Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

The reason your threads are closed down so quickly is because they are trying to prove a historical argument, not discuss linguistics.

You should be aware that there are strong disagreements among Hebrew scholars concerning history: on the one side are those who take Bible as an accurate historical record, and on the other side are those who follow the Documentary Hypothesis that claims that the Bible was written much later. Even within the Documentary Hypothesis school there are historical disagreements concerning when books of the Bible were written, early vs. later. This is a historical disagreement, deeply embedded in theological differences, and if it were allowed to rage on this list, possibly no linguistic research would occur here. That’s why historical arguments have been declared off limits for this list.

Your arguments so far put you in the Documentary Hypothesis school, though arguing for a very early date for that school.

There’s disagreement even among Egyptologists concerning the dates of the Amarna Letters; David Rohl, for example, dates them to about 1000 BC, others recognize that they portray a ninth to eighth centuries BC scenario. Archaeology seems to back up the claim that the Amarna Letters were written much later than what most modern historians claim.

I, on the other hand, accept that the Bible portrays an accurate history, which puts the Patriarchs centuries before even an old dating of the Amarna Letters.

Unfortunately, for linguistic analysis, the amount of Hebrew documents from ancient times is so limited that we don’t have enough data to make historical proofs as to when the individual books were written. For practical purposes, all we have is the Bible. And the Bible is such a small document that it simply doesn’t cover possibly even half of the language that was spoken. That’s why there are so many words that are used fewer than five times in Bible. To be honest, there are many words whose meanings have been forgotten and honest lexicographers can give only tentative glosses for their meanings. Therefore, the data are too small to give historical analysis.

We know enough of the language that we can get an accurate understanding of almost all of what was written, in spite of the fact that individual words and some verses remain puzzles. But we don’t have enough data to go much beyond that.

Historical arguments have been declared off limits for discussions on this list, and because your arguments are at their heart historical arguments, they are off limits therefore quickly shut down.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 11:21 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

Prof. Yigal Levin:

 

… 

I am glad to oblige.  But I am really hoping to learn from other people on the b-hebrew list as to their ideas.  You and I both know that as soon as I set forth my own explanation of SLM in Jacob’s “ladder”, this thread will be promptly closed by the moderators.  I don’t even get the benefit of receiving refutations of my views [which could be very valuable to me], because my threads are closed so quickly.

… 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois