Biblical Hebrew Forum

[decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca (Vincent DeCaen)]

dear friends,

i'm now in the home stretch of the job search here, and i'll probably
maintain radio silence soon, very soon...... but in the meantime.

this is a programme, not a theory, not conclusions, but a programme. so i
don't have answers, yet, to how ezra patterns with 2 chronicles (but
hopefully, the answers will start coming in soon). i don't know about
jonah (though have done some interesting work on the pentameter in jonah
2). the jury's out on she- vs asher right now....

but,
i can now talk a little more, because a very rough draft of the programme
with a few worked examples is now in print (a collection of papers from
departmental symposia), the paper is still steaming from the press. ;-)

so here're some initial results, yet to be confirmed, etc, etc.

(a) strata

so far, i have five clear strata (vs the old two: early vs late). i'm
using datable milestones to attach approximate dates (* indicates the bulk
of the book)

stratum I       ca 700 -        amos, 1st isaiah        *kings
stratum II      ca 600 -        jeremiah, ezekiel       *deuteronomy
stratum III     ca 500 -        *zechariah              *gen-exodus
stratum IV      400+ ?          job?                    numbers+gen/exod
stratum V       ?               ecclesiastes            *ezra-nehemiah
stratum ?       ?               qimron's DSS grammar

i'm using fine variations, considered marginal, and hitherto unstudied in
any rigorous fashion: verbal morphology, variants of pronominals, etc.

programme: three volumes (morphological, lexical, syntactic) using the
computer to create a "dialect geography" of the biblical text... time to
completion: 2-3 years.

to michael's question, what would this prove? well, i guess we'd have to
give the same answer archaeologists and historians give... but a rigorous
historical dialectology would be an important contribution all the same.
of course, time of composition is logically independent of value and
historicity of sources, etc.  i think, e.g., that chronicles has some
historical gems, despite its putative time of composition.....

sholom,
V
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Dr Vincent DeCaen     <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>
c/o Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, 4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor
University of Toronto, Toronto ON, CANADA, M5S 1A1

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative, www.chass.utoronto.ca/~decaen/hsei/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Love work. Hate authority.  --Shemaiah, from Avot