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  • From: David Steinberg <david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] song of Deborah
  • Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:50:33 -0500

The early dating of the so called "archaic poetry" is essentially based on the work of Albright, Cross and Freedman. It always went well beyond the evidence but has now been shown to be unfounded. A few elderly scholar whose reputations are bound up in early datings - Cross and Avi Hurvitz - still maintain the early dates but the evidence is against them. See -

1. The material I discuss and reference in the box /Can Biblical Texts be Linguistically Dated?/ http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_6.htm <http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_6.htm>

2. Vern, Robyn, "The Relevance of Linguistic Evidence to the Early Dating of the Archaic Poetry of the Hebrew Bible", PhD dissertation, University of Sydney, 2008.

If you look at the text of any of the so called archaic poems,and you revert it to its probable form c. 1200-1400 BCE (add case, mood, and other short vowel endings, revert contractions of final /y/ and /w/ consequent on the disapearance of final short vowels etc.) you will find that the orthography is not really archaic and, in many cases, such as the use of /matres/ - is often typologically late.


David Steinberg





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