Doctor X

Just for the record, here is Friedman's bibliography on the dating of Hebrew. I am no linguist either:

Robert Polzin, Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward an Historical Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1976)

Gary Rendsburg, "Lte Biblical Hebrew and the Date of P," Journal of the Ancient ear Eastern Society 12 (1980): 65-80

Ziony Zevit, "Converging Lines of Evidence Bearing o the Date of P," Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 94 (1982): 502-509

Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), pp3-13

Jacob Milgram, "Numbers, Book of," Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 4. pp. 1148-1149.

Avi Hurvitz, "The Evidence of Language in Dating the Priestly Code," Revue Biblique 81 (1974): 24-56

Hurvitz, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship Between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel (Paris: Gabalda, 1982)

Hurvitz, ני$לל ני$ל ניב (Jerusalem: Bialik Istitute, 1972)

Hurvitz, "Continuity and Innovation in Biblical Hebrew--The Case of 'Semantic Change' in Post-Exilic Writings," Abr-Naharaim Supp. 4 (1995), pp. 1-10

Hurvitz, "The Usage of $$ and צוב in the Bible and its Implication for the Date of P," Harvard Theological Review 60 (1967): 117-121

Ronald Hendel, "'Begeting' and 'Being Born' in the Pentateuch: Notes on Historical Linguistics and Source Criticism," Vestus Testametum 50 (2000): 38-46

--J.D.

Doctor X

Spin:

Kindly do not mischaracterize my response.

--J.D.

Celsus

Incidentally, here is Amihai Mazar's table on development of the Hebrew alphabet:

Clearly, the evidence from the DSS will be grammatical, and is prone to criticisms about deliberate archaising.

Dr.X: If as broadly defined as you want the Documentary Hypothesis to be defined, then we have little argument. However, like spin, I strongly agree that pre-exilic dating of any sources is mostly wishful thinking.

Joel

spin

This chart from A. Mazar is a perfect example of the kind of apologetic I have commented on elsewhere. (I've got a copy of Mazar somewhere and when I have access to my books I use it in conjunction with Ahlstrom and whoever else I can muster, because I know that some of Mazar's bias will get through my radar undetected.)

The Isbet Sartah ostracon is a practice alphabet... in what language? Who knows? But Mazar has claimed it for Judaism.

The Gezer calendar, a short, restricted text, has been argued as Phoenician. (And if you can't distinguish it from Phoenician, when did Hebrew emerge as a language??)

The Mesha Stone is Moabite.

The date of the Siloam Tunnel inscription has been argued about in scholarly journals.

What seems acceptable as datable Hebrew are the Lachish letters.


spin

Celsus

I agree in part that we can't claim them as "Hebrew". However, we know that languages evolve, as well attested by Old > Middle > Modern English. Obviously, Biblical Hebrew evolved from somewhere, and Phoenician and Hebrew are very similar (did you see the recent debate on the ANE list about the Phoenician alphabet?). I doubt that the Gezer calendar can be considered "Phoenician"--perhaps proto-Phoenician at best. The list simply shows the evolution of the language, not necessarily that they are direct progenitors of Hebrew (similar to complicated evolutionary trees where austrolopithecines are not necessarily progenitors of genus Homo, but show evidence of the evolutionary route that took place).

Joel

spin

What I advocate in this field is to know something about what the argument is, be it linguistics, palaeography, archaeology, or history. You need to have a little basic know-how because you simply cannot trust anyone in this field. I sure as hell wouldn't trust Avi Hurvitz without knowing the subject matter in some detail, nor Rendsburg without a fair bit of contextualisation. Even Ziony Zevit seems to me at times to basically be apologetic.

Without a historical framework to which one can pin the historical linguistics, it becomes a relative chronology.

Worse, can one assume that that which is called Late Biblical Hebrew is any later than that which is found in much of the bible? We see from the DSS that there were a number of Hebrew dialects in use at the same time, such as Mishnaic Hebrew found funnily enough in the Mishna, which at one time was thought to have been from the second century CE or later. The DSS have killed that little conjecture. Now I find some scholars who are projecting the Mishnaic flavour of Hebrew back before the DSS. How can one tell if biblical Hebrew was not in use at the same time as the heavily Armaic influenced "Late Biblical Hebrew" which seems similar to some of the texts at Qumran?

And there is no point in arguing that the writers of the scrolls were archaizing, for plainly they were innovative in their orthography, so why archaize while being innovative? It doesn't make sense.

What we apparently have are two undated sources, J and E, which have been worked upon and added to over a longish period, which people want us to believe were taken to Babylon and back (which in itself gets a "yeah, sure" from me). And we have a source which conveniently gets related to the literary "discovery" of a text in the temple said to have been Deuteronomy (and I point people to the short narrative in CD 5,2-5 about the discovery of a document in the temple by ... wait for it, not Hilkiah, but Zadok, so the literary tradition of the finding the book in the temple had not even at the time of the DSS been stabilized. (What is possible is that the deeds of John Hyrcanus have been retrojected into Josiah's time.)

(Do you notice how many secondary sources I quote here? I don't have even one with me. I have to use the primary sources or translations thereof because that's all I have at the moment. And if one can't make a reasonable case that way, it won't matter how many secondary sources one has... And the reason I find myself talking about nt claptrap is because no-one is talking hb -- not the xian ot -- or dss.)


spin

spin

Hebrew is closer, through comparative linguistics, to Moabite, Edom and Ammonite than it is to Phoenician, so let's give a quick classification of east and west Canaanite, and call Phoenician east-Canaanite, while the others developed out of west-Canaanite. That gives the vague idea of the situation, so, when did the Hebrew language truly raise its head? I think it's difficult even to use the Gezer calendar as an indication other than to say sometime after it.

No. I'm not on ANE. If I were I'd be arguing all the time with a few of the members and making myself unpopular without enough gain. If you've got a date I can look it up in the archives.

The problem we have is that Phoenician was already around and it itself had spawn dialects.

Well, let's say it shows the development of the alphabet. You know that Hebrew is sometimes written in "Aramaic" script. We write in a modified Roman script. The alphabet cannot necessarily tell us about the development of a language.


spin

Doctor X

Celsus:

Then I think you and Spin have to address Friedman's arguments.

--J.D.

Doctor X

I have no interest in posting 30 pages of material when it is ready enough for your to read at any bookstore.

If you are unwilling to address it, then perhaps you should abandon your position.

--J.D.

spin

Synthesis is the art of reducing something to its essentials.

I am always willing to address evidence and its interpretation.

However, if as I have pointed out (in the context of biblical studies) there are ideological problems with even supposedly hard evidence based disciplines such as archaeology, how can you expect to make any impact by citing a secondary work's rehash of the evidence? The ideological problems should be resolved in the primary works, not just passed on by the secondary ones. What you have indicated so far with your numerous references to the work under discussion is that this is exactly what it is doing. Hence, if you feel like making a synthesis which shows this not to be the case, then I'm happy to consider it.

I don't have the desire to argue with you on the subject, but you do have the tendency to shove some latest greatest overview book down the throats of readers, when what I need is the raw material, the evidence used and where it comes from, not just citations of other opinions.


spin