Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

Karl,
While I would like to see an early date for the book as well, I'm not sure we 
can establish
any kind of date for it, based on loanwords or otherwise.

On 10 Mar 2011 at 7:23, K Randolph wrote:
>
> Its opening verse is a historical statement that puts the book into
> a
> historical milieu. From other histories and looking at events
> portrayed in
> the book, we find a contextual match.

Actually, the king in Jerusalem, son of David, could just as well have been 
Hezekiah or
Josiah or one of the other "good" kings of Judah before the exile.  Solomon 
would be the
most natural choice, but the writer seems only to be establishing his davidic 
lineage, nothing
more specific.

> While those parallels are parallels in ideas, they are not parallels
> in
> language use. The language of Qohelet is Biblical Hebrew, that of
> Ben Sira
> is Hebrew, ... but strange.

Perhaps so, but the ideas in question need to be accounted for, since at 
least some of them
don't seem to have been a regular part of pre-exilic Hebrew philosophy.  Then 
again, the
only sources we have for pre-exilic Hebrew philosophy are other biblical 
texts whose dates
of composition are equally tenuous.

> OK, for the loan word, did it exist in other languages besides
> Persian? You
> can´t answer that because of lack of evidence. Your assertion that
> it didn´t
> is an argument from silence.

Arguments from silence always cut both ways.  I'm afraid you're arguing from 
silence as
well, and it seems to me that's the biggest reason that this conversation is 
going nowhere.

Discussions like this one are the main reason I gave on the idea of trying to 
date texts in
general.  The older I get, the more satisfied I am just to examine them and 
try to figure out
what they're saying.  As always, YMMV.

Dave Washburn

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