Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>Hebrew (1800 BC - present)

Sorry, this seems a bit of a joke, Brian.

If Garbini can claim that the so-called Gezer calendar was written in a
southern dialect of Phoenician while other scholars say that it was written
in some sort of Hebrew, the distinction between Phoenician and Hebrew in
the ninth century (memory) was so small that one cannot imagine the
existence of a Hebrew in 1800 BCE. (I need not mention that there is no
evidence of any Egyptian influence on the Hebrew language, had its speakers
spent four hundred years in captivity.)

We have difficulties dating Hebrew before the ninth century BCE. 


Ian