On 11/8/05, Peter Kirk wrote:
On 08/11/2005 16:05, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
There are no historical claims in the Bible that it was written
centuries before Ugarit. ...
If you look in the original message, "it" refers to "Biblical Hebrew",
not to the Bible. This isn't clear from the above quote, and evidently
even most of the Bible was not written down "centuries before
Ugarit." I think everyone will agree to that. ...
... The earliest reference in
my history books that I found to some datable historical text in
Ugaritic is a text by Niqmaddu/Niqmahaddu, that relates him as a
contemporary of Suppiluliuma I (1370-1330), king of Mitanni, in a
treaty that he made with him. ...
... Ugaritic as a language is then spoken
at best contemporary with and very likely earlier than the possible
15th century Exodus date. ...
... The 15th century Exodus date is by
no means the best -- there are problems connecting the Exodus to
the Hyksos expulsion since the Hyksos are expelled in the 16th
century BCE, and Raamses is unlikely to have been a city name
prior to Ramesses I. ...
... Now the question that is left is whether the
original language was Biblical Hebrew or not. It could have been
written in Canaanite. In fact, I don't think the Hebrew Bible never
mentions Hebrew as a "language." It refers to the language as
"Judaean" or "language of Canaan." So that, it's quite possible
that in the eyes of the Israelites, the Amarna Canaanite glosses
or even Ugaritic would be identified as something akin to "Old
Hebrew."
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