Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

OK, neither you nor I can disprove proposition A. But that is not a proof of
A. Your argument depends on the proof of A. A, here, is that the Biblical
texts are broadly contemporary with the DSS.

Your other arguments, which we have all seen enough times, may cast doubt on
a 2nd millennium dating of the Biblical texts but are very far from showing
that they are 2nd century.

As for your final question, I don't know and I don't care as it does not
affect the issue. Come back if and when you can PROVE that the texts were
written in the temple in the 2nd century, not just cast doubts in the
general direction of selected other opinions.

Peter Kirk

----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2000 6:02 PM
Subject: Re: Hebrew language, antiquity of ? [Cut]


> At 19.06 07/06/00 +0100, Peter wrote:
> >You are making unwarranted assumptions here that BH text is dated at the
> >same general time period as the DSS.
>
> Peter,
>
> Though you don't seem to have any defendable position about when the texts
> are dated, you shouldn't make unwarranted assumtions about what I am
doing.
>
> >The BH narratives certainly purport to
> >be several centuries earlier,
>
> So does Gore Vidal's "Julian". Ben Hur. Daniel. Judith.
>
> >and there is no proof that they are not what
> >they appear to be.
>
> As I have shown in the past, the texts are not what they appear to be to
> modern readers. It's not strange that a text can be taken wrongly when
read
> out of context: think of Gulliver's Travels as a children's book, or
> Wuthering Heights as a young girls romance. I have seen no attempts to
> reconstruct the context of the writing of the biblical texts.
>
> Some of the texts we are referring to have "historical" anachronisms (in
> that some things don't fit what actually happened in the past), which I
> have signaled a number of times, regarding for example Genesis. Here's
> another brief one: "The Wandering Aramaean" didn't start wandering until
> the climatic change post-1200 BCE drove the Aramaeans out of the steppes
to
> find other ways of surviving and caused such problems that Tiglath-pileser
> I saw fit to deal with them. This was the first time they emerged, ie 1100
> BCE. (There were however other nomadic Semitic groups mentioned before
that.)
>
> With a Hebrew language unaffected by hundreds of years of contact with
> Egypt and so similar to Phoenician of the ninth century, we have a
language
> that doesn't fit the literalism of modern interpretation of the biblical
> texts. Garbini notes that the major difference between Hebrew and
> Phoenician is the Aramaic influence on Hebrew, with Phoenician being more
> conservative. When did that Aramaic influence take place? Some time after
> the Aramaeans were forced to leave their earlier homelands in the north.
>
> What relationship is there between the little that has been gleaned about
> the earliest Hebrew found and biblical Hebrew?
>
> What trace is there of anything one might call a sub-stratum of an early
> form of Hebrew in the biblical literature to indicate writing before
> biblical Hebrew and only edited later? One would expect, for a text
> literally interpreted as purporting to cover over a thousand years, signs
> of linguistic change.
>
> >So we may be talking about a time gap of several
> >centuries rather than, or in addition to, a shift in social situations.
>
> Are you saying that most of the texts were not written in or around the
> temple? Or maybe they weren't? Or there is a slight chance that they
> weren't? Or that you don't know?
>
>
> Ian