Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

David Steinberg:
 
You wrote:  “The early dating of the so called "archaic poetry" is 
essentially based on the work of Albright, Cross and Freedman. It always went 
well 
beyond 


the evidence but has now been shown to be unfounded. A few elderly 


scholars whose reputations are bound up in early datings - Cross and Avi 


Hurvitz - still maintain the early dates but the evidence is against 


them. See - 1. The material I discuss and reference in the box /Can 
Biblical Texts 


be Linguistically Dated?”
 
At your website, you answer that last question “No”.
 
1.  I agree that dating Biblical texts on the basis of linguistics is 
problematic.  That’s because Biblical spelling of common words was 
continuously 
updated over the centuries through post-exilic times.  Your point is that 
even the Song of Deborah has “modern” orthography:  “If you look at the text 
of any of the so called archaic poems,and you revert it to its probable form 
c. 1200-1400 BCE (add case, mood, and other short vowel endings, revert 
contractions of final /y/ and /w/ consequent on the disappearance of final 
short 
vowels etc.) you will find 


that the orthography is not really archaic and, in many cases, such as 


the use of /matres/ - is often typologically late.”
 
But that does not mean that the Song of Deborah is late.  No, it just means 
that Biblical texts cannot be linguistically dated, because their spelling 
of common words was often updated.
 
2.  Much more informative as to dating is to look at the proper names in a 
Biblical text.  For example, take a gaze at the magnificent proper name 
$a-am-g/xa-ri ben Anat.  $a-am-g/xa-ri is attested only in the Late Bronze 
Age, 
and ben Anat is attested only in the Late Bronze Age and early Iron Age.  
That super-exciting name suggests that the Song of Deborah was composed 
shortly after the close of the Late Bronze Age, when Israel was in the 
process of 
absorbing the small remaining Hurrian charioteer remnant in Canaan.
 
3.  Now cast your eye on the following vintage Late Bronze Age proper names 
in the Patriarchal narratives at Genesis 15: 19-21:  Qa-a-ni-ya, 
Qa-ni-zi-ya, Xuti-ya, Piri-izzi-ya, Gera-ge-$e-ya, and A-bu-u-se-ya.  Subject 
to mere 
orthographic variances, those six names are attested only in the Late Bronze 
Age.
 
Why do university scholars think that Ezra’s contemporaries in post-exilic 
Jerusalem could come up with Late Bronze Age proper names like that?  Why 
believe in miracles?  When a text like the Patriarchal narratives has dozens 
of proper names that are attested outside of the Bible solely in the Late 
Bronze Age, why not come to the obvious conclusion that the Patriarchal 
narratives were composed in, or very shortly after, the Late Bronze Age?  
Whereas 
the Song of Deborah deals with a small remaining Hurrian remnant being 
absorbed by Israel in the mid-12th century BCE, Genesis 15: 19-21 is 
chronicling 
the historical fact that 200 years [400 spring and fall New Years, per 
Genesis 15: 13] before that, the first Hebrews had to contend with Hurrian 
princelings as the dominant ruling class in Canaan, with Hurrian charioteer 
princelings being officially-appointed mayors of a majority of Canaan’s 
cities in 
the mid-14th century BCE, as attested by the Amarna Letters.
 
The proper names in these two texts -- the Patriarchal narratives and the 
Song of Deborah -- go a long way to dating these two texts, both of which are 
really, really old.  Yes, the Patriarchal narratives feature non-archaic 
spelling of common words, in particular having no case endings.  So what?  
Those vintage Late Bronze Age proper names in the last 40 chapters of Genesis 
by the dozens could not be faked by Ezra’s contemporaries in post-exilic 
Jerusalem.  Why believe in miracles?
 
We begin to see why the academic community has  adopted the following 
highly questionable approach to dating Biblical texts on  the basis of their 
proper names, per Dr. Reinhard G.  Lehmann:  “Names are long-living,  even if 
they contain long-vanished Gods as theophoric.  Names are worth almost few if 
anything  when pondering the age of a text. With names, you can only prove 
that a text is  young….” 
There’s no way that the magnificent  proper name $a-am-g/xa-ri ben Anat in  
the Song of Deborah is “late”.  Not. 
Jim  Stinehart 
Evanston, Illinois
>From JimStinehart AT aol.com  Thu Nov 17 11:05:56 2011
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Chavoux:
 
In response to my statement that “I have not found any Semitic etymology 
for ‘Shamgar’,” you wrote:
 
"‘He live(d/s) there’ ??”
 
1.  As far as I know, no other Biblical name has a west Semitic format of 
that type.  No scholar has suggested such an interpretation of that name.
 
2.  The Hurrian name $a-am-g/xa-ri is historically attested, and only in 
the Late Bronze Age.  Ditto re XBR/Xavur, and Y(L/A-al-la, and 
QYNY/Qa-a-ni-ya 
in the Song of Deborah.  Shamgar’s title, ben Anat, is attested only in the 
Late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age.  The point of the Song of Deborah 
is that the Hebrews, shortly after the end of the Late Bronze Age, absorbed 
the small remaining Hurrian military remnant, which was the final step in the 
Hebrews becoming the dominant people of non-coastal Canaan, as predicted at 
Genesis 15: 18-21.  In this connection, note that in Judges we are 
introduced to Xavur [‘Heber’] by the statement at Judges 4: 11 that “Heber 
the 
Kenite…had severed himself from the Kenites”.  [In Hurrian, (i) Xavur means “
Heaven”, (ii) A-al-la means “The Lady”, and (iii) Qa-a-ni-ya is based on an 
Akkadian verb with Hurrian characteristics and means “Teshup Is Firm”.]
 
Thus both the proper names in the Song of Deborah, and its substantive 
content, suggest that it was composed shortly after the close of the Late 
Bronze 
Age, about 400 spring and fall New Years (per Genesis 15: 13) after the 
Patriarchal Age, which per Genesis 15: 18-21 had featured a majority of the 
officially-appointed mayors in Canaan being Hurrian charioteers.  The Late 
Bronze Age proper names XBR/Xavur and QYNY/Qa-a-ni-ya are shared by the Song 
of 
Deborah and the Patriarchal narratives, and in addition to that, the 
Patriarchal narratives have dozens of additional proper names that are 
attested 
outside of the Bible solely in the Late Bronze Age.
 
The scholarly view that the Patriarchal narratives were ginned up by 
multiple 1st millennium BCE authors is contradicted by the dozens of Late 
Bronze 
Age proper names in the text.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois