Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>]

Dear Greg,

Thank you for your helpful posting. I agree that if we restrict 
ourselves to evidence from Qumran we can learn little about whether 
texts were written two or twenty centuries earlier. We need to look 
also at the evidence from earlier texts. I know that this is limited 
and its dating is uncertain, but there are some things which can be 
looked at.

I wonder how securely you can date the "yachad" texts to no earlier 
than the 1st century BCE? I say this because the picture would be much 
easier to understand if the "yachad" texts were significantly earlier 
than the proto-MH texts. There can be other explanations of 
non-quotation of "yachad" texts in other texts. But are there clear 
indications of contemporaneity e.g. proto-MH texts quoted in "yachad" 
texts? I am not trying to bend the evidence but because I want to be 
sure that this plank of your structure, which carries a lot of weight, 
is truly firm.

Peter Kirk