Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

I think the point that Petr was trying to make (correct me if I'm wrong, 
Petr) is that there is a logical leap from saying that because Genesis 
**apparently** portrays events in the Early Bronze Age and it does so in 
Hebrew, that Genesis is therefore evidence for the state of Canaanite or 
Semitic languages in the Early Bronze Age. If that's Petr's position, he's 
absolutely right. There is a big leap in logic there.

Firstly, let's assume that the events portrayed in Genesis are staged in the 
Early Bronze Age (EBA). Though I doubt that's the case, let's assume it is 
for the moment. The most we can say is that the characters in the book of 
Genesis, who occupy the world of the text, speak Standard Biblical Hebrew. 
Logically, you have to argue the case that you can then extend the world of 
the text to the real world of the real EBA of the real past such that 
Standard Biblical Hebrew becomes a language of the EBA. You can't simply use 
the text to do it, because that's completely circular evidence: "The biblical 
text speaks about the EBA, so the biblical events look like the EBA, and 
therefore when we look at the EBA it looks just like the biblical text. 
Therefore, the Hebrew of the biblical text is EBA Hebrew." That line of 
reasoning is trying to hold itself up by its own bootstraps. It doesn't work.

You have to look for some kind of anchor point outside of the text to test 
the hypothesis. And there is virtually no evidence, as far as I know, of 
Hebrew in the EBA. In fact, if anything, the linguistic trajectory that 
Hebrew seems to be on suggests that Semitic languages in the Bronze Ages 
looked a little different to what they did in the Iron Age and the Persian 
Era.

Furthermore, there are good arguments that the biblical texts were written 
during Iron II and the Persian Era, with some final redactions occurring in 
the Hellenistic Era. References to Chaldeans, Sheba, and probably a good few 
of the other names in the Table of Nations (Gen 10) smell like the 8th or 7th 
century BC. There's barely much evidence to put them any earlier. The result 
is that the long distant past of Genesis looks a lot like the 7th century BC 
(or so). It's a bit like those Renaissance paintings of biblical scenes, 
where everyone is wearing Italian garb of the 15th and 16th centuries. It's 
not difficult to make the case, therefore that the Hebrew spoken by the 
characters of Genesis is at home in the 7th century BC.

Finally, the claim that many of the dates in the biblical texts co-ordinate 
with 164 BC is not all that far-fetched and baseless. It's a case of doing 
the math. What you make of the calculations is a different matter entirely, 
but the observation is intriguing. And no, it does not mean that the biblical 
texts were invented in the Maccabean Era. All it means is that the numbers in 
the final form of the text might have been reconfigured in the Maccabean Era.



Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au