Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

About a half year ago, Prof Thompson wrote with regards to the 
Samaritan discussion, and my points regarding Hurvitz:

> I have an explicitly inadequate, but nevertheless positive response to 
> Polzin and Hurvitz in my The Origin Tradition of Ancient Israel (p.191
> -194). Hurvits has not really done much more on the dating of ancient 
> Hebrew than what I accept here. Much criticism of Hurvitz' position has 
> been published in many places. I would hardly identify that with a 
> "minimalist camp".

Dear Prof Thompson,

I had originally apparently misunderstood what you wrote above
and with the book being apparently missing in the nearby library
(listed on-shelf in the computer, but not on-shelf), I was unable to 
check it myself.  Thanks to a list member, I had now read what 
you wrote, and evidently you appear to accept Hurvitz's claims, 
at least partially.  I am not sure whether you think so today (the 
above book is published almost 20 years ago).  I evidently mis-
understood what you meant by "positive response."  I thought you 
meant "effectively answer" and I could not see how this could be 
done in just 4 pages.  I was referring to datings of later than 6th 
century in my label of "minimalists," which at least with respect to the 
above cited book would not make you a minimalist.  It is with respect 
to these claims, especially the Greek period, which is attested in
abundance in the DSS, that I feel Hurvitz's criticisms especially 
apply.  Having reviewed slightly Ian Young's book, I would now
move that period slightly later - datings later than 5th or 4th
century, perhaps.  

I suppose that many of Hurvitz's articles will do, but the following 
article explores the linguistic criticisms without going into his own
method of dating:

Hurvitz, A., "The Relevance of Biblical Hebrew Linguistics for the 
Historical Study of Ancient Israel," Proceedings of the Twelfth World 
Congress of Jewish Studies. Division A: The Bible and Its World 
(Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1999) 21*-33*

I also note now the following book (of which I read small parts this
morning):

Ian Young (ed), Biblical Hebrew: Chronology and Typology (JSOTSup; 
Sheffield Academic: Sheffield, July 2003).

Reviewed here:

http://bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=4084&CodePage=4084,2557
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/reviews/review180.htm
(especially Zevit's review in bookreviews.org)

and will try to read it more.

Yitzhak Sapir