, Greek was enormously closer to Hebrew in respect of its article than it was to its sister language Latin. And both Hebrew and Greek developed their characteristic definite article patterns within roughly the same historical epoch, say the first millennium BC, with Hebrew, one might guess, having the priority. All this proves nothing and, as has been said, is not meant to prove anything: except perhaps that it contributes something to that old question about the parallelism of language and thought. I was from the beginning of my career a determined critic of ideas of such parallelism. Though these criticisms were largely successful, some retained misgivings because they felt that the same arguments diminished the difference between Hebrew thought and Greek thought, a difference to which much ideological importance was attached. But, as has been shown, so far as concerns the definite article, no such misgivings were required, and the force of the argument presses in the other direction. Of course there may be good reason for continuing to affirm the contrast between Hebrew thought and Greek thought. But, since the pattern of the definite article is remarkably similar as between the two languages, the contrast
8 For a typological survey of the various article patterns in languages, see J. Kramsky, The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in language (Janua Linguarum, Series Minor, 125. The Hague 1972). This work unfortunately has no material comment on biblical Hebrew. It has slight reference to biblical Aramaic, to modern Hebrew, and to Hamitic languages (pp. 158 ff.) but its account of ancient Semitic is really negligible.

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between Hebrew thought and Greek thought can be maintained only by negating the parallelism between language and thought. Naturally, the definite article is only one thing out of many, and I do not for a moment suggest that a multitude of other such similarities can be found. But the article has often been considered as a key example for exactly these problems.9 The striking similarity of its patterns, as between two languages which produced such great cultural differences, must count as important evidence. That same similarity may have also had some historical effect in facilitating the task of translating the Bible into Greek.

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9 The definite article was one of the linguistic phenomena mentioned as important elements in any discussion of the relation between language and thought by Basson and O'Connor in 1947; cf. my own remarks in The

Semantics of Biblical Language (1961), p. 26.

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