Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi Yitzhak,

just checked the archives and the first time I got involved in your claims
from epigraphic data was in response to your dating of Ruth which you state
can be no later than pre-exile.

The Samaritan versus Judean Torah tradition has absolutely nothing to do
with this. You are claiming spelling changed in Israel in different periods.
If the spelling for the Judean Torah changed then why couldn't it also have
changed for the Samaritan tradition. In any case the data, however small it
is, doesn't seem to be supporting your view.

It seems to be supporting the view that there was no accepted orthography.
People just wrote how they heard things. Yodh variation only goes to
illustrate the point. Some people heard it. Some people didn't.

Anyway, I think I agree with you. This thread is dead. But please do have
the final word by misrepresenting me once more or telling me that this is
not your theory or that all scholars agree with you.

Finally, I speak to you in simple terms. Each CL paper must be examined in
its own merits. There are a lot of CL papers published by researchers from
humanities departments. First and foremost they are theoretical linguists
and not computer scientists. Their approach to research is a theoretical
one. They seek proof for their theories using computers rather than the
other way around. Computational scientists come from the opposite direction
and should be guided by engineering decisions rather than linguistic
theories. There is of course great disagreement as a result of this in CL
literature.

Anyway, please do the exercise I asked you. Then we can have an intelligent
conversation.

James Christian