Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Raymond de Hoop <rdehoop AT tref.nl>]

Last Friday I sent the following message to the list, but it apparently
went astray somewhere. However, in addition to the books listed by Henry,
the books I suggested in that message have to be checked because they
respond to these studies.

The orthography (plene or defective writing) of words as an indication for
the time of origin is a rather tricky argument. We find certain words in
evidently post-exilic texts with defective spellings, while texts that
might have originated in the pre-exilic period have the plene spellings.

For a very balanced discussion of these problems you might look up

J. Barr, The Variable Spellings of the Hebrew Bible, Oxford: Oxford U.P., 
1989.

A (rather extensive, but very illuminating) discussion of this problem with
regard to Deuteronomy 32 can be found in:

P. Sanders, The Provenance of Deuteronomy 32 (OTS, 37), Leiden: Brill,
1996, pp.
323-333.

Best wishes,

Raymond



_____________________________________________________________________________

Dr Raymond de Hoop
Boeiersingel 11
9745 CA Groningen
Tel.: 050 553 01 15
E-mail: rdehoop AT tref.nl