Think Wink.

Here is another article to follow up on my previous post on Hurvitz’s study of Aramaisms not showing a late date for a particular text. Gary Rendsburger has taken Hurvitz’s method and expanded and adapted it to study the difference between northern Biblical Hebrew, which he calls Israelian Hebrew (IH), and souther Biblical Hebrew (which I guess would be called Judean Hebrew/JH?). I’ll let the reader check out this post and see what they think. But I can say that current studies in linguistics are doing much to dispell (though by itself linguistic studies cannot do this) what the last century of form criticism has taught scholars to believe about the OT (even NT studies is starting to move away from the conclusions and methods of form criticism). If I read this article correctly, many Aramaisms aren’t a sign of a later, post-exillic date, but rather comes from IH spoken in the northern kingdom. One example is that of 2 Kings 4 where Elisha is speaking; Elisha is a prophet most likely from Gilead in the north. Check out the post. I really wish I could get these journals!

בלשנות (balshanut: Resources for the study of the Bible and Linguistics): Rendsburg, Gary, “Hurvitz Redux: On the Continued Scholarly Inattention to a Simple Principle of Hebrew Philology,” Pages 104-128 in Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology Edited by Ian Young. London: T&T Clark, 2003.

Dating OT using BH

Aramaic Presence Doesn’t Mean Late Date?

“In his image” and Aramaisms