Biblical Hebrew Forum

[mjoseph <mjoseph AT terminal.cz>]

Ken Litwak wrote:

>As Francis Anderson has shown, there are clear changes in the Hebrew
>Bible from the Pentatuech to "alter" books.  For example most of the
>spellings in Exodus and Leviticus in particualr or defective.  BOoks
>that are traditinally assumed to be "laer" show plene spellings. Qumran
>Hebrew, of which I've read a fair amount personally, are clearly at the
>total opposite of the specturm from Exodus or Leviticus.  The spelling
>of words, lack of defective spellings, and whole word endings totally
>unknown virtually anywhere in teh TaNaKh argue strongly that Hebrew in
>the 2nd Century BCE was radically differentl orthographically and
>morpholigocially from biblical Heberw, especially taht of the
>Pentatuech.  I see no way to claim, based solely on empirical evidence,
>that anything in the TaNaKh could have come fromt he same period as the
>DSS.  

To these could be added others, such as the falling into disuse of the 
VAV-consecutive (whatever its real nature ;-), the increasing use of SH. 
as the relative pronoun vis-a-vis ASHeR, ad infinitum. All the reasons 
for which liberal scholars have long insisted that, for example, 
Ecclesiastes was written late. If these arguments are valid, and there 
doesn't appear to be any rational way to deny them, the "late 2nd century 
BC" school is out to lunch.

The lack of response to Mr. Litwak's post has been deafening, and, I 
might add, with very good reason. The "Hasmonean political tractites" 
(you know who you are) are blathering an in-your-face, media-oriented 
(anything radically pro-Bible or anti-Bible is sure to get a lot of media 
play in America) bit of silliness in order to draw attention to 
themselves, and get their 15 minutes of fame. They are the 
pseudo-intellectual equivalents of streakers, and are impressing no one 
except the fools who think, "This is new, therefore it is better."

Mark Joseph

____________________________
There are two kinds of fools:
The first says, "This is old, therefore it is good."
The other says, "This is new, therefore it is better."
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