Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

On 14 Sep 2009 at 12:40, Rolf Furuli wrote:

> If we compare the post-exilic words Hurwitz have identified in the
> books that clearly are post-exilic with post-exilic swans, the 
> problem is that most of the pre-exilic swans that it would have been
> so important to look at, have disappeared. Therefore, it is 
> impossible to be certain whether black swans (=the particular words
> in Qohelet believed to be post-exilic) existed in pre-exilic
> times.

Exactly.  We're at the mercy of what I call "the accident of preservation."  
Even with the 
inscriptions, Aramaic, items like the Lachish Letters and such, the corpus we 
have is just too 
small to make the kinds of conclusions that Hurvitz does.  His three-part 
test is thus invalid 
and cannot be used effectively to date a book like Qohelet, unless one is 
already 
predisposed to accept his conclusions.

Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur