Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Ah, now you are using just the argument which I did for the Hebrew 
Bible well before the 2nd century BCE. Let me adapt your words to that 
situation:

Again the web created by the authors of the Hebrew Bible makes it 
possible to date persons like David or Solomon to a specific time. The 
alternative would be to say that this web has been constructed by a 
circle (quite an extensive one) of authors from a much later period. 
That would exclude anywhere outside Judea because of lack of knowledge 
of Hebrew in that part of the world. As to Judea, they would know 
Hebrew in its late* Hellenistic form, but should in order to create 
this web be able to write in standard Biblical Hebrew (DH), late 
Biblical Hebrew (Chronicler), place the Writings in the right place 
and do their dialects as well. The literary data from the Hebrew Bible 
do fit together and seem also to go well with external evidence as 
well.

* if Byzantine Greek is "late" relative to classical, the DSS Greek is 
"late" realtive to BH

Now we may not have quite as much material or linguistic evidence for 
BH as for classical Greek, but the argument is just the same. So, if 
your argument is valid, is mine invalid, and why? Or is the different 
simply in the quantity and/or quality of the evidence?

Peter Kirk



______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re: historiography (Ken, again)
Author:  <npl AT teol.ku.dk> at Internet
Date:    01/01/2000 17:25

<snip>

        [Niels Peter Lemche]  Again the web created by several classical
authors makes it possible to date persons like Thucydides or Herodotus to a 
specific time. The alternative would be to say that this web has been 
constructed by a circle (quite an extensive one) of authors from a much 
later period. That would exclude Western Europe because of lack of knowledge 
of Greek in that part of the world. As to Byzans, they would know Greek in 
its late Byzantine form, but should in order to create this web be able to 
write in Ionian Greek (Gerodotus), clear Attic Greek (several otgher 
authors), place Pindar in the right place and do his dialect as well. The 
literary data from classical sourcs do fit together and seem also to go well 
with external evidence as well. It is probably time for Ken Litwak to stop 
this ridiculous discussion about classical analogies.
        NPL