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November 16, 2006

Problems of Using Linguistic Evidence to Date Texts

Simon at דבר אחר has an interesting post on his Honours Thesis. In fact, my post started as a comment on his post but it kind of grew beyond reasonable comment size. Simon studied the locative h in Chronicles and elsewhere in an effort to determine the extent to which the presence or absence is indicative of the time period in which some text in Biblical Hebrew was written or last edited. His discussion is interesting if inconclusive. It is also worth reading, if you are interested in the problems of using grammatical features to date Hebrew texts. Don't panic, despite the fact that his blog has a Hebrew name, his posts are in English. And if you don't know what a locative h is, Simon explains it. Some Hebrew will be required to understand his post fully, but it is worth the effort. Simon is trying to test the thesis that the locative h was dropped over time in Biblical Hebrew.

Because our understanding of the chronology of Biblical Hebrew is a bit of a mess, I always like to start with epigraphic Hebrew when possible. At least in theory, we know the place of discovery and the relative date of these texts. Once in a while, we even know the absolute date. I don't know if Simon looked for any cases of the locative h or lack of same in epigraphic Hebrew.

I could find only three (or four depending on how you count) examples.

The first example is from Lachish 3:16, mşrymh, "toward Egypt." The Lachish letters are from the early 6th century BCE. The same construction occurs nearly 30 times in the Hebrew Bible most predominantly in Genesis but also in Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and II Chronicles.

The second example is from Lachish 4:7, h‛yrh, "to the city." Gogel discusses it on page 173 and note 205 on page 174. The same expression occurs in Genesis 44:13, Joshua 6:20, Joshua 20:4, 2 Samuel 17:17, I Kings 14:12, I Kings 20:2, II Kings 20:20 and I Chronicles 19:15.

The third example is byth, "to the house of" in Arad17:2. This letter is from Arad Stratum VI. In other words, it is from about the same time as the two Lachish examples. One can see this same usage in Genesis 28:2, 43:17, 43:24, 44:14, 47:14 and Exodus 8:20.

Finally, there is the case of the adverb šm (there) and the locative adverb šmh. šmh is seen in Arad 24:20 ("come there"), Lachish 4:8 ("to send there") and Lachish 8:7 ("??? there"). All three of these letters come from the same period as the examples given above. The adverb with h is well known in Biblical Hebrew and is usually associated with verbs of motion as it is in the three examples from Epigraphic Hebrew.

From these examples, we can be certain that the locative h was still in use, at least with some words, in the early 6th century BCE. While these examples come from the late pre-exilic period, there is not much else that can be learned from them. They are certainly not "late" in any meaningful sense, certainly not as late as Chronicles. But they do provide a chronological benchmark for the use of this particle, i.e. it was in use in the early 6th century BCE.

While looking at epigraphic Hebrew is important, it is unlikely that there will ever be sufficient material to do meaningful statistical studies of the type Simon attempted with Biblical Hebrew. The best we can hope for is a set of examples that can provide relatively certain benchmarks for the use of language in contexts where we have somewhat better control of the chronology than we do with any of the texts from the Hebrew Bible.

For those who have made it this far and are still wondering if Epigraphic Hebrew is a different language than Biblical Hebrew, the first order approximate answer is "No, they are the same language." It may be possible to see minor dialectical variations in both within and between Biblical Hebrew and Epigraphic Hebrew and this is one of the reasons that Epigraphic Hebrew is important.

Reference:

Gogel, Sandra Landis, A Grammar of Epigraphic Hebrew, Society of Biblical Literature Resources for Biblical Study, 23, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1998

Posted by Duane Smith at November 16, 2006 8:57 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |

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Comments

Duane, there is at least one session, maybe two, on this general topic at SBL this year. I have one on my list to attend. I'll see if I can't report on it sometime this weekend.

Posted by: Christopher Heard at November 17, 2006 6:51 PM

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