The history of the first part of the second millennium B.C.E. is obscure indeed. We know that Akkadian was spoken, because cuneiform documents have been found. But we do not have a list of all the other languages that were spoken at that time. We do not have any evidence whatsoever, on the basis of which we can demonstrate that the account in Genesis 31 regarding Jacob speaking Hebrew and Laban Aramaic is history or fiction. So our standpoint must be based on faith.
I do not believe in the "argument from faith" defense of an argumentum ex silentio. Regardless of whether Jacob and Laban were actual characters or based on historical characters, I can look at the historical and chronological context of that narrative. The only historical "handle" that I can grasp is in Egypt for the Joseph Narrative in which Jacob plays a role. The internal information in that Narrative can only place the story at the end of the Egyptian 2nd Intermediate Period and the reign of Apepi, the last Hyksos Pharaoh, the mid 16th century BCE.
Placing Hebrew in the 17th to 16th century BCE is like placing Tyrannosaurus rex (a Cretaceous species) in the Triassic. In this case our "fossils" lie in the epigraphy for which we have examples throughout the Biblical and post-Biblical period with the oldest "fossil" being the Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription which clearly shows Hebrew in the mid 11th to late 10th centuries was still formative.
me epigraphy that is clearly Hebrew.
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