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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: "Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>
  • To: "Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>, 'Trevor Peterson' <speederson AT erols.com>, Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: SV: QohSV: Qoheleth
  • Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 15:50:38 +0200




> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Thomas L. Thompson
> Sendt: 22. maj 2001 15:29
> Til: 'Trevor Peterson'
> Emne: SV: QohSV: Qoheleth
>
> Dear Trevor Petersen,
> These are fair questions and in an effort to help return to issues
> Hebrew, let me respond very simply to the non-Hebrew elements of your
> questions.
> First of all I consider the term "mainstream" somewhat tendentious.
> We are all mainstream in our own duck ponds. How is Hurvitz more
> mainstream than Knauf and how is Halpern more than Van Seters? Mainstream
> is what the last generation of scholars formed. As for calling "us"
> something, follow my example: use our names and cite specific works. Over
> thirty years even the same author changes.
> I have been in favor of dating biblical Hebrew since my Origin
> Tradition of 1987 and I still am. Although I find it difficult to assign
> dates to such complex secondary literature as we find in the Pentateuch,
> the Psalter and Isaiah because of their collective nature, I do think we
> have been able to establish on the basis of other texts what is often
> referred to as Late Biblical Hebrew. What we have had some difficulty in
> showing is that classical biblical Hebrew--including what seems to be used
> in some of the Hodayoth and other Qumran texts as well as in so-called 3rd
> Isaiah, P and many "late" psalms--is in fact earlier than late biblical
> Hebrew. Similarly, I am much disturbed that we do not see a linguistic
> development between DTR 1 and DTR 2 and am only relieved by the
> realization that the existence of such "texts" along with 3rd Isaiah and
> P, as independent strata of literature has been frequently cast into
> doubt.
> I would be much more sanguine about dating things as pre-exilic and
> post-exilic were it not for the fact that we have had many exiles in
> Palestine between the 8th century BCE and the 2nd century CE. No clear
> historical arguments define the concepts that are essential to this
> chronology.
> I would be much more sanguine about our actual (rather than
> theoretical) abilities to date biblical Hebrew if the methods used were
> less dependent on vocabulary and on largely unvalidated assumptions about
> Aramaisms. I would be even more sanguine if real chronology were more
> frequently used rather than story chronology associated with the
> documentary hypothesis, which got quite a thrashing by the mainstream in
> the 1960s and 1970s.
> Yet I have strong hopes for this development and stress the issue's
> importance with my students.
> It is not enough to say that dating biblical Hebrew is a good idea
> or that it is possible. One has also to do it and to show that in doing
> it, it makes a difference.
> I am somewhat mystified by writers who seem to assume that dating
> biblical Hebrew would somehow make my task more or less difficult or my
> arguments more or less convincing. I really do not see how it has much to
> do with my issues. I do not see myself, for instance, as having a
> compressed view of the literary aspects of biblical texts. In this, I
> believe I have been consistent since my dissertation on the patriarchal
> narratives in 1971 to my article in the new issue of the Revue Biblique:
> namely, that the earliest literary developments of "biblical" traditions

> long antedate the gleam in Israel's father's eye.
> Thomas
>
> Thomas L. Thompson
> Professor, University of Copenhagen
>
> Trevor Petersen wrote:
> But, hopefully in the interest of drawing this
> discussion back to B-Hebrew proper, I'm curious about something, and
> maybe
> you could give me some help here. (Please permit me to generalize a
> bit,
> as it seems like you, N. P. Lemche, P. Davies, and some others are
> generally saying a lot of the same things about this issue.) What
> is your
> take on the standard reconstructions of the history of linguistic
> development in Hebrew? When I think in terms of comparing it with a
> language like Akkadian, where we have autographs surviving from many
> different periods of the language and can establish some sort of
> chronology of linguistic development, it seems like we ought to be
> able to
> observe some similar changes in Hebrew and note their development,
> even if
> the surviving forms are only later copies. So, if we're to view
> most of
> the biblical literature as post-exilic, or some such thing, how
> would the
> linguistic differences that others have assigned to periods of
> development
> (for instance, between most of Deuteronomy and 2 Chronicles where it
> doesn't seem to take its language directly from Kings or some common
> source) be explained?
>
> I guess one thing that intrigues me about this issue (and something
> that
> seems to have appeared in this discussion) is that there are ways in
> which
> it seems like the conservative scholar and (forgive me--I don't know
> what
> you prefer to call yourself) what Halpern has labeled as the
> minimalist
> are in a similar position relative to mainstream scholarship.
> Whereas the
> conservative looks at a book like Isaiah or Genesis and tries to
> debunk
> source analysis in favor of a comparatively early date within a
> century's
> time for the whole book, it seems like you would be inclined to do
> the
> same thing, except that it would be in favor of a comparatively late
> date.
> Either way, both are arguing for a more compressed view of the
> history of
> the literature, and both would therefore need to confront many of
> the same
> arguments for a longer literary development.
>
>




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