Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

(philip davies wrote:)
>  I simply find Hurvitz's explanation incredibly simplistic and naive as
> well as dismissive of a great deal of literary-histoical scholarship. If
he
> can convince me that the writing of classical Hebrew had to cease at some
> fixed point (as he seems to have convinced you - can you tell me why?)

i suppose the beauty of hurvitz' studies over the last thirty years is 
1. the simplicity of the methodology and 
2. it's tie-in with external sources where they are found and
3. its objective verifiability for others, and
4. the interesting spreads that show up in the bible, and
5. its sensitivity to the language. 
avi almost has a 'genre' to many of his articles: 'methodology/problem,
a,b,c; two/three pairs of words run through LBH, qumran, rabbinic, aramaic
material and compared with 'classical' hebrew and any evidence of dialectic
replacement.'

as to convincing me, well i'm an old student but a relatively 'new' player
because of spending fifteen years in the sub-sahara. 
more important is when someone like milgrom is convinced that the priestly
material is first temple. he credited hurvitz with some critical evidence
that the hurvitz'-methodology produced. 
e.g. the words `avoda and mishmeret in pre- and post- exilic hebrew, among
the many that are in hurvitz' own studies.
so basically, i view hurvitz' studies and methodology as one of the
'sleepers' in biblical criticism. 
bottom line:
yes, classical hebrew exists as a layer, 
and no, it was not written after the exile. 
i expect that to be next century's re-synthesis of the biblical material.

braxot
randall buth