Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 10/27/07, Yigal Levin wrote:

> While I agree with most of what you have written in this thread, Lipschits
> seems to be minimizing the archaeological evidence. According to Avraham
> Faust (in several articles), based mostly on survey data, the population
> decline in Judah as a whole seems to have been much more severe, up to
> 60-70%.

Well, obviously 60-70% is not 100%.  As far as the historical considerations
raised in the other thread on Hebrew as a spoken language, it
implicitly implies
that a sizable portion of Jews would continue to speak Hebrew.  I intended in
this thread mainly to show that a reading of the Biblical evidence as 
suggesting
a 100% deportation of all Jews in Samaria and Judah is tendentious, in some
cases even a misreading of the referenced Biblical verses, and at best 
ignoring
other Biblical claims to the contrary.  I wanted to refer to the 
archaeological
evidence in the other thread, however, and felt that it would be more
appropriate to detail that evidence here, and refer to it from there.
That is the
only reason I added in the archaeological evidence.

Yitzhak Sapir