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  • From: "Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re[2]: Diachronic study (was Purpose for discussion)
  • Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:41:02 -0500


Excuse me, but are you suggesting that philologists and linguists
should leave discussion of linguistic dating to historians who are
merely amateurs in linguistics?

I see the same line of argument here as in a previous thread: A
scholar in one field may have good evidence concerning a particular
problem e.g. dating from his own specialisation e.g. linguistics,
Egyptology. But he may not be qualified to examine the implications of
his argument in a different field e.g. Mesopotamian history. Should
our scholar be able to publish his argument for wider consideration,
and for properly scholarly comparison with the evidence from other
fields? Or should he be written off a priori as unscholarly because he
has not fully examined and tied up the loose ends of the implications
of his theory in a quite different field, where he is not qualified?

So my plea is, let the linguists present their linguistic evidence
without requiring them to first show themselves better historians than
you are. They don't claim to be! Then, if there seems to be a
contradiction between the linguistic and the historical evidence, both
parties need to reexamine their evidence and work together to find a
synthesis. Don't you agree?

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: Diachronic study (was Purpose for discussion)
Author: <npl AT teol.ku.dk> at Internet
Date: 19/02/2000 18:21

<snip>
>
This is what may happen when philologists enter a discussion about
language datings segments of language on the basis of language alone. I see
hardly a single, say first-level historical-critical scholar of the last
century dating Daniel to earlier than the 2nd century BCE, notwithstanding
some linguistic peculiarities and mythological ideas that go much further
back. I must also say that in spite of some 'early' elements, the language
of Daniel is vastly different from, say the one of the Sfire-inscriptions
(8th century Aramaic inscriptions) not to say even earlier Aramaic
inscriptions. By the way, Garbini dates the song of Deborah rather late cf.
his Il cantico di Debora, La Parola del Passato 33, 1978, 5-31.

NPL
>





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