Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Michael Abernathy" <mabernathy AT isot.com>]

> Sorry, Michael. I should have qualified this. What you wrote before and 
again here is that if there are no discernable linguistic differences, 
then the texts must have been written at one time and place. Is that 
fair? And I am arguing that there is a logical fallacy here.

I gave some other possibilities but that is one that I mentioned.


>
And this is where I differed from you. A natural explanation for freedom 
from dialectal differences is that the style of an older work is copied 
by a newer author. Did you respond to this argument and reject it? I 
don't remember anything.
>
Actually, I believe that I implied one reason for uniformity could be that 
the authors were imitating an earlier style.  However, I still believe that 
if actual differences had developed in common usage then there would be some 
evidence in later copies of the earlier texts.  Sooner or later someone is 
going to make a copy error because he didn't understand word that is no 
longer in use.  Those errors would be rare but significant.
Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy