Biblical Hebrew Forum

["uri hurwitz" <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

  truly I'm confused: does Thompson deny that there is diachronic
development in BH?
  It would seem that the epigraphic texts from Lakhish, Arad, Yabneh Yam
alone would offer chronological help.
   The orthography of a PN name like DWD always without a Yod in Sam., but
always with a Yod in Chron., with a few Yods creeping into texts in
between is
 a clear indication of Orthographic development.
   The syntactic differences, as well as some lexical (cf. SFR with )GRT
)are of course well known.
   That no exact date can be given for the composition or editorial
treatment of texts that span a thousand  or more years (yes, early Heb
poetry is ancient!) is regrettable, but in the case of the HB unavoidable
in our present state of knowledge.          Uri  UriHurwitz