Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila AT helsinki.fi>]

Niels Peter Lemche wrote:

>         The literray critics used a lot of linguistic argument when
> proposing their theory. Of course it is from a modern view point a rather
> primitive kind of linguistics but language was certainly a fixed part of the
> argument for the source division. Of course most of this discussion was in
> German but people in the USA who might not command the German vernacular
> must realize that the discussion goes back to the beginning of the 18th
> century and developed immensely during the 19th century in the
> Graf-Kuenen-Wellhausen hypothesis.
> 
>         NPL

Yes. I am aware of this. My point was not that literary critics lacked
in linguistic argumentation, but that discourse linguistics in
particular would be necessary. A good grasp of a well-formed Hebrew
discourse is necessary for a scholar to be on a sure footing identifying
anomalous instances.

I find some linguistic DH arguments rather unconvincing in cases where
there is an alternative analysis from a discourse perspective. That does
not, of course, disprove the DH analysis in such cases by any means. It
only shows that in these cases there is another way to explain the same
data.

I am not trying to argue against (or for) DH. Just noting that sometimes
DA gives a plausible alternative.

Kimmo