Steps and Missteps in the Linguistic Dating of Biblical Hebrew

Abstract

The hotly contested debate over the dating of biblical literature has now spread to the field of linguistics, and this collection of essays arises out of the debate. In editing this volume, Ian Young tried to craft a book that will gener ate light and not merely heat. The volume raises questions about assumptions and methodology that can serve to refine our methodologies and arguments. The book is separated into two parts with introductory and concluding re flections by the editor. The first part includes essays that support the tradi tional separation between Standard (i.e., pre-exilic) and Late (i.e., post-exilic) Biblical Hebrew. An essay by Mats Eskhult highlights the importance of loanwords for dating texts, especially noting the pattern of loanwords fits into the political history of Ancient Israel, as described in the biblical texts (p. 22). Avi Hurvitz revisits the problem of Aramaisms, which are often em ployed in the late dating of biblical texts. He points out that Aramaisms result from literary genre, literary technique, and regional-dialectal variation as well as diachronic developments; and, Hurvitz offers methodological nuance to the variety of dialectal and rhetorical purposes that Aramaic serves in biblical lit erature. Gary Rendsburg takes Hurvitz's methodological observations and applies them to particular biblical texts. Frank Polak's essay is among the more innovative, incorporating sociolin guistics into the methodological discussion. Using sociolinguistic observations about the differences between oral and written language (e.g., frequency of subordination, use of construct phrases, noun-verb ratios), Polak can quantita tively distinguish between literature that is oral-rhythmic (which can be asso ciated with the storyteller) and complex-nominal (which can be associated with the chancellery). These differences in style may have diachronic implica tions, although we should not think of them in strictly diachronic terms. Richard Wright's essay argues for lingering northern Israelite linguistic in fluence in late Biblical Hebrew. He takes Cyrus Gordon's classic article on