## Currents in the Historical Linguistics and Linguistic Dating of the Hebrew Bible: Report on the State of Research as Reflected in Recent Major Publications

Robert Rezetko, Radboud University Nijmegen & University of Sydney r.rezetko@ftr.ru.nl

Ian Young, University of Sydney ian.young@sydney.edu.au

[T]o kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing a new truth or fact. 1

Scholarly advance in the humanities often depends less upon sensational new discoveries than upon the questioning and re-evaluation of what had become unquestioned assumptions... 2

Abstract : In this essay we summarize the status quaestionis of diachronic linguistic study of Biblical  Hebrew  as  reflected  principally  in  some  major  publications  of  the  recent  several years. We reflect critically on research objectives, perspectives on sources, documentation of variation and change, and periodization issues. We also include a detailed bibliography of relevant works published since our Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew (November 2014).

Keywords : historical linguistics, linguistic dating, language variation and change, language periodization

## 0. Outline

1. Introduction
2. Research Objectives

1  C. Darwin, Letter 752 to A. Stephen Wilson, Down, March 5th, 1879, in More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters (ed. F. Darwin and A. C. Seward; 2 vols.; London: John Murray, 1903), 2:229.

2  R. Coggins, A. Phillips, and M. Knibb, 'Preface,' in Israelʼs Prophetic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter R. Ackroyd (ed. R. Coggins, A. Phillips, and M. Knibb; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), vii-ix (vii); quoted by J. C. Gertz, B. M. Levinson, D. Rom-Shiloni, and K. Schmid, 'Convergence and Divergence in Pentateuchal Theory: The Genesis and Goals of This Volume,' in The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (ed. J. C. Gertz, B. M. Levinson, D. Rom-Shiloni, and K. Schmid; FAT, 111; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 1-7 (1).

3. Perspectives on Sources
2. 3.1. Linguistic Analysis as a Support or Corrective to Textual Criticism
3. 3.2. Notion of the 'Original' Text or Composition
4. 3.3. Linguistic Analysis as a Support or Corrective to Literary Criticism
5. 3.3.1. Avoidance Versus Inclusion of Literary Criticism
6. 3.3.2. Notion of Pre-Exilic Redaction Mainly or Only Versus Post-Exilic Writing in CBH
7. 3.4. Defense of the MT
4. Documentation of Variation and Change
9. 4.1. Complete Versus Incomplete Documentation
10. 4.2. Sporadic Versus Systematic Variation
11. 4.3. Individual Versus Group Variation
12. 4.4. Common Versus Uncommon Language
13. 4.5. Meaningful Versus Non-Meaningful Language
14. 4.6. Macro-Diachrony Versus Micro-Diachrony
15. 4.7. Illustrative Versus Diagnostic Use of S-Curves
16. 4.8. Cross-Linguistic Data, Language Typology, and Diachronic Typology
17. 4.9. Quantitative Methods and Statistics
18. 4.10. Accumulation of 'Late' Language
5. Periodization Issues
20. 5.1. MH as a Continuation of BH or QH (or CBH > LBH > QH > MH)?
21. 5.2. Further Thoughts on Language Periodization
6. Conclusions
7. Concise Statement of Our Current Views
8. Bibliography for 2015-2018

## 1. Introduction

Research on the linguistic history of ancient and Biblical Hebrew (BH) is a vibrant field that is currently undergoing dramatic changes thanks to advances in our appreciation of language variation and change, consideration of the history of the biblical writings in their literary and textual dimensions, and the application of far more in-depth, data-driven, and methodologically sound methods of collecting and analyzing linguistic phenomena. 3

In this essay we summarize the status quaestionis as reflected principally in some major publications of the recent several years: 4

- 'Historical  Linguistics:  SBL/NAPH  2015  Session  Articles:  Editing  the  Hebrew  Bible  and Historical Linguistics,' JSem 25.2 (2016): 833-1103. 5
- 'Phases of Biblical Hebrew' and 'Contemporary Hebrew Attestations,' parts 1 and 2 of volume 1 of A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions, Volume 2: Selected Texts (ed. W. R. Garr and S. E. Fassberg; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 1-97. 6
- 'The Role of Historical Linguistics in the Dating of Biblical Texts,' part 3 of The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (ed. J.  C.  Gertz,  B.  M.  Levinson,  D.  Rom-Shiloni,  and  K.  Schmid;  FAT,  111;  Tübingen:  Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 295-475. 7

3   This contrasts with a more conventional piecemeal and intuitive approach, on which see also M. Ehrensvärd, R. Rezetko, and I. Young, 'Counting and Weighing: On the Role of Intuition in Philology and Linguistics, with Some Thoughts on Linguistic Comments by R. E. Friedman in The Exodus ,' B&I November 2017 (http://bibleinterp.com/articles/2017/12/ehr418003.shtml).

4  See our separate review of the recent book by Hendel and Joosten: 'Can the Ages of Biblical Literature be Discerned Without Literary Analysis? Review-Essay of Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten, How Old is the Hebrew Bible? A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study (AYBRL; New Haven/London: Yale University  Press,  2018;  xvi  +  221),' B&I January  2019  (https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/can-agesbiblical-literature-be-discerned-without-literary-analysis).  Despite  their  stated  aims  (ibid.,  x),  they  do  not 'gather the fruits of recent research on Biblical Hebrew' or engage in 'scholarly dialogue' with recent research in our field.

5  J. A. Naudé and C. L. Miller-Naudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew: The Current State of the Debate,' 833-864; J. S. Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: An IndoEuropeanist's View,' 865-880; A. D. Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial on Methods,' 881926; J. T. Jacobs, 'The Balance of Probability: Statistics and the Diachronic Study of Ancient Hebrew,' 927-960; M. Naaijer and D. Roorda, 'Syntactic Variation in Masoretic Hebrew, The Object Clause Reconsidered,' 961-971; I. Young, 'Ancient Hebrew Without Authors,' 972-1003; A. D. Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts: Observations from the Perspective of Reworked Pentateuchal Material,' 1004-1063; N. Samet, 'The Validity of the Masoretic Text as a Basis for  Diachronic  Linguistic  Analysis  of  Biblical  Texts:  Evidence  from  Masoretic  Vocalisation,'  10641079; R. Dean, 'Aramaisms: Not What They Used to Be,' 1080-1103.

6   J.  Lam and D. Pardee, 'Standard/Classical Biblical Hebrew,' 1-18; A. Gianto, 'Archaic Biblical Hebrew,' 19-29; A. D. Hornkohl, 'Transitional Biblical Hebrew,' 31-42; M. Morgenstern, 'Late Biblical Hebrew,'  43-54;  S.  Aḥituv,  W.  R.  Garr,  and  S.  E.  Fassberg,  'Epigraphic  Hebrew,'  55-68;  W.  van Peursen, 'Ben Sira,' 69-82; J. Joosten, 'The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls,' 83-97.

7  S. Gesundheit, 'The Strengths and Weaknesses of Linguistic Dating,' 295-302; E. Blum, 'The Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts: An Approach with Methodological Limitations,' 303-325; J. Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch,' 327-344; W. M. Schniedewind, 'Linguistic Dating,

- 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics: Perspectives on Data and Method,' 'Linguistics and Philology,' and 'Historical Linguistics and Language Change,' introduction and parts 1 and 2 of Advances in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics: Data, Methods, and Analyses (ed. A. Moshavi and T. Notarius; LSAWS, 12; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 1-149. 8
- 'Symposium: Does Archaic Biblical Hebrew Exist?,' HS 58 (2017): 47-118. 9

Six of the authors of the thirty-four essays under review contributed to two or three of the volumes. 10

Following this introduction, we reflect critically on how the authors of these publications handle and  progress-or  fail  to-the  central  matters  of  research  objectives,  perspectives  on  sources, documentation of variation and change, and periodization issues. On the whole, we see a significant progression in the application of historical linguistic theory and method as we move from the volumes edited by Garr and Fassberg and Gertz et al. which by and large reflect a conventional and somewhat dated stage of scholarship on language chronology, to the volume edited by Moshavi and Notarius, to the two journal issues which are the most up-to-date in their historical linguistic  ideas  and  approaches.  We  also  include  a  substantial  bibliography  of  relevant  works published  (or  forthcoming)  since  our Historical  Linguistics  and  Biblical  Hebrew (November 2014). 11

Writing Systems, and the Pentateuchal Sources,' 345-356; T. Römer, 'How to Date Pentateuchal Texts: Some Case Studies,' 357-370; N. Mizrahi, 'The Numeral 11 and the Linguistic Dating of P,' 371-389; J. Wöhrle, 'There's no Master Key! The Literary Character of the Priestly Stratum and the Formation of the Pentateuch,' 391-403; F. H. Polak, 'Oral Platform and Language Usage in the Abraham Narrative,' 405441; idem, 'Story Telling and Redaction: Varieties of Language Usage in the Exodus Narrative,' 443475.

8  A. Moshavi and T. Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics: Perspectives on Data and Method,' 1-24; N. Mizrahi, 'Linguistic Change through the Prism of Textual Transmission: The Case of Exod 12:9,' 27-52; A. D. Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost: Linguistic Periodization in the Face of Textual and Literary Pluriformity,' 53-80; Y. Bloch, 'Aramaic Influence and Inner Diachronic Development in Hebrew Inscriptions of the Iron Age,' 83-112; W. M. Schniedewind, 'The Linguistics of Writing Systems and the Gap in the Hebrew Scribal Tradition,' 113-123; T. Notarius, 'The Second-Person Non-Negated Jussive in Biblical Hebrew and Ancient Northwest Semitic,' 125-149.

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9   P.  Barmash,  'Symposium:  Does  Archaic  Biblical  Hebrew  Exist?  A  Note  from  the  Editor,'  47;  P. Korchin, 'Glimpsing Archaic Biblical Hebrew through Thetical Grammar,' 49-79; T. Notarius, 'Lexical Isoglosses of Archaic Hebrew: יל ִ ים פ ְּ ל (Deut 32:31) and כ ֵּ ן (Judg 5:15) as Case Studies,' 81-97; I. Young, 'Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew,' 99-118.

10   Joosten  (Garr/Fassberg,  Gertz/others),  Mizrahi  (Gertz/others,  Moshavi/Notarius),  Notarius  ( HS ,  Moshavi/Notarius),  Schniedewind  (Gertz/others,  Moshavi/Notarius),  Young  ( HS , JSem ),  and  Hornkohl (Garr/Fassberg, Moshavi/Notarius, JSem ).

11  R. Rezetko and I. Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew (ANEM, 9; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014) (https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/9781628370461\_OA.pdf).

Fassberg's organization of the history of research into three periods is neat and helpful, even if we believe that it requires some refinement of the third period. 12 'The first period begins with the publication of Gesenius' Geschichte in  1815 13 and  continues until 1896, the  year that the first Hebrew  fragments  of  Ben-Sira  (Ecclesiasticus  or  Sirach)  were  published.' 14 Driver's  distinguished Introduction was also published in this period. 15 'The second period of research...may be said to commence with the recognition that the language of the Hebrew Ben-Sira manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza as well as of the Damascus Document (published in 1910) reflect a Hebrew that is basically Classical Biblical Hebrew with Mishnaic Hebrew-like additions.' 16  A notable  publication  during  this  period  was  Kropat's Syntax . 17 'The  discovery  of  the  Dead  Sea Scrolls in 1947 and the publication of the first Scrolls a year later inaugurated the third period of research...' 18 Some of the best known and most respected treatments published during this period include those of Bendavid, Kutscher, Hurvitz, Polzin, 19 and various students of Hurvitz and Polzin. 20

12  S. E. Fassberg, 'What is Late Biblical Hebrew?,' ZAW 128 (2016): 1-15 (2-7). Other summaries of the history of research are found in I. Young, R. Rezetko, and M. Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts, Volume 1: An Introduction to Approaches and Problems, Volume 2: A Survey of Scholarship, a New  Synthesis  and  a  Comprehensive  Bibliography (BibleWorld;  London:  Equinox,  2008),  1:2,  8-9; Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 1-3; D.-H. Kim, Early Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Linguistic Variability: A Sociolinguistic Evaluation of the Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (VTSup, 156; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 11-44; A. D. Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah: The Case for a Sixth-Century Date of Composition (SSLL, 74; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 2-6.

13   W.  Gesenius, Geschichte der hebräischen Sprache und Schrift: Eine philologisch-historische Einleitung in die Sprachlehren und Wörterbücher der hebräischen Sprache (Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, 1815).

14  Fassberg, 'What is Late Biblical Hebrew?,' 3-4.

15 S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1891; first publication date).

16  Fassberg, 'What is Late Biblical Hebrew?,' 4-5.

17  A. Kropat, Die Syntax des Autors der Chronik verglichen mit der seiner Quellen (BZAW, 16; Giessen: A. Töpelmann, 1909).

18  Fassberg, 'What is Late Biblical Hebrew?,' 6-7.

However, in contrast to Fassberg, who considers that the third period of research covers from 1948 to the present, we believe that a fourth period has emerged since the 2000s, although it was anticipated by several publications already in the early 1990s. 21 Five major publications embody the  ongoing  debate  and  change  in  scholarship  from  the  early  2000s  until  several  years  ago: Young's edited volume Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology , 22 our co-authored Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 23 Miller-Naudé and Zevit's edited volume Diachrony in Biblical  Hebrew , 24 Kim's Early  Biblical  Hebrew,  Late  Biblical  Hebrew,  and  Linguistic  Variability , 25 and our co-authored Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew . 26 These works cannot be regarded as aberrations or anomalies in a period of research from 1948 to the present but rather as embodiments of a new stage of research that began about fifteen years ago and continues to expand and mature. As will become clear, this new stage of research is evident far beyond our own publications; it is hardly a peculiarity of just a very small group of scholars consisting only of Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, or of 'minimalists'-which we are not 27 -as some scholars claim (erroneously). 28

19  A. Bendavid, Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew (2 vols.; Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1967-1971; Hebrew); E. Y. Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa a ) (Jerusalem: Magnes/Hebrew University, 1959 [Hebrew]; STDJ, 6; Leiden: Brill, 1974); idem, A History of the Hebrew Language (ed.  R.  Kutscher;  Jerusalem:  Magnes,  1982);  A.  Hurvitz, The  Transition  Period  in  Biblical Hebrew: A Study in Post-Exilic Hebrew and Its Implications for the Dating of Psalms (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1972; Hebrew); idem, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel: A New Approach to an Old Problem (CahRB, 20; Paris: J. Gabalda, 1982); idem, in collaboration with L. Gottlieb, A. Hornkohl, and E. Mastéy, A Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew: Linguistic Innovations in the Writings of the Second Temple Period (VTSup, 160; Leiden: Brill, 2014); R. Polzin, Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward an Historical Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose (HSM, 12; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976).

20 Also in this  period fits  I.  Young, Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew (FAT, 5; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1993), published with 'the encouragement and scholarly insight' of Hurvitz (p. iii).

21  E. A. Knauf, 'War 'Biblisch-Hebräisch' eine Sprache?,' ZAH 3 (1990): 11-23; P. R. Davies, In Search of  'Ancient  Israel' (JSOTSup,  148;  Sheffield:  Sheffield  Academic  Press,  1992),  97-101;  F.  H.  Cryer, 'The Problem of Dating Biblical Hebrew and the Hebrew of Daniel,' in In the Last Days: On Jewish and Christian  Apocalyptic  and  Its  Period (ed.  K.  Jeppesen,  K.  Nielsen,  and  B.  Rosendal;  Aarhus:  Aarhus University  Press,  1994),  185-198.  Note  the  similar  assessment  by  the  Naudés:  'Rezetko  and  Young (2014) forms part of the linguistic chronology debate which already started in the 1990s' (Naudé and Miller-Naudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew,' 834).

22 I. Young (ed.), Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (JSOTSup, 369; London: T&T Clark, 2003). See also the essays in HS 46 (2005): 321-376; 47 (2006): 83-210.

23  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts . See also the contributions in E. Ben Zvi, D. V. Edelman, and F. H. Polak (eds.), A Palimpsest: Rhetoric, Ideology, Stylistics and Language Relating to Persian Israel (PHSC, 5; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2009), 161-290.

24 C.  Miller-Naudé  and  Z.  Zevit  (eds.), Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew (LSAWS, 8; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012). Note especially Holmstedt's observation in this volume about 'renewed attention to diachrony' and 'the introspection and methodological reevaluation that...have [been] provoked' in publications during these years (Holmstedt, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 97-124 [120]).

25  Kim, Early Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Linguistic Variability.

26  Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew.

The dramatic changes that our field is currently undergoing are nicely articulated by Naudé and Miller-Naudé in their recent discussion of the state of the debate:

Contra the view of Kaufman (2014) 29  (see also Gzella 2014 30 )  on  Miller-Naudé and Zevit (2012) 31 that the key point of the debate remains essentially without resolution and that it covers the same ground and repeats the same arguments that were presented elsewhere, the aim of this article is to demonstrate that there is advancement in our understanding of the diachrony of Biblical Hebrew and that the debate has indeed moved forward - not only by the response of Rezetko and Young (2014), but also by the 2015 session of the Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew Section. Specifically, these advancements concern the nature of language change in terms of periodisation, appropriate methodology in terms of qualitative and quantitative methods, the interpretation of data, and the role of scribal practice and text transmission. There is progress in the debate in that misunderstandings have been clarified and claims have become more nuanced. 32

27  Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 594-596; I. Young, R. Rezetko, and M. Ehrensvärd, 'Do We Really Think That Ancient Hebrew Had No Chronology?'

(https://www.academia.edu/24578410/2016b\_Young\_Rezetko\_Ehrensvärd\_Do\_We\_Really\_Think\_That\_Anci ent\_Hebrew\_Had\_No\_Chronology); R. Rezetko, 'Response to Steven E. Fassberg, 'What is Late Biblical Hebrew?,' ZAW 128 (2016): 1-15'

(https://www.academia.edu/25884031/2016h\_Rezetko\_Response\_to\_Fassberg\_What\_is\_Late\_Biblical\_Hebre w); and so on.

28   Fassberg, 'What is Late Biblical Hebrew?,' 9-10; Hurvitz et al., A Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew ,  12-13,  17;  Gesundheit,  'The  Strengths  and  Weaknesses  of  Linguistic Dating,'  296-297,  300 (even Jacobus Naudé is labeled a minimalist!); Morgenstern, 'Late Biblical Hebrew,' 45. Z. Zevit rightly calls out some such scholars on their 'academically inappropriate response' (Z. Zevit, 'Not-So-Random Thoughts on Linguistic Dating and Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew,' in Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew [ed. C. Miller-Naudé and Z. Zevit; LSAWS, 8; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012], 455-489 [457]). See also M. Ehrensvärd, R. Rezetko, and I. Young, 'An Unsettling Divide in Linguistic Dating and Historical Linguistics,' B&I February 2016 (http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/2016/02/ehr408024.shtml).

29   S.  A.  Kaufman, 'Review of Miller-Naudé and Zevit, Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew ,' RBL 7  (2014) (https://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/8820\_9712.pdf).

30   H. Gzella, 'Review of Miller-Naudé and Zevit, Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew ,' BO 71 (2014): 810816.

31  Miller-Naudé and Zevit, Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew.

32   Naudé and Miller-Naudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew,' 834. Note also the assessment of the overall situation by Hornkohl, even if he continues as something of a stalwart of  a  somewhat  conventional  approach:  'While  the  aforementioned  emphases  [on  pp.  1008-1009]  can hardly  be  considered  innovative  from  the  perspective  of  some  of  the  more  circumspect  discussions  of

At the conclusion of their introductory essay to the journal issue, the Naudés again reiterate that the diachrony debate has made advances on several fronts, including:

- The kind of language change possible in BH and how to typify the diachronic development of BH;
- Statistical methods for the study of the diachrony of BH;
- The  role  of  editorial  theory  (the  so-called  New  Philology)  in  the  study  of  BH  and  of  BH texts. 33

Relating to the Naudés' 'appropriate methodology in terms of qualitative...methods' and 'how to  typify...diachronic  development,'  specific  reference  should  be  made  to  ongoing  recourse  to cross-linguistic data, language typology, and diachronic typology, evident in some contributions to the Moshavi and Notarius, JSem , and HS volumes. As remarked above, this and the other advances mentioned are far less evident in the volumes edited by Garr and Fassberg and Gertz et al.

At the conclusion of the introductory essay to their edited volume, Moshavi and Notarius go over some main points as follows:

In summary, the overview presented here, in combination with the contributions in this volume, demonstrates in our view that despite the  numerous  differences  between current  approaches to BHL [Biblical Hebrew Linguistics], there is a basic commonality of purpose and method among scholars in the field. It is widely agreed that a mutually beneficial relationship exists between Hebrew language study, general linguistics, philology and biblical studies. Less consensus exists regarding attitudes toward the nature of the biblical data, including approaches to textual criticism, the development of literacy, and BH periodization. With regard to linguistic methodology, there is broad agreement on the utility of the corpus-based approach and typological comparison, and an increasing tendency towards a nondogmatic use of concepts drawn from a variety of theoretical frameworks. 34

This is a helpful statement of where things stand. 35 Yet, while we agree there is less consensus on several issues (see section 3 and section 5), we also believe there is not yet 'a basic commonality of purpose and method' nor 'a mutually beneficial relationship between Hebrew language study...and biblical studies' if the latter is intended to encompass literary (including source and redaction)  criticism  (see  section  2  and  section  4). 36 In  the  remainder  of  this  essay  we  address

ancient Hebrew diachrony, the field has arguably profited from the critique, which has led to both more cautious and refined argumentation as well as broader exposure' (Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1009).

33  Naudé and Miller-Naudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew,' 860-861.

34  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 16.

35  In contrast, the recent contribution by Rooker is an unhelpful statement of the status quaestionis that is at least five years out of date (M. F. Rooker, 'Recent Trends in the Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Hebrew,' in The Unfolding of Your Words Gives Light: Studies on Biblical Hebrew in Honor of George L. Klein [ed. E. C. Jones; University Park: PA: Eisenbrauns, 2018], 38-52.)

36  In essence, then, the assessments of the overall situation by Gesundheit and the Naudés are correct: 'To conclude, we have seen that the field of historical dating is exceptionally thorny and utterly lacking in

these differences, and issues that have yet to be ironed out and work that remains to be done, together with the advances that have been made in recent years. We also comment on some specific responses to our own work.

## 2. Research Objectives 37

It is well known that we have argued time after time against the possibility of assigning dates of origin to the writings of the Hebrew Bible on the basis of their linguistic profiles. 38 One facet of our argument has been that linguistic dating is a very eccentric discipline that is largely idiosyncratic to Hebraists and biblicists-it is highly unusual in historical linguistics-and consequently it would behoove our field to adopt the descriptive perspective of conventional historical linguistic theory and method. 39 Fortunately, this change is happening, but unfortunately, there is still a significant chasm of purpose among scholars in the field due to the fact that the work by some continues  to  be  inextricably  entangled  with  linguistic  dating.  This  is  especially  evident  in  the volume edited by Gertz et al. It is explicit in the title of part 3, 'The Role of Historical Linguistics  in  the  Dating  of  Biblical  Texts,'  and  in  the  titles  (and  contents)  of  many  of  the  contributions. 40 Furthermore, while the title of the section gives the impression that linguistic dating is

consensus . There are numerous methodological pitfalls, and there are problems surrounding various conclusions as well. We can only hope that increasing dialogue between scholars worldwide, as exemplified in the research group whose first fruits we are now seeing in this volume, will pave the way toward some clarity in this most important field of research' (Gesundheit, 'The Strengths and Weaknesses of Linguistic  Dating,'  302;  emphasis  added);  'Important  debates  and  developments  further  reflect  the  vitality  of Biblical Hebrew linguistics in the twenty-first century. One important debate involves the challenge posed to traditional models for identifying and describing the diachronic character and phases of biblical and post-biblical Hebrew. New hypotheses and new models for identifying and understanding language variation and change have been proffered and no consensus has been reached thus far' (J. Naudé and C. Miller-Naudé, 'The Evolution of Biblical Hebrew Linguistics in South Africa: The Last 60 Years,' OTE 31 [2018]: 12-41 [22]; emphasis added). Similarly, Blum emphasizes the need for cooperation due to the lack of consensus: 'Beyond the ongoing dispute about methodological questions and textual details, both disciplines - historical exegesis and Hebrew linguistics - need to work in constant and tight cooperation. Such cooperation would be of immense benefit for both, especially in terms  of  method'  (Blum,  'The Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts,' 325).

37  Background reading: Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 14-21; cf. 3-6, 594-598.

38  However, to repeat, we have never advocated a non-diachronic approach to the Hebrew Bible, including its language. See the references in n. 27 and n. 37.

39 See the references in n. 37.

40   Gesundheit, 'The Strengths and Weaknesses of Linguistic Dating'; Blum, 'The Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts'; Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch'; Schniedewind, 'Linguistic  Dating,  Writing  Systems,  and  the  Pentateuchal  Sources';  Römer,  'How  to  Date  Pentateuchal Texts'; Mizrahi, 'The Numeral 11 and the Linguistic Dating of P.' Polak's contributions are also oriented toward 'the methodological problems surrounding the role of linguistic characterization for literary stratification and periodization' (Polak, 'Oral Platform and Language Usage in the Abraham Narrative,' 406)

subsidiary to historical linguistics, one has to look very hard to find anything in the volume that resembles conventional historical linguistic theory and method. The exception is Mizrahi's essay which sits on the edge between the two approaches. 41 Otherwise, the several passing references by others to 'historical linguistics' and 'historical sociolinguistics'  in the conclusions to their essays appear only as rhetorical afterthoughts. 42

The volume edited by Garr and Fassberg aims to give a descriptive overview of the phases and sources of ancient Hebrew, thus its intention and scope are quite different to the volume edited by Gertz et al. Nonetheless, linguistic dating still makes several unexpected appearances in this volume, 43 as well as in one essay in the volume edited by Moshavi and Notarius 44 and in three essays in the JSem issue. 45 It is clear that the few scholars who are digging in their heels to advocate for a fading linguistic dating approach are now the exception rather than the rule. Otherwise, the research objective has largely shifted to a descriptive one involving more sophisticated data mining and evaluation of the results (see section 4).

This advance is in line with others' work besides our own. For example, linguistic dating is unmentioned  in  Moshavi  and  Notarius'  survey  of  current  scholarship, 46 and  elsewhere  Notarius explains well that 'historical linguistics is not text-dating.' 47 In contrast, in the volume edited by Notarius  and  Moshavi,  Hornkohl  alone  explicitly  links  'those  who  accept  the  diachronic  approach to BH and who attempt to date texts linguistically.' 48 We have already indicated in another place that some of the contributors to Miller-Naudé and Zevit's edited volume Diachrony in  Biblical  Hebrew manage to separate themselves from the conventional linguistic dating ap- proach. 49 The current large-scale Dutch research project, 'Does Syntactic Variation reflect Language Change? Tracing Syntactic Diversity in Biblical Hebrew Texts,' also is descriptive rather than prescriptive (that is, it is not oriented toward linguistic dating as such). 50

and 'the validity of the use of linguistic features as indications for literary-historical periodization' (ibid., 431), that is, linguistic dating (cf. ibid., 428-431; Polak, 'Storytelling and Redaction,' 449).

41  Mizrahi, 'The Numeral 11 and the Linguistic Dating of P.' The purpose of Mizrahi's essay is to highlight a 'blind spot' that is inherent in Hurvitz's linguistic dating method (ibid., 372).

42  Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch,' 344; Schniedewind, 'Linguistic Dating, Writing Systems, and the Pentateuchal Sources,' 356.

43  Hornkohl, 'Transitional Biblical Hebrew,' 33; Morgenstern, 'Late Biblical Hebrew,' 45.

44  Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost,' 53-56, and passim.

45  Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods,' 881, 922, and passim; Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1004-1007, and passim; Samet, 'The Validity of the Masoretic Text as a Basis for Diachronic Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Texts,' 1065. Others in this journal issue give a negative assessment of 'linguistic dating': Dean, 'Aramaisms,' 1101; Naaijer and  Roorda,  'Syntactic  Variation  in  Masoretic  Hebrew,'  969;  Young,  'Ancient  Hebrew  Without  Authors,' 997.

46  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics.'

47   T.  Notarius, 'Historical Linguistics is Not Text-Dating: A Review of D.-H. Kim, Early Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Linguistic Variability ,' HS 55 (2014): 389-397 (394-397).

48  Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost,' 69. It is clear that for him, diachronic or historical linguistics in Hebrew or biblical studies is linguistic dating. This is also evident in other publications by him.

The ongoing change of focus in research from linguistic dating  (of biblical texts) to historical linguistics (of language features) with its conventional theoretical and methodological properties is a welcome advance in the field, because it aligns it with mainstream scholarship on language variation and change and it sidelines the inconclusive results and highly problematic presuppositions and procedures of linguistic dating. This said, Klein remarks, 'diachronic linguistics and textual dating are separate enterprises, even though the results of the first can be useful to the second,' 51 and similarly,  Notarius comments, 'text-dating need not be the overarching goal of historical linguistics, but the results of the linguistic change analysis may be usefully integrated into the dating process alongside other historical and philological data as part of the hermeneutic circle.' 52 We agree. However, researchers in our field are just beginning to document variation and change in ancient (and Biblical) Hebrew (see section 4) in a way that could possibly prove beneficial  for  establishing  the  linguistic  periodization  of  biblical  writings  or  for  answering  a question like 'How old is the Hebrew Bible?' and its constituent parts. Our field is moving on, but there is still a long way to travel. Finally, we believe that the burden falls on the few scholars who are reticent to foray into historical linguistics (of language features) and abandon linguistic dating  (of  biblical  texts)  to  offer  a  defense  of  their  approach  which  is  largely  idiosyncratic  to Hebraists and biblicists. 53

49   Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew ,  20 n. 20 (contributions by Dresher, Naudé, J. A. Cook, Holmstedt, and Bar-Asher Siegal).

50  See https://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/research-projects/i/30/9930.html.

51  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 879 n. 16; cf. 872.

52  Notarius, 'Historical Linguistics is Not Text-Dating,' 397; cf. 394-397.

53  We have discussed elsewhere that there have been occasional stabs at the linguistic dating of texts (i.e., autographa or original compositions), with respect to some non-biblical writings (Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:61-62; Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew ,  18-20). However, on close inspection it becomes clear that these attempts have been executed on the basis of preconditions, usually the availability of adequate control corpora (i.e., sufficient quantity and quality of other dated and localized manuscripts), that do not hold for biblical writings. In particular, this assessment is relevant to the Egyptian texts that are treated in G. Moers, K. Widmaier, A. Giewekemeyer, A. Lümers, and R. Ernst (eds.), Dating Egyptian Literary Texts (Lingua Aegyptia, Studia Monographica, 11; Hamburg: Widmaier, 2013), esp. 161-281; A. Stauder, Linguistic Dating of Middle Egyptian Literary Texts (Lingua Aegyptia, Studia Monographica, 12; Hamburg: Widmaier, 2013).

## 3. Perspectives on Sources 54

Moshavi and Notarius remark in their summary of current BH linguistic scholarship that '[l]ess consensus exists regarding attitudes toward the nature of the biblical data, including approaches to textual criticism.' 55 Their observation is correct. And it is a remarkable observation for two reasons, first, because among textual critics of the Hebrew Bible, there is broad consensus regarding the nature of the biblical data, including approaches to textual criticism, 56 and second, because among historical linguists of other languages, there is substantial agreement on the pretasks for making use of written text specimens for diachronic linguistic research. Schendl, for example, comments:

The hypotheses of the historical linguist depend crucially on the interpretation of the data. It is not just a matter of the amount of data available but primarily of their quality. To evaluate the quality of old texts, we have to find out as much as possible about their extralinguistic context (such as the author, scribe, purpose, and location of a text, etc.), and about the textual tradition, including the original form and date of composition and copying. This is the task of the philologist, for whom auxiliary disciplines such as history and paleography, the study of ancient writing, are of major importance.

Only  very  few  old  texts  are  in  the  author's  own  hand,  and  even  these  may  show  various kinds of textual errors. Mostly they are the result of multiple copying by different scribes in different regions and over a long period of time. Some texts are compilations by a specific author  from  linguistically  divergent,  possibly  orally  transmitted  original  sources,  as  with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey , or the Rigveda , the oldest collection of religious texts written in Sanskrit. Such textual history may result in linguistically composite texts with a mixed language, full of scribal errors due to negligence or insufficient competence in the language(s) or varieties of the original. These different linguistic layers, whether dialectal or diachronic, must be disentangled and scribal errors detected before the text can be used as data for forming hypotheses about specific stages of a language. 57

So also, our pre-tasks as Hebraists and linguists should embrace the history of the biblical writings in their literary and textual dimensions, including fair-minded engagement with the methods and results of source criticism and redaction criticism.

54  Background reading: Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 21-45, 59-210 (chapters 3-6).

55  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 16.

56   See the thorough discussion in Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew ,  59116, and more recently, the discussions of the text-critical paradigm in Young, 'Ancient Hebrew Without Authors'; idem, 'Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew.'

57  H. Schendl, Historical Linguistics (Oxford Introductions to Language Study; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 14-15; cf. 11-15. For other pertinent discussions and quotes similar to this one, see the many references in Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 21-22 n. 21.

The absence of consensus is noticeable in the contributions to the five main publications we are discussing. The several dozen authors represent the entire scope of perspectives, from silence or dismissiveness  to  recognition  or  engagement  with  the  last  approach  either  supporting  or  challenging a particular viewpoint.

Much silence about literary and/or textual matters is understandable when considering the contexts or objectives of the contributions. Jacobs, and Naaijer and Roorda, for example, are interested in illustrating new tools for describing the distribution of particular linguistic features in the Masoretic Text (MT). 58 Joosten, while acknowledging the issues, summarily dismisses them in order 'to rehabilitate' the conventional linguistic dating approach (see section 2, and further below in this section). 59 Others are more circumspect in their recognition of the seriousness of the issues even if they do not seek to deal with them themselves. 60 For example, concerning problems of composition and trustworthiness of sources, Klein comments:

All of these make it abundantly clear that a text once circulated within a community was reworked over and over again by different editors, and copied by different scribes, with no attempt to produce a cohesive text, almost certainly over a considerable period of time and most  likely  in  different  places....Over  and  above  these  considerations  stands  the  issue  of trustworthiness of sources. There can be no doubt about the care with which the Masoretic text was treated from a certain point forward; however, its origin is centuries removed from the composition of its constituents, bearing witness to a time of consolidation of religious practice far removed from the days when 'īš hay-yāšār bĕ- ̔eynāyw ya ̔ăśeh . 61

58  Jacobs, 'The Balance of Probability'; Naaijer and Roorda, 'Syntactic Variation in Masoretic Hebrew.'

59  Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch,' 328; cf. 327-328, 342-343.

60  In addition to what follows, these comments are other examples: Epigraphic Hebrew's 'importance lies in revealing biblical-period Hebrew as written, and sometimes spoken, without the intervention of subsequent editors and copyists [as in the Hebrew Bible]' (Aḥituv, Garr, and Fassberg, 'Epigraphic Hebrew,' 55-56); 'There is no doubt that in some instances, nonstandard features in the language of the biblical books were eliminated by ancient copyists who replaced them with more standard features....No definite answer to this question can be given, which illustrates the difficulty of applying historical-linguistic analysis to a literary text [= the Hebrew Bible] copied and recopied through generations' (Bloch, 'Aramaic Influence and Inner Diachronic Development in Hebrew Inscriptions of the Iron Age,' 85 n. 5); 'When discussing the corpus [of Late Biblical Hebrew], we must take into consideration the nature of our textual witnesses. For the most part, we are dependent on textual witnesses of the Masoretic version of the Hebrew Bible for our corpus. Since the Masoretic Text is the outcome of many years of transmission of both the written text and its reading tradition, there is some doubt regarding the extent to which it reflects the Hebrew of the LBH [Late Biblical Hebrew] period....' (Morgenstern, 'Late Biblical Hebrew,' 45; cf. 4546); 'Given what is known about scribal practices during the biblical period of the history of the biblical texts, hopes of recovering composition dates using linguistic information seem misguided' (Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods,' 895). Regarding the book of Ben Sira, '[a]t times, it seems that the extant Hebrew witnesses reflect the language of later scribes rather than that of the original author....Although  various  non-biblical  linguistic  elements...probably  entered  the  text  during  its  transmission...' (Van Peursen, 'Ben Sira,' 69-70; cf. 69-71).

In a similar way, Gesundheit comments: 'Most of Hurvitzʼs analyses over the years have been of lexical items. This decision has its shortcomings, however, as lexemes, though prime examples of rapidly evolving linguistic features, are also particularly prone to editorial updating, as apparent from even a superficial comparison of the various textual witnesses of the Bible.' 62 And the same author also remarks: 'Revision - both literary and textual - is a major concern for both camps, as several scholars have noted. Textual adaptation can pollute the well by making early works look late, and conversely, it can make late features seem early.' 63 The other authors of the introductory  essays  also  highlight  the  non-linguistic  issues, 64 and  it  is  refreshing  that  they  are receiving the prominence they deserve even if in some instances the respective remarks are illconceived.

In the remainder of this section we look at how various contributors to the publications under review deal with some specific issues related to literary criticism and textual criticism.

## 3.1. Linguistic Analysis as a Support or Corrective to Textual Criticism

Moshavi and Notarius, referring to three previous essays by Holmstedt and Joosten, 65 and citing as examples the essays (discussed below) by Hornkohl and Mizrahi in their own volume, say: 'Although textual concerns can at times pose a challenge for linguistic research, they also present an opportunity for BHL to demonstrate that it can make valuable contributions to the field of textual criticism. The scientific methods of linguistic analysis enrich our knowledge of the BH language system and can lead to the solution to many difficult textual problems.' 66 While there may be cases where (historical) linguistic analysis could aid in solving a particular text-critical problem, as a rule such an approach puts the cart before the horse in that it violates the normal, and judicious, procedure of historical linguistics. This is eminently clear and hardly debatable. 67 Furthermore, the suggested approach fails to  grasp the low-density (infrequent, etc.)  and noncategoricality (sporadic, etc.) of the ancient Hebrew linguistic data that more often than not is involved in such text-critical problems. 68 As a consequence, it is very doubtful that in a particular instance one can confidently make a textual emendation or decide between two or more textual variants on the basis of highly fluid and fluctuating linguistic variants of a particular linguistic variable. 69 Finally, the suggested approach reflects a pre-Qumran understanding of the 'original' text and of the objective of textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. 70 This brings us to the next issue.

61  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 875-876. Klein's remark that 'few if any scholars of BH would make such a claim' about the 'pristine form' or 'the ipsissima verba ' of (MT) biblical writings (ibid.,  875) is,  sadly,  untrue  (cf.  Rezetko  and  Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 59-60, 68-71, 83-110, etc.).

62  Gesundheit, 'The Strengths and Weaknesses of Linguistic Dating,' 299.

63  Ibid., 302. However, even as Gesundheit's accompanying footnote 28 illustrates, it is untrue that revision 'is a major concern for both camps' if one of those camps is supposed to be the one represented by Hurvitz et al. and the conventional linguistic dating approach.

64   Barmash, 'Symposium,' 47; Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 3-4 ('The Challenge  of  Textual  Criticism');  Naudé  and  Miller-Naudé,  'Historical  Linguistics,  Editorial  Theory,  and Biblical Hebrew,' 834, 861-862 ('The role of editorial theory [the so-called New Philology] in the study of Biblical Hebrew and of Biblical Hebrew texts').

65  We discuss in detail the text-critical views of Holmstedt and Joosten, and in particular their three essays cited by Moshavi and Notarius, in Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 9-10, 29-31, 89-96.

66  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 4.

## 3.2. Notion of the 'Original' Text or Composition

Some of our authors speak about the 'original' text in a laissez-faire manner that gives us pause about their views on the history of the biblical text and the MT in particular. For example, Moshavi and Notarius comment: 'Since the canonical biblical texts have been transmitted by tradition through many generations, scholars investigating the linguistic properties of these texts must consider whether and how to engage with the field of biblical textual criticism, which seeks to reconstruct a text as close as possible to the original.' 71 With all due respect-and from our per- spective as authors who have published plenty on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible 72 such words strike us as being rather close to what we and other contemporary textual critics re- text' (ibid., 1074); 'original traditions' (ibid., 1075, 1076). Despite Samet's disclaimers (ibid., 1067 n. 6, 1070, 1073), namely that she is talking about the 'original' language of texts that relate to different periods of time, either the First Temple or Second Temple period, her statements reflect a perspective that is highly problematic (see below). Other more judicious references to the 'original' text include Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1012-1013; Naudé and MillerNaudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew,' 861; cf. Van Peursen, 'Ben Sira,' 69-70, cited above in n. 60.

67  See Schendl's statement above and the additional sources referred to in n. 57.

68   Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew ,  passim; R. Rezetko and M. Naaijer, (2016) (http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article\_213.pdf). This is discussed more below in this section and in the

'An Alternative Approach to the Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew,' JHS 16 next section.

69   See the discussion of evaluating linguistic variants in Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 77-79, and many illustrations are given in the chapters on parallel passages and Samuel manuscripts  (ibid.,  145-210,  413-591).  Another  helpful  contribution  on  the  text  of  Samuel  is  J.  K. Driesbach, 4QSamuel a and the Text of Samuel (VTSup, 171; Leiden: Brill, 2016), which also includes a chapter on 'linguistic exegesis' (ibid., 102-131) which 'includes changes that have been motivated by grammatical or syntactical difficulties in the Hebrew text or by linguistic updating' (ibid., 52). However, his treatment of linguistic variants in this chapter and elsewhere is far from exhaustive, and very often his judgments are debatable because they rely indiscriminately on very general statements about this or that development of the Hebrew language.

70 E.  Tov, Textual  Criticism  of  the  Hebrew  Bible (3rd  edn;  Minneapolis:  Fortress,  2012),  2,  161-169, 263-266, 364.

71  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 3. Some other awkward references to the 'original' text include: 'the original wording' (Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost,' 58; quoting Hurvitz favorably); 'an original' reading (ibid., 70); 'the original text' (Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch,'  338);  'the  originality  of  individual  readings'  (Mizrahi,  'Linguistic  Change  through  the Prism of Textual Transmission,' 34); 'the language of the original texts' (ibid., 47); 'the original language of the authors of the biblical texts' (Samet, 'The Validity of the Masoretic Text as a Basis for Diachronic Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Texts,' 1065); 'the text's original wording' (ibid., 1065); 'originality' (ibid., 1065); 'the original language of the text' (ibid., 1067); 'its original style' (ibid., 1067); 'an original tradition...at the time when the book was authored' (ibid., 1072); 'an original tradition, which goes back to the time of authorship of the relevant books' (ibid., 1073); 'the original language of a given

72  R. Rezetko, Source and Revision in the Narratives of David's Transfer of the Ark: Text, Language and Story in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 13, 15-16 (LHBOTS, 470; London: T&T Clark, 2007); idem, 'David over Saul in MT 2 Samuel 6,1-5: An Exercise in Textual and Literary Criticism,' in For and Against David: Story and History in the Books of Samuel (ed. A. G. Auld and E. Eynikel; BETL, 232; Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 255-271; idem, 'The Qumran Scrolls of the Book of Judges: Literary Formation, Textual Criticism,  and  Historical  Linguistics,' JHS 13  (2013)  (http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article\_182.pdf); idem,  'The  (Dis)Connection  between  Textual  and  Linguistic  Developments  in  the  Book  of  Jeremiah: Hebrew Bible Textual Criticism Challenges Biblical Hebrew Historical Linguistics,' in Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism (ed. R. F. Person, Jr. and R. Rezetko; AIL, 25; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 239-269; Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 59-210, 413-591; I. Young, 'The  'Archaic'  Poetry  of  the  Pentateuch  in  the  MT,  Samaritan  Pentateuch,  and  4QExod c ,' AbrN 35 (1998): 74-83; idem, 'ʿAm Construed as Singular and Plural in Hebrew Biblical Texts: Diachronic and Textual Perspectives,' ZAH 12 (1999): 48-82; idem, ' ʿEdah and Qahal as Collective Nouns in Hebrew Biblical Texts,' ZAH 14 (2001): 68-78; idem, 'Notes on the Language of 4QCant b ,' JJS 52 (2001): 122131; idem, 'Observations on the Third Person Masculine Singular Pronominal Suffix h in Hebrew Biblical Texts,' HS 42 (2001): 225-242; idem, 'The Stabilization of the Biblical Text in the Light of Qumran and Masada: A Challenge for Conventional Qumran Chronology?,' DSD 9 (2002): 364-390; idem, 'The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Masoretic Text: A Statistical Approach,' in Feasts and Fasts: A Festschrift in Honour of Alan David Crown (ed. M. Dacy, J. Dowling, and S. Faigan; Mandelbaum Studies in Judaica, 11; Sydney: Mandelbaum Publishing, University of Sydney, 2005), 81-139; idem, 'Biblical Texts Cannot be Dated Linguistically,' HS 46 (2005): 341-351 (349-351); idem, 'Textual Stability in Gilgamesh and the Dead Sea Scrolls,' in Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria: Proceedings of the Conference  held  at  Mandelbaum  House,  The  University  of  Sydney,  21-23  July  2004 (ed.  J.  Azize  and  N. Weeks; ANESSup, 21; Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 173-184; idem, 'The Contrast Between the Qumran and Masada Biblical Scrolls in the Light of New Data: A Note in Light of the Alan Crown Festschrift,' in Keter Shem Tov: Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Memory of Alan Crown (ed. S. Tzoref and I. Young; PHSC, 20; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2013), 113-119; idem, ''Loose' Language in 1QIsa a ,' in Keter Shem Tov: Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Memory of Alan Crown (ed. S. Tzoref and I. Young; PHSC, 20; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2013), 89-112; idem, 'Patterns of Linguistic Forms in the Masoretic Text: The Preposition מן 'From,'' in Interested Readers: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David J. A. Clines (ed. J. K. Aitken, C. Maier, and J. Clines; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 385-400; idem, 'The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible: The View from Qumran Samuel,' ABR 62  (2014): 14-30; idem, 'Manuscripts and Authors of the Psalms,' StBiSl 8 (2016): 123-136; idem, 'The Original Problem: The Old Greek and the Masoretic Text of Daniel Chapter 5,' in Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism (ed. R. F. Person, Jr. and R. Rezetko; AIL, 25; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 271-301; idem, 'Literature As Flexible Communication: Variety in Hebrew Biblical Texts,' in Registers and Modes of Commu- gard as 'a vain quest for a holy grail which one can never hope to find.' 73 However, we will not ask the reader to take our word for it; a few  statements by  several leading textual  critics will make the point for us: 74

There is no evidence for the existence of the model of an original text because of the late date of our manuscripts, even the ones from the Judean Desert...In these cases, the textual evidence does not point to a single 'original' text, but a series of subsequent authoritative texts produced by the same or different authors. Each of these stages may be considered a type of original text....However, now more than ever it seems that there never was an 'archetype' or 'original text' of most Scripture books....For most biblical books, scholars assume editorial changes over the course of many generations or even centuries. If this assumption is correct, there never was a single text that may be considered the original text for textual criticism; rather, we have to assume compositional stages, each of which was meant to be authoritative when completed. 75

In the case of the Hebrew Bible it is difficult to define what the 'original' means, since each book is the product of a complicated and often unrecoverable history of composition and redaction.  The  'original  text'  that  lies  somewhere  behind  the  archetype  is  usually  not  the product of a single author, but a collective production, sometimes constructed over centuries, perhaps comparable to the construction of a medieval cathedral or the composite walls of an old city. 76

All one needs to do is to think about the long and complicated editorial histories of the biblical books to recognize that the texts of our biblical books are very far from the traditionally envisioned  'Moses  and  the  Prophets  and  the  Sages,'  and  to  realize  that  the  quest  for  the 'original text' is naive in the extreme. The books grew organically and dynamically over the centuries, in what we can call new and expanded editions or revised literary editions. 77

nication in the Ancient Near East: Getting the Message Across (ed. K. H. Keimer and G. Davis; London: Routledge,  2018),  156-173;  idem,  'Daniel's  Throne  Vision  in  Daniel  7:9-10  According  to  the  Old Greek,' JHS (forthcoming); idem, A Textual and Linguistic Commentary on Daniel (Text of the Hebrew Bible;  London:  Bloomsbury  T&T  Clark,  in  preparation);  Young,  Rezetko,  and  Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:341-360.

73  H. Debel, 'Rewritten Bible, Variant Literary Editions and Original Text(s): Exploring the Implications of a Pluriform Outlook on the Scriptural Tradition,' in Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period (ed. H. von Weissenberg, J. Pakkala, and M. Marttila; BZAW, 419; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 65-91 (85).

74 For  many  other  expert  opinions  on  the  text-critical  situation  of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  see  Rezetko  and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 71-77.

75  Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible , 166, 167, 364 (emphasis original).

76   R. Hendel, 'The Oxford Hebrew Bible: Prologue to a New Critical Edition,' VT 58 (2008): 324-351 (332).

77   E. Ulrich, 'The Text of the Hebrew Scriptures at the Time of Hillel and Jesus,' in Congress Volume Basel 2001 (ed. A. Lemaire; VTSup, 92; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 85-108 (86).

Therefore, we would like to ask Moshavi and Notarius and the others to answer questions such as these: Which 'original' text or which in 'a series of determinative (original) texts' 78 do they have in mind when they talk about the 'original' text of the Hebrew Bible? 79 When do they date that 'original' text or at least the data that is transmitted in it? Does that 'original' text reflect literary, textual, and linguistic phenomena of the First Temple period or Second Temple period or both? And so on. In reality, the evidence available to us, which is from the later stages of textual  transmission,  indicates  that  the  language  of  both  earlier  and  later  compositional  stages  in biblical books will not reflect the details of the language used at the time of their first composition. And also, in reality, due to the complex composition and transmission history of the Hebrew Bible, questions about compositional history have no hope of being answered apart from source-critical and redaction-critical research. With this we come to another issue.

## 3.3. Linguistic Analysis as a Support or Corrective to Literary Criticism

Our discussion of this issue has two parts, first, avoidance versus inclusion of literary criticism, and second, the notion of pre-exilic redaction mainly or only versus post-exilic writing in Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH). We discuss these issues in turn.

## 3.3.1. Avoidance Versus Inclusion of Literary Criticism

The fact of the matter is that only a handful of contributors to the five main publications we are discussing enter into conversation here. In many cases, as already noted above, this really is not a problem given the contents and objectives of their contributions; however, it is relevant to many of the authors whose work we have discussed in the preceding sections. We already mentioned one author who summarily dismisses the literary issue in order 'to rehabilitate' the conventional linguistic  dating  approach. 80 Another author acknowledges the issue but likewise shelves it as 'speculation'  and  'conjectural  assumption.' 81 Still  another  author  briefly  discusses  the  issue, even affirming that his view of both early and late literary strata in P is different from the view of this source as a more or less unified document that is held by some other Hebraists, but otherwise the issue does not figure appreciably in his essay either. 82 Somewhat ironically, it is several 'biblicists' rather than the self-labeled 'linguists' who tackle this issue and whose approach stands nearest to what historical linguists of other languages, like Schendl (quoted above), think, say, and do. In particular, they adopt a philological approach that considers the full range of critical scholarship on written documents, including both their composition and transmission aspects as well as their linguistic characteristics. 83 Most notably, Blum argues that while '[l]inguistic anal- yses are of fundamental significance for biblical exegesis. Inter alia they provide an indispensable tool for the dating of biblical texts,' simultaneously, '[o]nly a comprehensive analysis that includes  all  data  available  to  historical  philology  has  the  potential  to  provide  solid  results.' 84 Therefore, following trenchant remarks on various flaws of linguistic dating, 85 he 'deal[s] with some interconnected texts in Genesis [ch. 24 and chs. 15, 22, 26] in order to indicate what is meant by a 'comprehensive approach' that includes linguistic data as part of exegetical dating.' 86 One may or may not agree with the results of Blum's analysis of these texts, but there is no getting around the fact that his comprehensive approach is the only correct and viable one from the perspective of conventional historical linguistics. 87 One more point is worth making here. Blum comments:  'There  is  simply  no  'neutral/objective  position'  in  such  issues,  because  refraining from diachronic [exegetical or literary-historical] analysis would itself inevitably involve a diachronic assessment,' 88 namely in essence an assumption of non-diachronicity, or of synchronic unity (when in reality the situation is manifestly one of diachronic complexity). Finally, any who oppose this approach because they regard it as speculative or conjectural (see above) will have to accept-if they are committed to conventional historical linguistic theory and method-that this does not mean that the approach can be ditched in favor of the conventional linguistic dating approach, but that their/our historical linguistic analysis is all the more unsure to the extent that the results of the philological approach itself are uncertain. To repeat: 'The hypotheses of the historical linguist depend crucially on the interpretation of the data. It is not just a matter of the amount of data available but primarily of their quality. To evaluate the quality of old texts, we have  to  find  out  as  much  as  possible  about  their  extralinguistic  context  (such  as  the  author, scribe, purpose, and location of a text, etc.), and about the textual tradition, including the original form and date of composition and copying.' 89 This is our reality even if to some it may seem 'demanding' or 'time-consuming' or 'utopian' or 'too complex.' 90

78  Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 161, 163, 165, 167, etc.

79  For a discussion of what the 'original' text of a biblical writing could mean, see Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 60-61.

80  Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch,' 328.

81  Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1016 with n. 18.

82  Mizrahi, 'The Numeral 11 and the Linguistic Dating of P,' 371, 372 with n. 5.

83  For remarks on the philological approach see Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 26-33; cf. 33-45, 56-57, 60-62, 83-84, 89-91, 115-116, 129-131, 406, etc.

84  Blum, 'The Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts,' 303. 'Moreover, for methodological reasons, linguistic  arguments  should  be  part  of  a  much  more  comprehensive  historical-philological  endeavor'  (ibid., 305). In a recent publication Schmid also advocates for a comprehensive approach that combines linguistic and alternative approaches to dating biblical writings, but his treatment is somewhat out of date since it does not consider the last five years of language discussions and remains oriented toward linguistic dating rather than historical linguistics (K. Schmid, 'How to Date the Book of Jeremiah: Combining and Modifying Linguistic- and Profile-based Approaches,' VT 68 [2018]: 1-19).

85  Ibid., 303-314.

86  Ibid., 315-325 (quote from p. 315).

87  However, as observed above in section 2, Blum's essay, like the others in the same volume, is oriented toward  linguistic  (or  exegetical)  dating  rather  than  historical  linguistics.  Note  also  the  contribution  of Römer which briefly discusses linguistic evidence as part of a global theory/view about the formation of the  Pentateuch  (Römer,  'How  to  Date  Pentateuchal  Texts,'  361-363),  and  the  contribution  of  Wöhrle which, while not discussing linguistic issues per se (which is somewhat surprising given the context of his essay), seeks to show the literary complexity-both source and redaction-of the Priestly stratum of the Pentateuch (Wöhrle, 'Thereʼs No Master Key!'), and this is an essential part of a global approach and a necessary pre-task for making use of this written text specimen for diachronic linguistic research.

88   Blum, 'The Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts,' 308. Note our previous assessment along this same line: 'It is arguable that many of these scholars employ a crypto-synchronic or quasi-diachronic approach since they purport to discuss diachronic developments in BH language, yet for all intents and purposes, that is, in their actual method, they negate diachronic developments in the literary and textual realms of the Hebrew Bible. Many scholars working on the history of the Hebrew Bible's language are far less historically oriented than they seem' (Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 83 n. 118).

## 3.3.2. Notion of Pre-Exilic Redaction Mainly or Only Versus Post-Exilic Writing in CBH

Hebraists seldom if ever engage literary-critical study of the biblical writings and so as a matter of course they date books like Genesis through Kings in their entirety to the  pre-exilic period because they do not believe it was possible to write Hebrew in a late(r) period without producing so-called Transitional Biblical Hebrew (TBH) or Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH). We begin with Hurvitz, because several contributors to the publications under review simply inherited his approach. Hurvitz's argument is straightforward: late (post-exilic) writings inevitably have some degree (allowing for differences of consistency and frequency) of late language, hence writings without late language  are dated  early  (pre-exilic).  Furthermore,  this  explanation  applies  to  the entire production history of biblical writings, including their 'original' composition and subsequent editing and copying. In his own words, he 'deal[s] exclusively with biblical texts in the way in which they have crystallized and in the form in which they now stand--regardless of textual alterations, literary developments and editorial activities which they may or may not have undergone during their long transmission.' 91 Hurvitz has no regard for such matters because, he believes, 'they lie in areas about which we have no direct information or actual facts,' and consequently,  '[o]nly  after  the  linguistic  analysis  of  the  actual  texts  has  been  completed  without interference  is  there  room  to  proceed  and  consider  the  findings…in  a  broader,  non-linguistic framework.' 92 Similarly and more recently, in a chapter on the terminology of genealogical records in Genesis-Joshua, Hurvitz says:

89  Schendl, Historical Linguistics , 14.

90  See the words of Kabatek and Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg in Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 9 and 120 n. 8, respectively. For integrated diachronic literary, textual, and linguistic discussions of various texts in Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Jeremiah, see the publications of Rezetko cited in n. 72 and also Rezetko, 'Biblical Hebrew Changed, but How?,' B&I September 2016 (https://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2016/09/rez408007.shtml),  and  Rezetko  and  Young, Historical  Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 302. Rezetko hopes to eventually complete a book on the Saul-David Stories in 1 Sam 9-2 Sam 1 that integrates (historical) linguistic analysis with historical, artifactual, literary, and textual criteria. Otherwise, there is very little else published in our field that combines these various approaches.  In  addition  to  Blum's  essay,  see  also  Baruch  Halpern, David's  Secret  Demons:  Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Bible in Its World; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), especially 57-72 ('Dating 2 Samuel'), but since this author disregards the text-critical phenomena and embraces the conventional linguistic  dating  approach,  his  results  are  not  satisfactory.  The  recent  volume  by  Hendel  and  Joosten ( How Old is the Hebrew Bible? A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study ) also omits serious engagement with literary criticism. See our separate review-essay of this volume (Young and Rezetko, 'Can the Ages of Biblical Literature be Discerned Without Literary Analysis?').

91  Hurvitz, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel, 21.

In conclusion: Whatever editorial activities and literary modifications the Priestly genealogyrelated accounts and records in Genesis-Joshua may have undergone during the process of their  transmission,  all  these  textual  developments  must  have  come  to  an  end prior to  the emergence of the distinctive LBH corpus as laid before us in its presently extant version. Or, in a slightly different formulation, the linguistic formation and consolidation of the Priestly genealogical and other similar material preserved in the books of the Pentateuch and Joshua predate the time period that shaped our LBH corpus as found in the MT. The language of this material should therefore be categorized typologically as Classical Biblical Hebrew and assigned historically to the preexilic period. 93

In other publications, Hurvitz extends this specific remark on genealogical material to the language of P en bloc. 94

When we turn to our authors, we find that several of them closely follow Hurvitz's line of reasoning. 95 In his essay on diachronic linguistics and the date of the Pentateuch, Joosten argues that the Pentateuch on the whole is a writing of the monarchic period because it is largely barren of LBH language.  As  an  illustration  he  discusses  the  story  of  Abram  and  Sarai  in  Egypt,  about which he concludes:

The three features enumerated [ נ ֵּ ה־נ ָא ה ִ , temporal כ ִ י , passive qal ] show that Gen 12:10-20 is written in CBH. The nature of the usages virtually excludes the possibility that a later author would have been able to imitate them. In light of what was said before, this would suggest that the story was created, more or less in the form we have it, during the time of the monar- chy.  In  a  pinch,  it  might  be  dated  soon after  the fall of Jerusalem.  Taking  it  down  to  450 BCE, or later, seems completely impossible. 96

92 Ibid., 153.

93   A.  Hurvitz,  'Terminological  Modifications  in  Biblical  Genealogical  Records  and  Their  Potential Chronological  Implications,'  in Hebrew  in  the  Second  Temple  Period:  The  Hebrew  of  the  Dead  Sea Scrolls  and  of  Other  Contemporary  Sources (ed.  S.  E.  Fassberg,  M.  Bar-Asher,  and  R.  A.  Clements; STDJ, 108; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 105-116 (116; emphasis original).

94  A. Hurvitz, 'The Evidence of Language in Dating the Priestly Code: A Linguistic Study in Technical Idioms and Terminology,' RB 81 (1974): 24-56; Hurvitz, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel . For other similar quotes and references to Hurvitz's writings, see Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:16-18.

95  In addition to the following authors, this may also be Samet's view. She argues that the distribution of qittālôn vs. qitlôn nouns in BH 'indicate[s] that there existed a difference between two pronunciations, one common in First Temple times, and the other in the Second Temple period. By no means does this identification of the forms' date rule out complicated processes of editing and reshaping; it only locates them within limits of dialect and time' (Samet, 'The Validity of the Masoretic Text as a Basis for Diachronic Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Texts,' 1073). In other words, if First Temple writings had been edited  and  reshaped  in the  Second Temple period, qitlôn would  have  (sometimes? often? always?) replaced qittālôn .

Regarding some objections to his linguistic dating approach he further comments:

- Archaizing: 'Perhaps in other late passages the archaizing was more successful. But the available evidence does not confirm this possibility. There are late writings - certainly dating to the Persian period or beyond - that evince an effort to write Classical Hebrew. But to the best of my knowledge there are no late writings where this effort was consistently successful.' 97
- Stratified nature of the Pentateuch: 'If some of the strata were added in the postexilic period, one would expect those strata to reflect postclassical Hebrew. If no LBH elements can be located, this indicates that all the strata were composed during the period when CBH was in use. The monarchic era is a very long one. There is no problem of principle in postulating multiple rewritings before the cut-off point of 550 BCE or so.' 98
- Modernizations: 'The answer to this objection is as before: perhaps modernization did happen, but if so, it must have happened over the period when CBH was in use. The MT of the Pentateuch shows very few signs of modernization during the postexilic period.' 99

Hornkohl  is  another  scholar  who  follows  Hurvitz's  line  of  reasoning.  At  numerous  points  he talks about textual, text-critical, scribal, transmission, copyists, and so on, and literary, exegetical, editorial, revision, editors, and so on, mainly in response to our work, but a close reading of his  publications  indicates  that  he  has  very  little  to  say  about  literary  development,  despite  acknowledging its reality, and despite calling for the 'evidence of textual and/or literary development, on the one hand, and of linguistic development, on the other [to] be integrated in a mutually beneficial fashion towards the resolution of textual cruxes and diachronic puzzles.' 100 Rather, his comments relate almost entirely to textual matters, and then to textual and/or literary 'cruces'/'cruxes'/'knots'/'suspicion' 101 rather than the larger compositional and redactional issues. Furthermore, despite the subtitle of one of his essays, 'Periodization in the Face of Textual and Literary Pluriformity,' 102 the relevant section on 'Linguistic Periodization, Textual Cruces, and Literary Development: Examples of Integration' 103 contains only a brief discussion of 'Literary Criticism' 104 which merely cites some publications by Paul on Isaiah and Joosten and Hornkohl on Jeremiah as examples of linguistic evidence tallying with non-linguistic evidence for the identification  of  secondary  material  in  these  books. 105 Unfortunately,  however,  as  pointed  out  already,  Hornkohl  regards  linguistic  analysis  as  a  support  or  corrective  to  textual  criticism and literary criticism, the latter because, he believes, it involves 'speculation' and 'conjectural assumption.' Consequently, his default posture is the same as Hurvitz's: biblical writings are innocent until proven guilty, or early unless proven late, by the presence of adequate LBH elements, and literary-critical arguments that biblical writings or parts of them without LBH elements are late are specious. In his own words: there is a 'conspicuous lack of unambiguous evidence...that late writers could successfully imitate classical style,' 106 and,  'the assumption that late writers could indeed reproduce flawless CBH is theory-driven. No text securely datable to the Second Temple Period on nonlinguistic grounds fails to exhibit a conspicuous concentration of distinctive  postclassical  linguistic  features.' 107 This  is  also  the  reason  why  Hornkohl  is  compelled to date the bulk of (proto-)MT Jeremiah to the sixth century BCE, 108 against the conclusion of most biblical  scholars  and  textual  critics  that  the  revisions  exhibited  in  the  MT  date  to  the  Persian and/or Hellenistic period. 109

96  Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch,' 338; cf. 336-338. He also mentions the illustrations of Genesis 15 and 24 (ibid., 338 n. 38), although he is willing to date Num 36:1-12 to the Persian period or later because it contains a single 'late' expression ('to speak before ') (ibid., 339-340), and he is also willing to allow occasional late editorial changes, for example, in Exod 36:10 (ibid., 341342), Deut 33:2 (ibid., 343), and elsewhere (ibid., 343 n. 49).

97  Ibid., 342; cf. 340-342.

98 Ibid., 342.

99 Ibid., 343.

100  Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost,' 55-56.

101   Ibid.,  56,  58,  69,  75;  idem,  'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1015 n. 17, 1057.

102  Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost.'

103 Ibid., 68-75.

104 Ibid., 74-75.

105  For discussions of the publications cited by Hornkohl, see on Isaiah, R. Rezetko, 'Response to Mark F. Rooker, 'Characteristics of the Hebrew of the Recognized Literary Divisions of Isaiah,' in Bind up the Testimony: Explorations in the Genesis of the Book of Isaiah , ed. Daniel I. Block and Richard L. Schultz (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2015), 195-225'

(https://www.academia.edu/25885221/2016k\_Rezetko\_Response\_to\_Rooker\_Characteristics\_of\_the\_Hebrew\_ of\_the\_Recognized\_Literary\_Divisions\_of\_Isaiah); Young, ''Loose' Language in 1QIsa a '; and see on Jeremiah, Rezetko, 'The (Dis)Connection between Textual and Linguistic Developments in the Book of Jeremiah.'

106  Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1011.

107   Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost,' 55. Likewise, he says: 'The sort of evidence required would consist of copious amounts (not just an example or two) of non-linguistically datable post-classical compositions (not just copies of earlier material) employing pure CBH. It is not merely that the quantity of such evidence  is  meager;  it  is  non-existent.  No  text  securely  datable  on  non-linguistic  grounds  to  the  Second Temple Period fails to exhibit a conspicuous accumulation of distinctive post-classical linguistic features' (A.  D.  Hornkohl,  'Diachronic  Exceptions  in  the  Comparison  of  Tiberian  and  Qumran  Hebrew:  The Preservation of Early Linguistic Features in Dead Sea Scrolls Biblical Hebrew,' in The Reconfiguration of Hebrew in the Hellenistic Period: Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 [ed. J. Joosten, D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey; STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018], 61-92 [70]); cf. Schniedewind's remark that 'claims of substantive SBH writing in the late Persian and Hellenistic periods are not supported by what we know from  historical  sociolinguistics  or  from  the  evidence  of  texts  like  Chronicles,  Ezra-Nehemiah,  Esther, Daniel, Jubilees, 1QIsaiah, or other Qumran texts' (Schniedewind, 'Linguistic Dating, Writing Systems, and the Pentateuchal Sources,' 356). It is unclear what Schniedewind might 'know from historical sociolinguistics' that buttresses his perspective.

108  Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah.

There are substantial difficulties with the approach of these scholars and their view that writings in CBH (i.e., [almost] without LBH elements) must be early/pre-exilic and late/post-exilic writers could not write in CBH (i.e., without using [some] LBH elements).

First, their  approach is out of step with the conventional historical linguistic approach that we have described above. They put the cart before the horse. Linguistic analysis as a support or corrective to literary criticism and/or textual criticism is generally untenable. Analysis of the language in its historical dimension is contingent on the analysis of the sources (of linguistic data) in their literary and textual dimensions.

Second, their approach is circular because the biblical books and their constituent parts (including those written in CBH) are not independently and undisputedly dated before the  diachronic linguistic analysis is executed and conclusions about language periodization are reached. Here we encounter the issue of literary-linguistic circularity that we have talked about before, 110 and the critique is repeated by some of our present authors and others. Thus, Gesundheit comments:

It is worth dwelling on Hurvitzʼs suggestion that a linguistic item must be found in incontrovertibly late contexts to permit 'room to doubt [its] antiquity.' It is difficult to escape the impression that we are dealing here with a philosophy according to which all biblical texts are early  until  proven  late .  This  and  other  similar  statements  indicate  that,  according  to Hurvitz, every work has a default status, and that status is preexilic. Every ostensible stringency is a leniency, as well. To be stringent about determining that a text is late is to be lenient in assuming the textʼs antiquity. 111

## And Blum remarks:

The doubt, however, that linguistic analyses can prove that a biblical text was composed in preexilic times is even stronger. Naturally, such a proof would be based on the absence of LBH features in the respective text or corpus. But the 'absence of evidence' could be decisive only if a late author would unavoidably have produced sufficient LBH features, even if he tried to write in classical language. In fact, that is what proponents of this approach in the field of Hebrew linguistics do assert. The problem of such an allegation, however, lies in its a priori nature, for no one will ever be able to prove or to disprove such a general statement.

109   See  Rezetko,  'The  (Dis)Connection  between  Textual  and  Linguistic  Developments  in  the  Book  of Jeremiah'; cf. Schmid, 'How to Date the Book of Jeremiah.'

110 See  our  treatment  of this  issue  and  the  citations  of  others'  discussions in  Young,  Rezetko,  and  Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:65-68, 81, 92-93 with n. 22 on 93-94, 140. The reference to  'Edenburg, Gibeah ,  forthcoming'  is  now  C.  Edenburg, Dismembering the Whole: Composition and Purpose of Judges 19-21 (AIL, 24; SBL, 2016), 117 n. 4.

111  Gesundheit, 'The Strengths and Weaknesses of Linguistic Dating,' 298 (emphasis original).

Though repeated 'slip-ups' in comparison to the classical language were possible, they were by no means necessary. 112

## So too Schmid comments:

A third argument by Hebraists for an early (that is, preexilic) dating of CBH texts is the idea that it should be impossible to reproduce real CBH in later times without slip-ups. The problem with this argument is a fundamental methodological one: It is a priori and therefore not falsifiable.  If  a  biblical  text  is  written  in  clear  and  flawless  CBH,  then  it  is by  definition preexilic because otherwise it would not be in correct CBH. In such an argument, the possibility of a late text in correct CBH is excluded as impossible from the outset .  Determining CBH as copy-safe is therefore begging the question. Of course, languages evolve over time, but in a learned elite idiom like CBH, a certain degree of inertness is likely as well. 113

## Finally, Klein says:

Rezetko and Young...freely admit in the case of many characters that there is some tendency toward late usage. What they deny is not the fact of late usage but rather the inverse conclusion that books not showing such usage are necessarily early, a point with which I wholeheartedly concur. Variation analysis is very helpful in making sense out of characters that are of fluctuating occurrence within a textual tradition, but it has nothing to say about evidence that is not there, particularly in a corpus where editorial and scribal intervention have produced massive fluidity in the form of individual books. 114

In short, the idea, stated somewhat simplistically, that CBH = early and LBH = late, rests on literary-linguistic circularity and problematic assumptions and reasoning.

Third, working from within the conventional linguistic dating approach, we have argued that the linguistic dating principle of accumulation or concentration of late linguistic elements in a given text is far from airtight because there is sometimes an accumulation of 'late' language in some presumably  early  writings  (both  biblical  and  epigraphic)  and  there  is  sometimes  a  nonaccumulation of 'late' language in some undisputed late writings. 115 In addition, all biblical writings  have  some  degree  of  LBH  or  'late'  language.  (We  address  the  criticisms  by  Forbes  and Hornkohl of our discussions of accumulation in section 4.10.)

Fourth, it is well documented in historical sociolinguistic research that there can be early, middle, and late adopters of linguistic innovations, such that even contemporary speakers or writers may  display  nearly  opposite  trends  in  their  use  of  old  and  new  variants. 116 So,  for  instance, whereas one (a leader or progressive) might display one/several late (absolute or relative) linguistic element(s), it/they might be completely absent from the language of another (a laggard or conservative) who lived in the same period of time.

112  Blum, 'The Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts,' 311-312 (emphasis original).

113  K. Schmid, 'The Biblical Writings in the Late Eighth Century BCE,' in Archaeology and History of Eighth-Century Judah (ed. Z. I. Farber and J. L. Wright; ANEM 23; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018), 489-501 (491; emphasis original).

114  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 879 n. 16.

115  Among our various treatments of this, see Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:111-142, 163-168, 271-276; 2:83-91; Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 196-202.

Fifth, supposing the conventional dates of biblical writings held to be correct by many Hebraists, we have argued that the continuity of early language in late writings is the norm rather than the exception. This is true to such a degree that what is generally called 'late' language is a sporadic and idiosyncratic part of the language of the corpus of late books, and furthermore these books show very different tendencies in their use (including non-use) of late variants. 117 This reveals that  the  central  assumption  of  Hurvitz  and  his  followers,  as  outlined  above,  that  the  linguistic profile  of  the  post-exilic  books  of  Esther-Chronicles  provides  the  measure  and  definition  of 'late' Hebrew, seems to be an unexamined presupposition.

Sixth,  empirical  textual  data  corroborates  the  long  production  history  of  biblical  writings, demonstrating that even those written in CBH did not stop developing until late in the Second Temple period, 118 thus undercutting these scholars' conjectural explanation of the linguistic data and their claim that late/post-exilic writers could not write in CBH.

Seventh, there are empirical comparative examples of various literary languages that show relatively minor internal evolution over a substantial period of time or, conversely stated, sometimes writers  who wrote in a late(r) period could produce literary  works in a  nearly flawless earlier ('classical') style. Some examples cited in recent literature include Standard Babylonian, Late Middle  Egyptian,  Ancient  Greek,  Classical  Sanskrit,  Classical  Arabic,  and  Classical  Armenian. 119

116   We document this, citing documented examples, in Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics  and Biblical Hebrew , 52, 223-228, 237, 402-403, etc.

117   Rezetko and Naaijer, 'An Alternative Approach to the Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew,' 3, 28, 33, 36-38; see also R. Rezetko, ''Late' Common Nouns in the Book of Chronicles,' in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. R. Rezetko, T. H. Lim, and W. B. Aucker; VTSup, 113; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 379-417; Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:83-90, 111-119.

118 J.  H. Tigay (ed.), Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985; repr. with a new foreword by R. E. Friedman, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005); H. von Weissenberg, J. Pakkala, and M. Marttila (eds.), Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period (BZAW, 419; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011); H. Ausloos, B.  Lemmelijn, and J. Trebolle Barrera (eds.), After Qumran: Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts-The Historical Books (BETL, 246; Leuven: Peeters, 2012); N. Dávid, A. Lange, K. De Troyer, and  S.  Tzoref  (eds.), The  Hebrew  Bible  in  Light  of  the  Dead  Sea  Scrolls (FRLANT,  239;  Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012); R. J. Müller, J. Pakkala, and B. ter Haar Romeny, Evidence of Editing: Growth  and  Change  of  Texts  in  the  Hebrew  Bible (RBS,  75;  Atlanta:  Society  of  Biblical  Literature, 2014); J. Pakkala, God's Word Omitted: Omissions in the Transmission of the Hebrew Bible (FRLANT, 251;  Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck  &  Ruprecht,  2013);  R.  F.  Person,  Jr.  and  R.  Rezetko  (eds.), Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism (AIL,  25;  Atlanta:  SBL  Press,  2016);  R.  Müller  and J.  Pakkala (eds.), Insights into Editing in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East: What Does Documented Evidence Tell Us about the Transmission of Authoritative Texts? (CBET, 84; Leuven: Peeters, 2017).

Finally, we should underline again that when scholars argue that the sources or books of the Pentateuch, for example, are pre-exilic compositions because they are written in CBH , 120 they are actually misunderstanding the real question, which is whether biblical writings in CBH can only be pre-exilic and not also post-exilic.

## 3.4. Defense of the MT

Mostly in response to our discussions (sometimes misunderstood or misrepresented) of linguistic variants  in  biblical  manuscripts,  some  of  our  authors  have  as  an  objective  the  defense  of  the MT's  'accuracy,'  'authenticity,'  'genuineness,'  'reliability,'  'trustworthiness,'  'validity,' 'value,' 'antiquity,' 'originality,' and so on (their words).

Samet looks at three sets of linguistic items in Qoheleth: the assimilation of third aleph with third he participles,  the  use  of  the  abstract  nominal  pattern qitlôn vs. qittālôn ,  and  the  feminine demonstrative זֹה vs. ז ֹ את . 121 'The case studies show that the Masoretes had preserved the differ- ence between CBH and LBH pronunciations, although they were probably unaware of the historical nature of these different pronunciations and of their diachronic dimension. These findings testify  to  a  strong  and  stable  oral  Masoretic  tradition  which  accompanied  the  written  one.' 122 Accordingly: 'If vocalisation turns out to reflect original traditions, then the system's more stable components, as manifested in the consonantal text, are even more likely to testify to the language of the biblical text in the period when it was authored and edited.' 123

119   Gesundheit,  'The  Strengths  and  Weaknesses  of  Linguistic  Dating,'  298-299  (Ancient  Greek,  Late Middle Egyptian, Classical Sanskrit; citing Dickey and Gass); Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 867-868 (Classical Armenian, Ancient Greek, Classical Sanskrit); N. J. C. Kouwenberg, 'Diachrony in Akkadian and the Dating of Literary Texts,' in Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew (ed. C. MillerNaudé and Z. Zevit; LSAWS, 8; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 433-451 (437-438, 448; Standard Babylonian); Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:47-48 (Classical Arabic; citing Blau). Polak challenges the validity of several of these examples (Polak, 'Storytelling and Redaction,' 449-454). Hornkohl acknowledges the possibility of late imitation of classical language but disputes that the situation in BH is comparable to Classical Arabic since 'there exists classically formulated Arabic material that can be securely dated to the late period on the basis of non-linguistic evidence...,  but  no  classically  formulated  Hebrew  material  securely  dateable  to  the  late  period  on  nonlinguistic grounds' (Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 30 n. 88). Hornkohl's argument, however, is circular since any examples of it happening according to biblical scholars are reinterpreted and reclassified as early by Hornkohl and other Hebraists but without any discussion of the empirical textual data mentioned above. So also the occurrence of small amounts of 'late' language is dismissed in compositions like Samuel that are 'known' to be early, but is treated as evidence of late composition in works that can be comfortably considered late, such as Qumran compositions.

120  For example, L. Petersson, 'The Linguistic Profile of the Priestly Narrative of the Pentateuch,' in Paradigm  Change  in  Pentateuchal  Research (ed.  M.  Armgardt,  B.  Kilchör,  and  M.  Zehnder;  BZAR,  22; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2019), 243-264; cf. Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch'; Schniedewind, 'Linguistic Dating, Writing Systems, and the Pentateuchal Sources'; etc. In other words, the language of Genesis-Deuteronomy is unmistakably CBH, but this is not an argument that these books are 'unmistakably pre-exilic' (contra J. A. Berman, Inconsistency in the Torah: Ancient Literary Convention and the Limits of Source Criticism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017], 278).

121  Samet, 'The Validity of the Masoretic Text as a Basis for Diachronic Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Texts.'

Hornkohl contends that when the MT and the biblical and non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) differ  with  regard  to  (what  he  regards  as)  diachronically  meaningful  linguistic  features,  more often than not the MT preserves the characteristically classical (pre-exilic, First Temple) feature whereas the DSS present a typically post-classical (post-exilic, Second Temple) one. In one essay he examines various examples related to spelling and pronunciation and in more detail the morphology of 3mp suffixes on plurals in ות -, ֶ ם ֵ ֵּ יה - vs. ֵ ָ ם -; he also discusses four textual errors in the MT where a classical feature was replaced by a non-classical one or vice versa. 124 In another  essay  he  compares  the  language  of  the  MT  Pentateuch  and  two  quasi-biblical  DSS works,  4QCommentary  Genesis a   (4QComGen,  4Q252)  and  4QReworked  Pentateuch  (4QRP, 4Q158 and 4Q364-367). He includes case studies on twenty linguistic issues in the realms of orthography,  phonetic  realization  and  phonology  (4),  morphology  (2),  syntax  (6),  lexicon  and phraseology (5), and grammatical levelling of non-standard language (2). 125 Regarding the issue at hand, the nature of the MT, he concludes that this manuscript tradition is adequately faithful to permit a correlation between a work's linguistic character and its date of composition in either the pre-exilic or post-exilic period.

Similarly, while not all-out defenses of the MT, the case studies of several others may lend support to the fidelity of the MT as a witness to ancient Hebrew.

Mizrahi argues that MT's hapax legomenon נא ('raw') in Exod 12:9 is earlier/older/(more) original than 4Q11's נו which was substituted later in an attempt to disambiguate the homonymous form from the common BH particle נ ָא ('please') for the scribe's contemporary, Second Temple audience. 126

Notarius analyzes two lexical isoglosses of so-called Archaic Biblical Hebrew (ABH), ִ יל ִ ים פ ְּ ל in Deut 32:31 and כ ֵּ ן in Judg 5:15. She argues that while these words continued in use in later BH, they  attest  different  meanings  in  the  pre-classical  stage.  Consequently,  because  the  words  remained in the MT and were not altered or updated, she concludes that 'the archaic language of the old songs was transmitted with a relatively high level of accuracy due to the prestigious liter- ary status of these compositions.' 127 In another essay she argues that ִ י ְּ כ ְּ ר ת ִ ד in MT Judg 5:21 is a unique, authentic, and archaic use of the second person jussive in a non-negative sentence, and although she does not say so explicitly, she would probably view the form as support for the fidelity of the MT as a witness to ancient Hebrew. 128

122 Ibid., 1064.

123 Ibid., 1075.

124  Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost.'

125  Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts.'

126  Mizrahi, 'The Numeral 11 and the Linguistic Dating of P.'

ֵּ

Polak, citing his analysis of the object suffix attached to the finite verb (e.g., הוּ י ַ נ ִח ו ַ ) as opposed to the object particle with suffix (e.g., אֹת ָ ם ), argues that 'the vagaries of textual transmission do not obliterate the systematic contrast between the different syntactic-stylistic profiles of the various corpora' in the MT. 129

Schniedewind  argues  that  there  were  older  words  and  constructions,  such  as  the  asseverative lamed , that had gone out of use during the monarchic period, so that they were no longer understood by later post-exilic scribes, but nevertheless they were often preserved in the textual record (MT). 130

Before  making  some  general  observations  here  on  the  contributions  summarized  above,  we should point briefly to three authors in the publications under review who offer a different perspective on the MT.

Dean argues that 'many features which have historically been identified as Aramaisms were not stable during the transmission of the Hebrew Bible, as the presence or absence of Aramaic elements varies between the Masoretic Text and the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls. It is thus argued that the presence of Aramaisms is not a reliable criterion for linguistic dating as Aramaisms could often reflect Aramaic influence during a stage of the text's transmission, rather than the time of its composition.' 131

Forbes distinguishes composition date and crystallization date 132 or the composition and redaction channel of the biblical period versus the transmission channel of the Masoretic era. 133 He concedes: 'Given what is known about scribal practices during the biblical period of the history of  the  biblical  texts,  hopes  of  recovering  composition  dates  using  linguistic  information  seem misguided. Recovery of relative 'crystallisation dates' may be another matter.' 134 Therefore in his essay he wants 'to infer when the careful copying process began. For each text portion, we ask: What was its (absolute, relative, or cluster-based) crystallisation date?' 135 Forbes' separation of linguistic information from the date of composition distinguishes him from the authors discussed above who are interested precisely in using the MT to establish time of composition. 136

127  Notarius, 'Lexical Isoglosses of Archaic Hebrew,' 97.

128  Notarius, 'The Second-Person Non-Negated Jussive in Biblical Hebrew and Ancient Northwest Semitic.'

129 Polak,  'Oral  Platform  and  Language  Usage  in  the  Abraham  Narrative,'  431;  cf.  F.  H.  Polak,  'The Book of Samuel and the Deuteronomist-A Syntactic-Stylistic Analysis,' in Die Samuelbücher und die Deuteronomomisten (ed.  C.  Schäfer-Lictenberger;  BZAW,  188;  Stuttgart:  Kohlhammer,  2010),  34-75 (69).

130   Schniedewind, 'Linguistic Dating, Writing Systems, and the Pentateuchal Sources,' 354-355; idem, 'The Linguistics of Writing Systems and the Gap in the Hebrew Scribal Tradition,' 119-120.

131   Dean,  'Aramaisms,'  1080;  cf.  1100-1101:  'While utilising  a  criterion  such  as  accumulation  might insulate  one  from  the  risk  of  using  isolated  Aramaisms  in  an  argument  for  late  dating,  1QIsa a   demonstrates that a text can even have a high concentration of Aramaic forms which are likely not representative of the 'original' language of the text.'

132  Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods,' 890 n. 21.

133  Ibid., 881-882.

Young, building on our previous work, 137 argues that the language of biblical writings, especially distinctive (less common) linguistic features or linguistic peculiarities-such as the archaisms of the ABH poems that scholars have used to create a linguistic profile of these writings and their authors-was highly fluid in textual transmission, thus demonstrating that it was not copied precisely or carefully or with a high degree of accuracy. 138

Taking into account the above arguments and conclusions, we would like to offer three postulates about the MT that are part correctives and part recommendations for future research.

First, the MT should not be an object of bias and the objective should be neither to attack nor defend it. Rather, it should be highly regarded as one of the extremely few but very important and most extensive sources for ancient Hebrew, alongside the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), biblical  and  non-biblical  DSS,  Wisdom  of  Ben  Sira,  and  Hebrew  inscriptions.  Practically,  the  MT cannot be dismissed or discarded, and theoretically, it should not be. It is a valid basis for the diachronic study of ancient Hebrew, 139 but it is not the only one, and it should not be privileged.

134 Ibid., 895.

135 Ibid., 899.

136  However, Forbes' tactic, while commendable, is also problematic, since textual critics of the Hebrew Bible generally agree that in practice it is virtually impossible to distinguish sharply between the composition, redaction, and transmission stages of the biblical writings, or between authors, editors, and scribes, for the reason that the writings were still in the process of development as they were being copied. 'A major complication for any theory [of an original text] is the assumption that the textual transmission was operative before the completion of the final literary stage...' (Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible , 166).

137  On texts in the MT versus other textual traditions, especially the DSS, Samaritan Pentateuch, and Septuagint  (Pentateuch  poetry,  Judges,  Samuel,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Song  of  Songs,  Daniel),  and  on  parallel texts within the MT (Samuel//Psalms, Samuel//Chronicles, Kings//Isaiah, Kings//Jeremiah, Kings//Chronicles). For references, see n. 72.

138   Young, 'Ancient Hebrew Without Authors'; idem, 'Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew.'

139   According to Samet, Rezetko's and Young's 'attitude' toward the MT includes 'arguing against the use of the Masoretic Text as a basis for the linguistic discussion' (Samet, 'The Validity of the Masoretic Text as a Basis for Diachronic Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Texts,' 1064), 'mak[ing] the MT inadmissible as evidence in a linguistic discussion' (ibid., 1065), 'denial of the validity of the MT as a basis for a diachronic discussion' (ibid., 1066), believing 'the MT is too corrupt to tell us anything about the original language of the text' (ibid., 1067), asserting 'the uselessness of the MT in representing the original lan-

Furthermore, just as 'it should not be postulated that 𝕸 [MT] better or more frequently reflects the original text of the biblical books than any other text,' 140 so also it should not be postulated that the language of the MT better or more frequently reflects the original language of the biblical authors than any other text.

Second, the careful and precise transmission of the MT is a later development that should not be retrojected back to earlier periods. While there is evidence of texts relatively close to the MT in some books in the last centuries BCE, these are only a minority in the attested pluriformity of the biblical books in the BCE period. 141 This applies even more to the period before c. 250 BCE, when the text must have been much more fluid, which means also that any jump from the transmission of the MT to the time of composition of the biblical writings by authors and editors is unsubstantiated, and it is doubtful that it can be corroborated. What is true for the MT and protoMT is probably not true for earlier stages of the literary and textual development of the Hebrew Bible. 142 In other words, the 'accuracy' of the MT does not correspond a priori to the 'accuracy' or 'antiquity' or 'originality' of its words as representations of the words of the biblical writings in the earlier times of their authoring, editing, and copying. Literary and textual critics cannot affirm  on  the  basis  of  any  actual  documentation  prior  to  the  earliest  Qumran  scrolls  from  the third century BCE that the linguistic profiles and especially the linguistic details of the surviving texts are those of original authors whether they be from the earlier Second Temple or much earlier First Temple periods. Finally, what is argued, or even demonstrated, to be true for the Penta-

guage of a given text' (ibid., 1074 n. 28), and having 'a theoretical premise as to the unreliable nature of the MT' (ibid., 1076). Her perspective-shared by some others-on our work does not reflect our actual beliefs  or  published  words.  See,  for  example,  our explicit  statement in  Rezetko  and  Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 116 n. 266.

140  Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible , 11-12.

141  On the relative proportion of MT-related scrolls at Qumran, see the discussion in Young, 'The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Masoretic Text,' 123-125.

142  'The textual diversity visible in the Qumran evidence from the 3rd century BCE onwards is probably not representative  of  the textual situation in earlier periods,  when  the text  must  have  been  much  more fluid' (Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible , 166 n. 24). See especially Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible ,  26-27 (cf. 26-39), 184-186 (cf. 181-190). Carr summarizes the contemporary view: 'So also, in Jewish tradition, recent studies in the  history  of the  development of the  biblical text have highlighted an increasing trend toward precision of copying. Largely thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls and new analysis of the LXX [Septuagint] tradition, we now know that early biblical textual traditions tended to be more fluid, manifesting more of the kinds of semantic shifts surveyed in this chapter (among other sorts of changes). Later, however, there was an increasing emphasis on precise copying of the consonantal text, still later, a codifying and standardization of textual vocalization, and finally the accentuation of the text was fixed. Thus, both the Mesopotamian and Jewish cases show an increasing emphasis on precision in reproduction of the tradition...' (D. M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction [Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  2011],  35);  'Given  the  breadth  and  depth  of this  evidence,  the burden of proof lies not on someone who sees such changes as typical of the scribal process more generally,  but  on  one  who  would  posit  something  radically  different for earlier  stages of  development  (likely even more fluid!) that are not documented' (ibid., 134).

teuch 143 does not automatically apply to other individual books and groups of books since they were processed differently: 'differently copied and preserved...transmitted...composed and edited...translated...quoted...ordered...interpreted...authorized.' 144

Third, the witnesses to the text of the Hebrew Bible substantiate both the stability and instability of language in textual transmission. Accordingly, Mizrahi, Samet, Hornkohl, Notarius, Schniedewind, and Polak, as discussed above, are entirely correct that the MT represents a conservative and stable tradition that accurately preserves and transmits many aspects of biblical languageeven archaisms-from the period when the writings were authored and edited. However, at the same time, these scholars commit the fallacy of inferring something about a whole class of things on the basis of some instances of that thing, that is, the fallacy of insufficient evidence or sample. Instances, or even many instances, of transmission stability do not erase the very many instances of transmission instability or fluidity that are clearly evidenced-not abstractly or theoretically but practically-within the MT and between the MT and other textual traditions. 145 While the authors just  mentioned offer evidence for stability, they do not engage the extensive data that supports fluidity.

Two questions are relevant: How fluid was the text? What was fluid? We will again attempt to answer these questions to the extent possible on the basis of the surviving Hebrew evidence, also emphasizing again that the text must have been much more fluid prior to the 3rd century BCE. 146

How fluid was the text? Comparison of the MT and biblical DSS (and SP and Septuagint [LXX]) demonstrates that the text of the Hebrew Bible was highly fluid in the late Second Temple period. But what does 'highly fluid' mean? It does not mean  'unlimited fluidity.' 147 One way of quantifying the rate of variation is to focus on individual non-orthographic variants, which may in themselves cover a number of graphic units, or in some few cases, a large number of graphic units. This approach has been studied in detail from the point of view of comparison of the MT with the Qumran biblical scrolls. 148 In  this  approach,  the  largest  groupings  of  manuscripts  fall between 5 and 25 words per variant, with the largest, the 10-15 words per variant group. The mean falls at the low end of the 15-20 range. Thus, a 'normal' Qumran biblical scroll varies from the MT about once every 15 words by this measure. Note, however, that even with this approach, around a quarter of the manuscripts have less than 10 words per variant. Another way of viewing the data is to count variant graphic units, rather than variants which can often encompass more than one graphic unit. What is at issue in this method is how many individual words are variant  between  different  manuscripts.  Comprehensive  statistics  are  not  yet  available  for  this approach, but it brings out what proportion of the individual elements that make up a text are variant. For comparison, while the highly variant 4QSam a has a variant approximately every 6 words, when variant graphic units are taken into account, this increases to each variant word occurring on average once every 4 words or less. 4QSam b has a variant every 7 words, but focusing on  graphic  units  this  increases  to  1  every  5.5  words.  4QSam c has  a  variant  every  7.5  words, which increases to about 1 in 6 when the focus is variant graphic units. 1QSam gives an example of  the  effect  of  individual  large-scale  variants  on  the  statistics.  By  the  first  counting  method, when multi-word variants are counted as one, it has a ratio of 1 variant every 11 words. However, when graphic units are the measure, the ratio changes to 1 variant every 4.5 words, due to a large minus involving multiple graphic units in 2 Sam 20. 149 When we and other textual critics speak about the 'high fluidity' of the biblical text, we are therefore usually talking about a nonorthographic variation rate between individual manuscripts somewhere in the range of 5-25% on average. 150 Looking at this situation from the opposite direction, the 'high fluidity' of the bibli- cal text in the most common situations is really somewhere in the range of 75-95% continuity or stability . 151

143  As for example in Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts'; Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch.'

144  See J. C. Trebolle Barrera, 'A 'Canon Within a Canon': Two Series of Old Testament Books Differently Transmitted, Interpreted and Authorized,' RevQ 19 (2000): 383-399; idem, 'Qumran Evidence for a Biblical Standard Text and for Non-Standard and Parabiblical Texts,' in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical  Context (ed.  T.  H.  Lim,  L.  W.  Hurtado,  A.  G.  Auld,  and  A.  Jack;  Edinburgh:  T&T  Clark, 2000), 89-106. On language variations in ritual texts, especially with reference to the Pentateuch, see R. Hobson, Transforming  Literature  into  Scripture:  Texts  as  Cult  Objects  at  Nineveh  and  Qumran (BibleWorld; London: Equinox, 2012). On the formation of the Pentateuch in its textual dimensions, see A. Lange, 'From Many to One: Some Thoughts on the Hebrew Textual History of the Torah,' in The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (ed. J. C. Gertz, B. M. Levinson, D. Rom-Shiloni, and K. Schmid; FAT, 111; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 121-195.

145  See n. 137.

146  See n. 142.

147  Hornkohl, citing Hurvitz, seems to think we believe in the 'unlimited 'fluidity' of the textual tradition underlying the MT' (Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1016 n. 18), but we have never used the word 'unlimited'; rather, we have said: 'extremely' or 'highly' or 'quite' or 'very' fluid or 'massive' or 'substantial' or 'a great degree of' or 'a high degree of' fluidity.

148  See Young, 'The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Masoretic Text'; idem, 'Revised Statistics for 'The Biblical Scrolls From Qumran and the Masoretic Text: A Statistical Approach'' (https://www.academia.edu/37986280/Revised\_Statistics\_for\_The\_Biblical\_Scrolls\_From\_Qumran\_and\_the\_ Masoretic\_Text\_A\_Statistical\_Approach\_2005\_revised\_2018). For more detailed treatments of the MT and Qumran manuscripts of Judges and Samuel see, respectively, Rezetko, 'The Qumran Scrolls of the Book of Judges,' 64-65; Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 203-208; cf. Young, 'The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Masoretic Text,' 93; idem, 'The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible.'  Helpful  comparisons  of  fluidity  in  biblical  and  Mesopotamian  texts  can  be  found  in  Hobson, Transforming Literature into Scripture ;  A. Lenzi, 'Scribal Revision and Textual Variation in Akkadian Šuila -Prayers: Two Case Studies in Ritual Adaptation,' in Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism (ed. R. F. Person, Jr. and R. Rezetko; AIL, 25; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 63-108; Young, 'Textual Stability in Gilgamesh and the Dead Sea Scrolls.'

149  Young, 'The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible,' 19-20; cf. Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 203-210.

150  Note that this is only an average and it focuses only on the comparison of individual Qumran manuscripts with the MT. Accumulating the witnesses of multiple manuscripts, including those in other languages such as Greek, can lead to a situation in some verses where more than half the graphic units have attested variants (see, e.g., Young, 'The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible,' 22-23). Further, the variation rate of course fluctuates a great deal depending on the book and manuscript, and there are outliers in both

What was fluid? The answer to this question has various related facets. (1) Language was fluid, in all of its dimensions, lexical, morphological, syntactical, and so on. However, the categorization of variant readings often proves difficult or subjective, especially distinguishing linguistic variants  from  orthographic  and  content  variants,  and  almost  any  variant  may  potentially  have linguistic significance. 152 In general, linguistic variants are morphological and syntactic variants, the kinds of phenomena discussed in grammars. Such variants in biblical manuscripts are predominantly (2) sporadic and  often  involve  (3) less  common but  (4) diachronically meaningful linguistic features. We look at these last three issues in section 4. (5) Finally, in terms of language, variation rates between the MT and biblical DSS are similar to or greater than the frequency of 'late' language features in LBH writings compared to CBH writings in the MT. 153 In

directions. On the one hand, some few scrolls are close to identical to the MT. On the other, there is evidence of extremely variant texts. For example, if the Old Greek version of Daniel 5 reflects fairly directly a Semitic Vorlage ,  only about 15% of the words of the MT are directly paralleled in the Old Greek, or there is about 85% fluidity (see I. Young, 'The Original Problem: The Old Greek and the Masoretic Text of Daniel 5,' in Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism [ed. R. F. Person, Jr. and R. Rezetko; AIL, 25; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016], 271-301).

151  We emphasize that in this paragraph we have been talking about the relationships between individual extant witnesses of biblical texts. Our remarks on fluidity should not be construed to apply to earlier undocumented stages of textual transmission or to putative original texts. Again, we concur with Tov: 'The textual diversity visible in the Qumran evidence from the 3rd century BCE onwards is probably not representative of the textual situation in earlier periods, when the text must have been much more fluid' (Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible , 166 n. 24). Also, note that Hornkohl, responding in particular to our studies of Judges and Samuel (cf. n. 148), emphasizes the preservation of (authentic and diachronically meaningful) linguistic details (Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 114-115, etc.), but he does not deal with the significance of the variation rate in the context of the CBH versus LBH discussion. Samet's response also overlooks this point (cf. n. 139).

152  Hobson, Transforming Literature into Scripture , 8-28 (esp. 21-23); Young, 'Textual Stability in Gilgamesh and the Dead Sea Scrolls' 177-180; cf. Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 142.

153  For example, on the basis of the data presented in Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:132-134; cf. 353-358: Qoh 1:1-2:9; 6:1-12 has 15 unique LBH features and 25 total occurrences or 1 every 20 words. Esth 5:1-6:13a has 17 unique LBH features and 32 total occurrences or 1 every 16 words. Dan 1:1-20; 11:44-12:13 has 24 unique LBH features and 64 total occurrences or 1 every 8 words. Ezra 1:1-11; 9:1-10:2a has 25 unique LBH features and 65 total occurrences or 1 every 8 words. Neh 1:1-2:17 has 20 unique LBH features and 48 total occurrences or 1 every 10 words. 1 Chr 13:5-14; 15:25-16:3; 16:43-17:12 (synoptic) has 12 unique LBH features and 17 total occurrences or 1 every 29 words. 2 Chr 18:5-34 (synoptic) has 7 unique LBH features and 14 total occurrences or 1 every 36 words. 2 Chr 30:1-31:3 (non-synoptic) has 22 unique LBH features and 41 total occurrences or 1 every 12 words. In other samples of synoptic material in Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, Young discovered one linguistic variant every 23 words and one LBH linguistic variant every 48-50 words (Young, 'Biblical Texts Cannot be Dated Linguistically,' 349; cf. 349-351; idem, 'Textual Stability in Gilgamesh and other  words,  the  linguistic  differences  between  CBH  and  LBH  writings  are  often  very  subtle, more subtle than the linguistic differences between the MT and biblical DSS. Consequently, a suggestion like Carr's, that the 'late' linguistic profiles of (originally early) books like Song of Songs and Qoheleth could be the result of the fluidity of language in textual transmission rather than original authorship, is well within the realm of possibility. 154 Nevertheless, whether or not one accepts that a linguistic variation rate of 5-20% between the MT and biblical DSS constitutes 'high fluidity,' it  remains the case that the different linguistic profiles of CBH and LBH writings in terms of 'late' language involves a similar or even lower rate of variation or fluidity .

In conclusion, the nature of the sources of BH has profound relevance and impact on the current debate on the historical linguistics and linguistic dating of the Hebrew Bible. It is remarkable and unfortunate  that  BH  linguistic  scholarship,  where  '[l]ess  consensus  exists  regarding  attitudes toward the nature of the biblical data, including approaches to textual criticism,' 155 trails so far behind.

## 4. Documentation of Variation and Change 156

Moshavi and Notarius remark in their summary of current BH linguistic scholarship that 'there is a basic commonality of purpose and method among scholars in the field,' and, '[w]ith regard to linguistic methodology, there is broad agreement on the utility of the corpus-based approach and typological  comparison,  and  an  increasing  tendency  towards  a  nondogmatic  use  of  concepts drawn from a variety of theoretical frameworks.' 157 It  is  true  that  some  recent  publications do display the application of far more in-depth, data-driven, and methodologically-sound methods of  collecting  and  analyzing  linguistic  phenomena,  but  others  continue  to  use  methods  that  are unsuitable  for  answering  the  questions  asked  and/or  disregard  established  historical  (socio)linguistic concepts. Our comments in this section, although directed toward a lengthy series of specific issues, are general in scope.

The study of ancient Hebrew is largely the study of the language of the Hebrew Bible (MT, SP, biblical  DSS)  since  it  comprises  about  80%  of  the  ancient  Hebrew  or  pre-Mishnaic  Hebrew

the Dead Sea Scrolls,' 182). The linguistic differences between CBH and LBH writings are reduced further when it is taken into consideration that all CBH writings also have LBH features (Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:134-141). The relative infrequency of 'late' language in LBH writings compared to CBH writings is substantiated further by variation studies that document linguistic change and continuity between these groups of writings (Rezetko and Naaijer, 'An Alternative Approach to the Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew').

154  Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible, 432-455.

155  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 16.

156   Background reading: Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew ,  45-49, 211403 (chapters 7-9).

157  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 16.

(MH)  corpus. 158 Consequently,  by  itself-and  also  in  combination  with  the  several  other sources-it is fitting to take a corpus-based approach to language variation and change in ancient Hebrew,  as  recognized  by  Moshavi  and  Notarius.  One  issue  to  remember  is  that  'corpuslinguistic analyses are always based on the evaluation of some kind of frequencies,' involving occurrence, also non-occurrence (i.e., absence), and co-occurrence. 159 Another issue to keep in mind is that corpus-linguistic analyses always involve the search for consistent patterns (whether or not they exist) in the use of two or more variants (e.g., ממלכה , מלכות , מלוכה , ממלכות ) of a variable ('kingdom'). It is here in these areas that many problems quickly come into sight in the publications under review.  If they are taken as  indicators  of the current  state  of  BH  linguistic scholarship, then it is clear there is no 'broad agreement on the utility of the corpus-based approach.' Many illustrations, whether one-off examples or full-blown case studies, are problematic and unpersuasive because in one way or another they fail to correspond to the linguistic facts of the corpus; they fall short of descriptive linguistics as exhibited in other contemporary corpusbased research.

## 4.1. Complete Versus Incomplete Documentation

We mentioned above the fallacy of insufficient evidence or sample. A recurrent problem in research on diachrony in BH is the construction of linguistic arguments on the basis of incomplete evidence. It is common in the publications under review for the authors to generalize about language usage in entire books and groups of books and even purported language stages and historical periods (e.g., CBH, TBH, LBH, Qumran Hebrew [QH]) when they just cite-and often, it seems, only examined-a small part of the relevant linguistic data. Such an approach amounts to little more than prooftexting. At this stage of scholarship, and in the framework of the corpusbased approach, what is needed is complete and accurate documentation of all variants of a linguistic variable, or complete accounts of 'distribution' and 'opposition' in the wording of the conventional (Hurvitzian) linguistic dating approach to BH. Again, however, as we have documented previously in numerous places, the principle of accountability 160 continues to be neglect- ed, and routinely so. It remains the norm to cite partial linguistic data (most scholars), a few cite no linguistic data at all (Römer, Wöhrle), and only some (aim to) cite complete linguistic data (Hornkohl,  Jacobs,  Mizrahi,  Naaijer  and  Roorda).  Thorough  linguistic  data  mining  of  ancient Hebrew is still largely in its infancy.

158   The other pre-Mishnaic Hebrew sources are the non-biblical DSS (15.9%), the Wisdom of Ben Sira (2.6%), and Hebrew inscriptions (1.3%). For the percentages see DCH 8:9; cf. Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 63.

159  S. T. Gries, 'What is Corpus Linguistics?,' Language and Linguistics Compass 3 (2009): 1-17 (2-3; emphasis original).

160  'Accountability requires that all the relevant forms in the subsystem of grammar that you have targeted for investigation, not simply the variant of interest, are included in the analysis. The idea is that the analyst cannot gain access to how a variant functions in the grammar without considering it in the context of the subsystem of which it is a part. Then, each use of the variant under investigation can be reported as a proportion of the total number of relevant constructions, i.e. the total number of times the function (i.e. the  same  meaning)  occurred  in  the  data...'  (S.  A.  Tagliamonte, Variationist  Sociolinguistics:  Change, Observation, Interpretation [Language in Society 40; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012], 10; cf. 9-11, 19-21); 'principle of accountability[:] a methodological axiom; all contexts of a variable must be taken into account, including all contexts in which the variants occurred, as well as those in which they could

## 4.2. Sporadic Versus Systematic Variation

According to some contributors there are 'unmistakable constellations of late linguistic features' in LBH and QH 161  or 'systemic differences' or 'systemic changes' between CBH and LBH and QH. 162 However, the linguistic data cited fail to support such assertions since either the documentation is incomplete or consistent patterns in the use of two or more variants of a particular variable are unsubstantiated. In actual fact, scholars have documented few if any systematic (or systemic)  differences  between  the  language  of  CBH  writings  like  Genesis-Kings  and  the  language of LBH writings like Esther-Chronicles. Almost all the examples cited are sporadic variants of different variables which occur infrequently within any particular writing and across different  writings  that  are  customarily  dated  similarly. 163 In  other  words,  the  examples  cited  are

have  occurred but  did  not  [zero-instances]'  (idem, Analysing  Sociolinguistic  Variation [Key  Topics  in Sociolinguistics; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 265).

161 Hornkohl,  'Hebrew  Diachrony  and  the  Linguistic  Periodisation  of  Biblical  Texts,'  1008;  cf.  1019, 1056-1057.

162  Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch,' 332-333; idem, 'The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls,' 87, 89-92; idem, 'Late Biblical Hebrew and Qumran Hebrew: A Diachronic View,' in The Reconfiguration of Hebrew in the Hellenistic Period: Proceedings of the  Seventh  International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 (ed. J.  Joosten,  D.  Machiela,  and  J.-S.  Rey;  STDJ,  124;  Leiden:  Brill,  2018),  93-103  (101-103);  Mizrahi, 'Linguistic Change through the Prism of Textual Transmission,' 42. The words 'systematic' and 'systemic' are not synonymous, but it is clear from their discussions that the few scholars who use the word 'systemic' in relation to BH are thinking also of regular, consistent, or 'systematic' variations. Other less egregious, or less problematic, and in some cases acceptable, references to the notions of sporadic (arbitrary, random, etc.) versus systematic or systemic variation include: Jacobs, 'The Balance of Probability,' 932, 938, 940; Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 868 n. 7, 877; Naaijer and Roorda, 'Syntactic Variation in Masoretic Hebrew,' 968; Notarius, 'Lexical Isoglosses of Archaic Hebrew,' 8384; idem, 'The Second-Person Non-Negated Jussive in Biblical Hebrew and Ancient Northwest Semitic,' 142 n. 49; Polak, 'Oral Platform and Language Usage in the Abraham Narrative,' 431; Young, 'Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew,' 108-109, 114.

163  Rezetko, 'The (Dis)Connection between Textual and Linguistic Developments in the Book of Jeremiah'; idem, 'The Qumran Scrolls of the Book of Judges'; Rezetko and Naaijer, 'An Alternative Approach to  the  Lexicon  of  Late  Biblical  Hebrew';  Rezetko  and  Young, Historical  Linguistics  and  Biblical  Hebrew , 117-210, 245-403 (chapters 4-6, 8-9); Young, ''Loose' Language in 1QIsa a '; idem, 'Patterns of Linguistic  Forms  in  the  Masoretic  Text';  idem,  'Starting  at  the  Beginning  with  Archaic  Biblical  Hebrew'; Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:83-90, 111-119. In particular, we have shown repeatedly and conclusively that the incidence of 'late' language in late biblical writings is sporadic and idiosyncratic. The outstanding (near) exception is the plene spelling of 'David' as דויד rather than דוד in Ezra-Chronicles, but even in this case some other undisputed late sources show

marginal phenomena. A similar situation of non-systematic (or non-systemic) variation generally holds for textual variants between different textual traditions and manuscripts (MT, SP, biblical DSS) of individual biblical writings. 164

## 4.3. Individual Versus Group Variation

In  numerous  publications  we  have  underlined  the  principle  of  individuality  which  means  that occurrences in separate  compositions rather than (only)  groups of writings are considered and compared. 165 Nevertheless, it remains commonplace in much work based on insufficient data to overestimate linguistic uniformity or homogeneity  in CBH, or LBH, or QH writings. 166 In  response, Jacobs discusses this issue further, and he makes some headway in support of the conventional  groupings  of  CBH  and  LBH  books with  regard  to  one  particular  linguistic  feature . Specifically,  he  examines  the  distribution  of  the he-locale (directional/directive he )  and  com-

exceptions and it is also likely that the distribution of these forms is due, at least partly, to scribes rather than  authors  (Rezetko  and  Young, Historical  Linguistics  and  Biblical  Hebrew ,  456-459).  Hornkohl's counterargument does not refute the main points being made here about 'David' or the nearly complete absence of systematic (or systemic) linguistic differences between CBH and LBH and QH writings (A. D. Hornkohl, 'Characteristically Late Spellings in the Hebrew Bible: With Special Reference to the Plene Spelling of the o -vowel in the Qal Infinitive Construct,' JAOS 134 [2014]: 643-671 [653-655]).

164  See the references in the preceding n. 163. Hornkohl contests this as well, but his analysis of parallel material in the MT Pentateuch and several quasi-biblical DSS works (4QComGen, 4QRP) actually shows that as far as different linguistic variables are concerned, there is no 'array' or 'pattern' of late for classical variation (or 'replacement') but only periodic variation (or 'replacement'), and also, since he does not clearly display the data of individual manuscripts, it is very difficult even to judge rates of variation (or 'replacement') (Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts'). (We put 'replacement' in quotation marks because Hornkohl's assumption is unidirectional, MT features are replaced elsewhere.) Other recent publications that support our assessment of the MT and the biblical DSS, against Hornkohl's contestation, include R. Oosting, 'Changes of Syntactic Patterns in the Textual Tradition of the Book of Isaiah: A Corpus-Linguistic Approach,' HIPHIL Novum 4 (2017): 13-22; J. M. Lundberg, 'Long or Short? The Use of Long and Short Wayyiqṭols in Biblical, Parabiblical and Commentary Scrolls from Qumran,' in Studies in Semitic Linguistics and Manuscripts: A Liber Discipulorum in Honour  of  Professor  Geoffrey  Khan (ed.  N.  Vidro,  R.  Vollandt,  E.-M.  Wagner,  and  J.  OlszowySchlanger;  AAUSSU,  30;  Uppsala:  Uppsala  University,  2018),  57-74  (however,  this  essay  has  other shortcomings related to the reporting of MT data and incomplete documentation of both occurrences and non-occurrences or  zero-instances);  and  especially  J.  Jacobs, Statistics,  Linguistics,  and  the  'Biblical' Dead Sea Scrolls (JSSSup, 40; Oxford, 2018). Jacobs' analysis of the MT and biblical DSS finds only four features that can be considered distinctive of the scrolls: pluses of the directive he , pluses and minuses of the conjunction vav , shifts toward vav plus imperfect, and shifts from singular to plural nouns. At the same time, however, the analysis does not reveal any large-scale patterns of change within the scrolls connected to diachronic development, dialect, or, more specifically, to QH in general.

165   See,  for  example,  Rezetko  and  Young, Historical  Linguistics  and  Biblical  Hebrew ,  227-228  (with references to other cross-linguistic studies), 238-242, 398-399, 407.

166   For instance, take Hornkohl's treatment of the MT Pentateuch and several quasi-biblical DSS works (see n. 164), but the problem is hardly restricted to this publication.

pares his findings to those of Hornkohl and Rezetko and Young. 167 He draws four main conclusions: first, there is a statistically valid difference between the use of the he-locale in  the CBH and LBH books; thus there is some credence to these different groupings of books; second, there is no statistically significant difference in the use of the non-standard use of the he-locale in the CBH and LBH books; thus these books should not be grouped when analyzing the non-standard use of the he-locale ; third, while there is a clear difference between these two corpora, this difference is not consistent with a diachronic interpretation; and fourth, the grouping of texts should be supported by evidence for each feature of Hebrew language studies.

## 4.4. Common Versus Uncommon Language

Linguists speak often about usual and rare linguistic features and in relation to all sorts of contexts such as a particular writing, corpus of writings, genre, dialect, period, and so on. Needless to  say,  this  is  true  also  for  BH  where  common  features  like  the  relative  pronoun ֶ ר א ֲ ש (5574 times) greatly overshadow the uncommon ש ֶ ־ (142 times; mainly in Psalms, Song of Songs, and Qoheleth) by a ratio of almost 40 to 1. It is also well known that uncommon words, forms, and constructions may be less well understood or welcomed and therefore more susceptible to being replaced by more common ones in speech and writing. This too is true for BH where it is often suggested, for example, that uncommon items in Samuel-Kings were replaced by common ones in Chronicles, for example, 2 Sam 6:16's ַ ז ֵּ ז מ ְּ פ ֵּ ר ְְּכ כ ַ ר וּמ ְּ by 1 Chr 15:29's ֵּ ד ַ ק מ ְּ ר ֵּ ק ַ ח וּמ ְּ ש . 168 On the basis of observations like these and careful analysis of parallel passages in the MT and between the  MT  and  other  textual  witnesses  such  as  the  biblical  DSS,  we  noticed  time  after  time  that large-scale, basic, common linguistic features of BH rarely show variation and thus were presumably highly stable in textual transmission, whereas less common items were highly fluid (i.e., variable), and consequently only with much caution and great doubt should these less common items be relied on as evidence of the earliest compositional stages of biblical literature or of the (original) language of particular authors at particular times and in particular places. 169 Nevertheless, it is precisely these less common features, many of which appear sporadically only in the corpus of LBH, 170 that have played the biggest role in historical linguistic and linguistic dating studies of BH writings.

167   Jacobs,  'The  Balance  of  Probability,'  941-957;  Hornkohl, Ancient  Hebrew  Periodization  and  the Language of the Book of Jeremiah ,  203-217;  Rezetko  and  Young, Historical  Linguistics  and  Biblical Hebrew , 374-394. Note also this justification of his approach by Hornkohl: 'The approach I adopt in this study, according to which, for example, CBH Masoretic texts, the MT's core LBH material, and the biblical DSS I treat as more-or-less well-defined corpora, is justified in light of their respective linguistic profiles. This is not to say that the individual texts that comprise each corpus are linguistically homogenous. For example, the language of the books (and even component compositions) that comprise the Masoretic Torah is not unified. Also, as I readily admit below, in the face of widespread orthographic and linguistic development  in  the  case  of  DSS  biblical  material,  specific  manuscripts  exhibit  striking  conservatism. Even so, it seems useful to group compositions, biblical or otherwise, on the basis of linguistic similarity, diachronic and otherwise...' (Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost,' 56 n. 5). However, the 'usefulness' (subjective convenience) of grouping compositions is not an adequate 'justification' (objective validation) for doing so.

168 פזז x3 in BH; כרר x2; רקד x9; שחק / צחק x49 (Piel x24). See, for example, S. Japhet, 'Interchanges of Verbal Roots in Parallel Texts in Chronicles,' HS 28 (1987): 9-50 (12, 14). As an aside, in actual fact textcritical evidence raises doubt about this explanation in this case (cf. Rezetko, Source and Revision in the Narratives of David's Transfer of the Ark , 240-241).

In addition to Young, 171 there are several other contributors to the publications under review who discuss the issue of common versus uncommon language. Dean examines Aramaisms-a sort of less common linguistic feature of BH-in parallel MT and biblical DSS material, concluding that they were not stable during the transmission of the biblical text; consequently Aramaisms cannot be safely assumed to have been part of the 'original' form of the text; hence Aramaisms are an unreliable criterion for linguistic dating. 172 Bloch, referring to the illustration of ש ֶ ־ and ֶ ר א ֲ ש in 4QJudg a and MT Judg 6:13, respectively, comments: 'There is no doubt that in some instances, nonstandard features in the language of the biblical books were eliminated by ancient copyists who replaced them with more standard features....No definite answer to this question can be given, which illustrates the difficulty of applying historical-linguistic analysis to a literary text [= the Hebrew Bible] copied and recopied through generations.' 173

169  For in-depth analysis and discussion, see Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 87-88, 110-115, 406-409, and especially 145-210 with 413-591. See also our many other relevant publications cited in n. 72. The notion of common and less common linguistic features is the outcome of inductive research on language variation within the MT and between the MT and other textual witnesses. We did not approach the texts with some preconceived common/less common linguistic research method, but just happened to discover what we did after a multitude of observations. Some have misunderstood our approach, such as Notarius in her review-essay of our Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew . See T. Notarius, 'Just a Little Bend on the S-Curve: The Rise and Fall of Linguistic Change in Post-Classical Biblical Hebrew,' SJOT 32  (2018): 201-216, and our response, R. Rezetko and I. Young, 'Bending It Too Far: Response to Tania Notarius, 'Just a Little Bend on the S-Curve: The Rise and Fall of Linguistic Change in Post-Classical Biblical Hebrew,' SJOT 32 (2018): 201-216' (http://www.academia.edu/37418069/2018a\_Rezetko\_Young\_Bending\_It\_Too\_Far\_Response\_to\_Notarius\_Ju st\_a\_Little\_Bend\_on\_the\_S-Curve).

170  Several other issues come into play here. One is the issue of sufficient versus insufficient tokens of a particular  linguistic  variant  (cf.  Rezetko  and  Young, Historical  Linguistics  and Biblical  Hebrew ,  229231). Another is the greater instability and variability of the lexicon as opposed to the morphology and syntax of a language (cf. R. Rezetko, 'Dating Biblical Hebrew: Evidence from Samuel-Kings and Chronicles,' in Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology [ed. I. Young; JSOTSup, 369; London: T&T Clark, 2003], 215-250 [245-249]; Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:71).

171   Young, 'Ancient Hebrew Without Authors'; idem, 'Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew.'

172  Dean, 'Aramaisms.'

173   Bloch,  'Aramaic  Influence  and  Inner  Diachronic  Development  in  Hebrew  Inscriptions  of  the  Iron Age,' 85 n. 5.

## 4.5. Meaningful Versus Non-Meaningful Language

Some of our authors discuss the notion of meaningful language. To begin, all should admit the subjectivity of deciding what has a 'serious, important, or useful quality or purpose' 174 when it comes to linguistic forms and uses. Two matters come into play here, first 'diachronically [or: chronologically, historically] meaningful [or: relevant, significant]' language, and second a significant accumulation of late language. We discuss the first issue here and the second issue below. In these volumes and elsewhere, Hornkohl expresses his opinion on different linguistic features and patterns (or: arrays) of distribution (or: development), both within the MT and between the MT and the biblical and non-biblical DSS, that in his mind carry or do not carry diachronic weight. 175 These features and patterns are by and large the conventional ones. His main points regarding 'diachronically meaningful' language are, first, there is generally a situation of stability between the MT and DSS, and second, when there are differences between these, it is usually the  MT  that  has  the  classical  feature  and  the  DSS  that  have  the  post-classical  alternative. Young's lengthy response to Hornkohl underlines three points about the criterion of 'diachronically meaningful': first, it is selective, because features and patterns that do not fit the conventional paradigm are discounted or unrecognized; second, it is circular, because the approach is based on the conventional CBH → LBH → QH framework; third, it is ambiguous, because the distribution of the 'late' items is less straightforward than Hornkohl and others acknowledge. 176

## 4.6. Macro-Diachrony Versus Micro-Diachrony

One contributor makes a distinction between macro- and micro-diachrony, or more specifically between macro-diachronic change versus micro-diachronic variation. Klein says:

It  will be useful here to distinguish two aspects of what is traditionally labelled 'historical linguistics':  microdiachronic linguistics and  macrodiachronic linguistics. 177 The first  deals with language change in the interstitial time span of generation to generation; the latter deals with  time  intervals  measurable  not  in  generations  but  in  centuries.  The  former  yields  the basic  material  for  change reflected  in  competing  variants;  the  latter  yields  linguistic  salta- tions  in  which  the  victorious  variants  are  on  display,  but  not  the  internecine  competitions which have produced them. 178

174  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/meaningful.

175   Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost,' passim; idem, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' passim.

176  Young, 'Ancient Hebrew Without Authors,' 987-997.

177  Here Klein cites one of his earlier publications where he says: 'Although we would like to determine historical truth to as fine-tuned a degree as possible, in most instances (indeed, in nearly all that really matter in (relatively) distant linguistic reconstruction) we must be content with long-range saltations on a fairly large scale...The actual internal steps in the historical processes yielding our attested forms are as a rule irrecoverable. and [sic] it is probably just as well that this is so, since the intermediate 'noise' has been filtered out...It is a measure of the remarkable efficacy of our diachronic methodologies that we can in fact make macrodiachronic sense out of the often overdetailed historical record...' (J. S. Klein, 'Theory VS Practice in Diachronic Linguistics,' Language Sciences 21 [1999]: 87-104 [92]).

As  an  example  of  macro-diachronic  change,  a  'real'  and  'full-blown'  diachronic  change  in BH, 179 he  discusses  the  establishment  of ש ֶ ל as  an  independent  lexical  item  as  seen  in  Qoh 8:17. 180 What is more, he considers that such internal linguistic processes or changes or 'processual linguistic change[s],' 181 which point outward from a starting point to an end point, stand out against the many lexical and grammatical case studies in our Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew which he regards as examples of micro-diachronic change since those show, in his view, synchronic variation rather than diachronic change. 182 As a matter of fact, this is also our view. Klein is correct that those studies provide evidence for variation rather than change-in the best case scenarios, changes underway and not completed or systematic changes-and this is what we argued, in point of fact, against the conventional viewpoints on the features studied. That said, we disagree with Klein that the variationist analyses in our monograph are, in theory, inadequate for  uncovering  macro-diachronic  change  in  ancient  Hebrew.  For  example,  using  variationist analysis, Raumolin-Brunberg demonstrates that the object form you came to be used in the subject function, gradually ousting the older alternative ye from the language, from the introduction of you as subject in the 14th century to the completion of the change by the end of the 16th century. 183 If  the  Hebrew  Bible  was  written  over  roughly  a  1000-year  period-compared  to  the roughly 250-year period related to the ye / you change-then it is reasonable to conclude that variationist  analysis  would,  in  theory,  succeed  in  revealing  at  least  some  completed  or  systematic changes,  or  both  competing  (micro-diachronic  variation) and victorious  (macro-diachronic change) variants. Given that it does not succeed in revealing these says very little about the theory and method of variationist analysis, but it speaks volumes about the production of the Hebrew Bible. Either it  was  composed and/or edited over a much shorter period of time, or the same literary language was used throughout the entire period of its production, or its language was updated as time passed thus smoothing over diachronic changes .  In  agreement with us, Klein himself allows for these possibilities. 184

178  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 869.

179 Ibid., 869, 872.

180  Ibid., 870-872.

181 Ibid., 876.

182  Ibid., 865, 867, 869, 873.

183   H.  Raumolin-Brunberg, 'The Diffusion of Subject 'You': A Case Study in Historical Sociolinguistics,' Language Variation and Change 17 (2005): 55-73. Variationist analysis displays the change over about three hundred years on the 'macro' level (p. 60). Note that Klein associates micro-diachrony with sociolinguistics and macro-diachrony with 'language history' (Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 869), but the  discipline  of  historical  sociolinguistics,  displayed  in  Raumolin-Brunberg  essay and in our Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , aims precisely to bridge the disciplines of sociolinguistics and historical linguistics.

184  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 876-879.

## 4.7. Illustrative Versus Diagnostic Use of S-Curves

Holmstedt was the first to invoke the s-curve in BH studies, 185 but around the same time it was embraced by Kim, 186 and then in other publications by Holmstedt and several others. 187

Regrettably, however, despite our detailed evaluation of their use of the s-curve, 188 these other authors continue to want to use it, illegitimately, as a diagnostic/prescriptive tool rather than as an illustrative/descriptive model. 189 The truth is, linguists, historical linguists, and historical sociolinguists are of the opinion that the s-curve is a descriptively adequate model for many and perhaps  most  instances  of  language  variation  and  change;  however,  none  of  these  ( including those scholars and publications cited by Holmstedt et al . 190 ) have attempted to use the s-curve as a diagnostic tool for the sequencing (relative dating) of written text specimens. There are some strong and compelling reasons for not using the s-curve in this way.

185 R.  D.  Holmstedt, Ruth: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text (Baylor  Handbook on the Hebrew Bible; Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010), 31. In Rezetko and Young, Historical  Linguistics  and  Biblical Hebrew ,  239  n.  97,  we  made  a  mistake  when  we  claimed  that  Kim  invoked  the  s-curve  prior  to Holmstedt.

186  D.-H. Kim, 'The Use of Linguistic Evidence in the Dating of Biblical Hebrew Texts: A Sociolinguistic Evaluation'  (PhD  thesis,  Yale  University,  2011);  idem, Early  Biblical  Hebrew,  Late  Biblical  Hebrew, and  Linguistic  Variability:  A  Sociolinguistic  Evaluation  of  the  Linguistic  Dating  of  Biblical  Texts (VTSup, 156; Leiden: Brill, 2013).

187  J. A. Cook, 'Detecting Development in Biblical Hebrew Using Diachronic Typology,' 83-95 (88-93); B. E. Dresher, 'Methodological Issues in the Dating of Linguistic Forms: Considerations from the Perspective of Contemporary Linguistic Theory,' 19-38 (24-31, 33-36); R. D. Holmstedt, 'Historical Linguistics  and  Biblical  Hebrew,'  97-124  (101-104,  108-119),  in Diachrony in  Biblical  Hebrew (ed.  C. Miller-Naudé and Z. Zevit; LSAWS, 8; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012); R. D. Holmstedt, 'The Grammar of ש and אשר in Qohelet,' in The Words of the Wise Are like Goads: Engaging Qohelet in the 21st Century (ed.  M. J. Boda, T. Longman III, and C. G. Rata; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 283-307  (296-299);  idem,  'Investigating  the  Possible  Verb-Subject  to  Subject-Verb  Shift  in  Ancient Hebrew: Methodological First Steps,' KUSATU 15 (2013): 3-31 (12-13); idem, The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew (LSAWS, 10; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 241-244; J. Screnock and R. D. Holmstedt, Esther:  A  Handbook  on  the  Hebrew  Text (Baylor  Handbook  on  the  Hebrew  Bible;  Waco: Baylor University Press, 2015), 21-22; R. D. Holmstedt, J. A. Cook, and P. S. Marshall, Qoheleth: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text (Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible; Waco: Baylor University Press, 2017),  36-37  nn.  24-25;  J.  Screnock,  'The  Syntax  of  Complex  Adding  Numerals  and  Hebrew  Diachrony,' JBL 137 (2018): 789-819 (793, 800, 805, 811); cf. Notarius, 'The Second-Person Non-Negated Jussive  in  Biblical  Hebrew  and  Ancient  Northwest  Semitic,'  125;  idem,  'Just  a  Little  Bend  on  the  SCurve.'

188  Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 223-226, 233-243.

189  Screnock initially acknowledges some 'potential pitfalls' with the use of the s-curve but his use of it in his subsequent case studies actually succumbs to those drawbacks (Screnock, 'The Syntax of Complex Adding Numerals and Hebrew Diachrony,' 793).

190  For example, in Holmstedt, Cook, and Marshall, Qoheleth , 36 n. 24, where they cite publications by Bailey, Kroch, Pintzuk, and Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg. We repeat, these scholars and publications do not use the s-curve as a diagnostic tool for dating; they work with dated texts .

First, and most importantly, empirical studies have shown that the s-curve is not a universal pattern  of  frequency  change  in  language,  that  is,  not  all  language  variation  and  change  proceeds according to the s-curve shape. 191

Second, illustrated by a study of the history of genitive variability in English (the of -genitive and the s -genitive), Szmrecsanyi reaches the verdict 'that text frequencies are a regrettably unreliable and inconclusive diagnostic of grammar change: they are at best inconclusive, and at worst misleading. The reason is that the all-other-things-being-equal condition, which typically underpins frequency-driven reasoning about grammar change, is rarely met in historical linguistics...Thus, we advocate conservatism; before positing grammar change, the analyst needs to rule out alternative explanations. In this context, Occam's razor is useful: the principle reminds us to choose the simplest explanation consistent with the facts - and grammar change, alas, is typically not the simplest explanation of frequency fluctuation.' 192

Third, when attempting to track language change in progress it is crucial to control for the independent variables of dialect, genre, register, and various social factors-not to mention time it- self!-but this is very difficult and often impossible to do when dealing with written text specimens, especially those that are long-duration writings for which the demographics of the authors, editors, and copyists are uncertain or unknown.

191   For example, Nevalainen discusses stable variation, s-curves, inverted s-curves, and potentially continuous/repetitive u-shaped curves (T. Nevalainen, 'Descriptive Adequacy of the S-Curve Model in Diachronic  Studies  of  Language  Change,'  in Can  We  Predict  Linguistic  Change? [ed.  C.  SanchezStockhammer; Studies in Variation,  Contacts  and  Change  in  English,  16;  Helsinki:  VARIENG,  2015] [http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/16/nevalainen]). Feltgen et al. discuss s-curves, Bass curves, and change according to an exponential (Q. Feltgen, B. Fagard, and J.-P. Nadal, 'Frequency Patterns of Semantic  Change:  Corpus-Based  Evidence  of  a  Near-Critical  Dynamics  in  Language  Change,' Royal Society Open Science ,  November 2017 [https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170830]). Similarly, Ghanbarnejad et al.  describe various linguistic changes that do not follow universal s-curves (F. Ghanbarnejad, M. Gerlach,  J.  M.  Miotto,  and  E.  G.  Altmann,  'Extracting  Information  from  S-Curves  of  Language  Change,' Journal  of  the  Royal  Society  Interface 11  [2014]  [http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.1044]).  Note  also Labov's description  of  language  changes  in  progress  in  Philadelphia  which  are  the  major  focus  of  his volume: 'The recalcitrant nature of that data is displayed in three common features of change in progress: 1 Linguistic changes show a sporadic character, beginning and ending abruptly at times that are not predicted by any universal principles. 2 Stable, long-term variation that persists over many centuries in much the same form is perhaps even more common than changes which go to completion. 3 It is not uncommon to find retrograde movements, where the direction of change reverses, or opposing directions of movement in parallel  communities'  (W.  Labov, Principles  of  Linguistic  Change,  Volume  2:  Social  Factors [Language in Society 29; Malden: Blackwell, 2001], 75). Contrast Holmstedt's remarks: 'The process [of change] may unfold relatively quickly or quite slowly; however it unfolds, the statistical  research has shown the S-curve to be the expected result of the change over time ' (Holmstedt, The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew , 241; emphasis added); '...if the features commonly cited were plotted along the dimensions of time and frequency, an S-curve such as the one above would emerge ...' (idem, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 103; emphasis added).

192  B. Szmrecsanyi, 'About Text Frequencies in Historical Linguistics: Disentangling Environmental and Grammatical Change,' Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 12 (2016): 153-171 (168).

Fourth, another complicating factor is that not all speakers or writers adopt a linguistic innovation simultaneously. Highly fluctuating rates of adoption are exhibited by conservatives, moderates, and progressives. Consequently, in any given speech community or text corpus, there are usually coexistent and competing language variants which are in the process of adoption (or rejection) with different degrees and rates.

These points have not been dealt with adequately by those scholars who have attempted to use the s-curve as a diagnostic tool to sequence the writings of the Hebrew Bible.

Fifth, and finally, the case studies undertaken by us corroborate that most BH linguistic phenomena conforms poorly to the s-curve shape, despite looking at comprehensive data for the features examined and organizing the writings according to the conventional tripartite periodization of biblical writings with which many Hebraists and biblicists would more or less agree. 193 Furthermore, we are unconvinced that the few case studies offered by others as support for the use of the s-curve as a diagnostic tool actually support their contention. 194

In conclusion, due to the preceding general and specific factors, we believe it is more than problematic, it is impossible, to sequence the writings of the Hebrew Bible by using the s-curve model as a diagnostic tool. Rather, the contours of language variation and change must be established independently. Rogers explains: 'The S-curve of diffusion is so ubiquitous that students of diffusion  often  expect  every  innovation  to  be  adopted  over  time  in  an  S-shaped  pattern.  However, certain innovations do not display an S-shaped rate of adoption, perhaps for some idiosyncratic reason...The main point here is not to assume that an S-shaped rate of adoption is an inevitability. Rather, the shape of the adopter distribution for a particular innovation ought to be regarded as an open question, to be determined empirically. In most cases when this has been done in past research, an adopter distribution is found to follow a bell-shaped, normal curve or is S-shaped on a cumulative basis.' 195 However, as he observes, that is not an inevitability, and consequently the

193  Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 245-403; Rezetko and Naaijer, 'An Alternative Approach to the Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew.' We have attributed the fluctuating distributions of linguistic variants, to a substantial degree, to Labov's notion of 'change from above' (Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 401-402, 407-408).

ָ

194  For general remarks on their case studies see Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 239-240. For specific comments see: on J. A. Cook's analysis of the decline of the Qal perfect of ידע expressing a present state, Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 240 n. 99; on Dresher's and Kim's analyses of כ ָ ה ְּ ל מ ַ מ and ל ְּ כוּת מ ַ (and other words), Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 329-350; on Holmstedt's analysis of ֶ ר א ֲ ש and ש ֶ ־ , Rezetko, 'The Qumran Scrolls of the Book of Judges,' 40-42; on Kim's analysis of צעק and זעק , Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 278-282; and on Kim's analysis of ֵ ָ ם - and יה ֶ ם ֵ ֵּ -, Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 351-374.

195  E. M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (5th edn; New York: Free Press, 2003), 277.

adopter distribution or temporal dimension of the s-curve must flow from the distribution of the data and not be written over the top of the data. And this is, in fact, what other language experts also assert: 'As an empirical tool to measure the progress of linguistic change, the S-curve pattern is usually constructed following the periodization adopted by the compilers of a given text corpus .' 196

Forbes, in three recent publications, 197 has interacted with the use of the s-curve by Holmstedt, 198 who wishes to use it as 'an approximating diagnostic tool to check the plausibility of a diachronic analysis,' 199 and by us in our Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , where we use it as 'a heuristic model or technique for displaying the distributional patterns of coexisting 'old' and 'new' linguistic items.' 200 The point of contention is whether the s-curve has value as a diagnostic tool for the sequencing (relative dating) of written text specimens, and if so then to what degree?

Forbes seems to agree with aspects of both sides of the discussion. On the one hand, he believes that Holmstedt's 'stance [on the use of the s-curve as an approximating diagnostic tool to check the plausibility of a diachronic analysis] is reasonable.' 201 On the other hand, he says: 'I have warned  against  assuming  a  functional  form  for  s-curves  (in  agreement  with  Rezetko  and Young...) and have shown how non-monopolisation, non-monotonicity, and fluctuation seriously compromise the usefulness of simple s-curves. I have used confidence interval theory to show how the fluctuations associated with small samples cause intuitive s-curves to be misleading. I have shown how a small adjustment in the composition of a corpus can alter the ordering of its so-called 'EBH-LBH' feature values across sub-corpora.' 202 As an alternative to the s-curve he therefore suggests using seriation of multiple linguistic features. 203

196   Nevalainen,  'Descriptive  Adequacy  of  the  S-Curve  Model  in  Diachronic  Studies  of  Language Change' (emphasis added).

197  Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods,' 900-914); idem, 'On Dating Biblical Hebrew Texts: Sources of Uncertainty/Analytic Options,' in From Ancient Manuscripts to Modern Dictionaries: Select Studies in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek (ed. T. Li and K. Dyer; Perspectives on Linguistics and Ancient Languages, 9; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2017), 247-272 (254-260, 268); idem, 'Two Candidate  Approaches to Text Sequencing: An Addendum to 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods,'' JSem 26 (2017): 710-716.

198   Holmstedt, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew'; idem, The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew .

199  Holmstedt, The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew , 242 n. 41.

200  Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 225.

201  Forbes, 'Two Candidate Approaches to Text Sequencing,' 714.

202  Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods,' 922. 'That BH linguistic phenomena typically  diffuse  into  use  in  rough  accordance  with  an  's-curve'  was  a  valid  insight  of  Holmstedt...and Cook...However, the curse of fluctuating data muddled the details of their informal s-curves....Based on the [confidence intervals], many orderings of the corpora might be made. Ordering the texts from smallest-to-largest value is misleading' (ibid., 905-906). In the light of Forbes' seemingly mediating position, Holmstedt et al. seem to us to be a little too enthusiastic when they say that Forbes has given a 'statistical

Forbes approaches the debate with a high level of scientific rigor and statistical sophistication and he expresses relevant criticisms of both sides 204 while also offering some valuable insights for  potentially  making  significant  advances.  This  said,  we  should  return  to  our  points  above against using the s-curve as a diagnostic tool to sequence biblical writings.

First and foremost, Forbes' concurrence with Holmstedt, that the use of the s-curve as a diagnostic tool is a reasonable stance, is problematized by the fact that diachronicians of language do not use  it  this  way,  for  the  reasons  summarized  above.  It  seems  to  us  that  Forbes  has  agreed  too quickly with Holmstedt et al.'s idiosyncratic diagnostic use of the s-curve. Again, Nevalainen describes the same perspective that we have encountered in all the literature we have examined: 'As an empirical tool to measure the progress of linguistic change, the S-curve pattern is usually constructed following  the  periodization  adopted  by  the  compilers  of  a  given  text  corpus .' 205 Therefore,  Forbes' remark is correct, 'Historical linguists typically  wish  to  fit  an  s-curve  to  a dated linguistic feature , thereby quantitating the extent to which standard innovation theory approximates the observed data,' 206 except that we are unaware of any exception, such that Forbes' 'typically' seems to be an understatement (and Nevalainen's 'usually' also seems to be an understatement).

Second, it is uncertain, and it actually seems doubtful, that Forbes' alternative suggestion for text sequencing (i.e., seriation) will itself be able to control adequately for the various independent variables and different rates of adoption that are likely associated with the linguistic phenomena of the BH writings. There is also the matter of the complex production history of the Hebrew Bible. Forbes makes this cautious statement: 'Whether innovative seriation methods can be used to advance diachronic analysis is an open question. The extent of the various kinds of noise afflicting our texts may prevent success...We shall only know whether this is the case after we carry  out  the  analysis.' 207 Among  'the  various  kinds  of  noise  afflicting  our  texts'  he  includes transmission noise, but since, as we saw above, he admits that the use of linguistic information to recover the preceding composition/redaction history of the Hebrew Bible is improbable ('misguided'), how could seriation really help to answer questions about the dates of origin of the biblical writings?

defense of using the S-curve as a diagnostic tool' and a 'convincing rebuttal of recent arguments [by Rezetko  and  Young]  against  using  the  S-curve  as  a  diagnostic  tool'  (Holmstedt,  Cook,  and  Marshall, Qoheleth , 36-37 nn. 24-25).

203   Forbes,  'The  Diachrony  Debate:  A  Tutorial  On  Methods,'  914-921;  idem,  'Two  Candidate  Approaches to Text Sequencing,' 715.

204  For example, we agree that the illustrative use of the s-curve in our Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew would have benefited greatly from some of the comments in Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods,' 906-914.

205   Nevalainen,  'Descriptive  Adequacy  of  the  S-Curve  Model  in  Diachronic  Studies  of  Language Change' (emphasis added).

206  Forbes, 'Two Candidate Approaches to Text Sequencing,' 711 (emphasis added).

207  Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods,' 922.

Third, it would be much appreciated and very helpful if Forbes would 'carry out the analysis' on a set of BH data, in addition to the Middle English data he has examined, so that we could get a feel for the viability of his seriation approach for biblical literature.

Finally, returning to Holmstedt's stance on the s-curve, we challenge him to cite even one discussion by historical (socio)linguists of other languages where it is used as a 'diagnostic tool,' and we challenge him to produce just three s-curves of relatively frequent BH linguistic data that coincide  for  most  of  the  individual  biblical  writings  and  therefore  might  support  a  plausible chronology of the production of those writings. 208

## 4.8. Cross-Linguistic Data, Language Typology, and Diachronic Typology

In addition to the more traditional major techniques of historical linguistics-internal reconstruction and the comparative method (evident in many of the contributions under review)-a handful of contributors make use of language typology (study of the ways in which languages are similar and different) and, especially relevant to our interests, diachronic typology (historical linguistics using a typological method). 209 Moshavi and Notarius rightly underscore this as one of the recent advances in BH linguistics. 210 In essays on ABH, Notarius incorporates cross-linguistic data on imperative-hortative paradigms, 211 elsewhere she has limited recourse to typological comparison of several lexical isoglosses between Hebrew and Canaanite and Ugaritic, 212 and Korchin argues 'that the thetical profiles within our Archaic Biblical Hebrew and Sargonic Akkadian test corpo- ra  preserve  relatively  early  evidence  for  a  parallel  diachronic  development  toward  increasing three-dimensional (discourse) complexity, analogous to that of their substrate grammaticalization pathways.' 213 Finally, the Naudés provide additional evidence from the cross-linguistic negative cycle related to the negation of the participle in ancient Hebrew. 214 They cite Croft on the value of 'a trajectory (or cycle) of change' when 'philological evidence is not available and internal reconstruction may be difficult due to a lack of a sufficient range of data.' 215 In  summary, we agree  with  Moshavi  and  Notarius  that  'there  is  broad  agreement  on  the  utility  of  the  corpusbased approach and typological comparison.' 216

208   Holmstedt recently said: 'Though Forbes is right to criticize the facile use of S-curves, he has also confirmed in private communication my own position, which I have articulated in public but not yet put to print-S-curves hold promise if utilized carefully. That is, one S-curve means extremely little, and two S-curves mean hardly more, but dozens of carefully performed S-curve analyses may result in a statistically valid relative order of texts. And this, I believe, is where the future of ancient Hebrew diachronic analysis lies' (R. D. Holmstedt, 'Writing a Descriptive Grammar of the Syntax and Semantics of the War Scroll [1QM]-Laying the Groundwork,' in The Reconfiguration of Hebrew in the Hellenistic Period: Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 [ed. J. Joosten, D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey; STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018],  44-60  [45]).  First,  Forbes'  'private  communication'  to  Holmstedt  sits  uncomfortably  with  his published discussions of Holmstedt's use of the s-curve (see above and in n. 202). Second, we are doubtful  that  Holmstedt  can  produce  even  three,  much  less  dozens,  of  s-curves  that 'result  in  a  statistically valid relative order of texts' that is plausible and convincing.

209  For some previous publications in the same vein see the references in C. Miller-Naudé, 'Diachrony in Biblical  Hebrew:  Linguistic  Perspectives  on  Change  and  Variation,'  in Diachrony in Biblical  Hebrew (ed.  C.  Miller-Naudé  and  Z.  Zevit;  LSAWS,  8;  Winona  Lake,  IN:  Eisenbrauns,  2012),  3-15  (5-6); Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew ,  409-410. In addition to the following references, see also the discussion of linguistic processes in Klein,  'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 869-872.

210  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 8, 16.

211  Notarius, 'The Second-Person Non-Negated Jussive in Biblical Hebrew and Ancient Northwest Semitic.'

212  Notarius, 'Lexical Isoglosses of Archaic Hebrew.'

## 4.9. Quantitative Methods and Statistics

Linguistics  has  taken  a  decidedly  quantitative  turn  over  the  last  twenty  or  so  years  especially because technological progresses have facilitated the compilation and processing of large(r) corpora which in turn yield higher frequency data that cannot be studied efficiently without the use of computers and statistical tools. 217 This change corresponds with the ongoing data science revolution. Pintzuk, Taylor, and Warner, speaking specifically about diachronic syntax though their description is equally true for the transformation of historical linguistic research generally, elaborate further:

The use of electronic  corpora as a  source  of  data  is  a  relatively  new  development  in  diachronic  syntax.  Traditionally,  much  historical  syntactic  research  was  based  on  a  scholar's knowledge of the language, including sets of collected examples, or on impressions of general patterns, sometimes using individual examples taken from secondary sources...Another approach was to use a set of examples systematically collected from a sample of texts...The availability of syntactically annotated electronic corpora, such as the series covering the history of English produced at the Universities of Pennsylvania and York, in collaboration with Helsinki, has completely transformed the scope, accuracy and speed of such systematic investigations, with benefits also for more qualitative studies. 218

Turning to the significance and objective of quantitative methods, it has been argued that

quantitative concepts and methods are superior to the qualitative ones on principled grounds. The quantitative ones enable a more adequate description of reality by providing an arbitrarily fine resolution. Between the two extreme poles yes/no , true/false , 1/0 , as many grades as are needed can be distinguished up to the infinitely many 'grades' of the continuum.

213  Korchin, 'Glimpsing Archaic Biblical Hebrew through Thetical Grammar,' 78-79.

214  Naudé and Miller-Naudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew.'

215 Ibid., 848.

216  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 16; cf. 8.

217  S. T. Gries, 'Quantitative Linguistics,' in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (ed. J. D. Wright; 2nd edn; 26 vols; Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2015), 19:725-732 (725).

218  S. Pintzuk, A. Taylor, and A. Warner, 'Corpora and Quantitative Methods,' in The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax (ed. A. Ledgeway and I. Roberts; Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 218-240 (218).

Generally speaking, the development of quantitative methods aims at improving the exactness and precision of the possible statements on the properties of linguistic and textual objects. They help us derive new insights that would not be possible without them: Subjective criteria can be made objective and operationalized...interrelations between units and properties can be detected, remaining invisible to qualitative methods; and workable methods for technical and other fields of application can be found where traditional linguistic methods fail  or  produce  inappropriate  results  due  to  the  stochastic  properties  of  the  data  or  to  the sheer mass of them... 219

The main point we want to make here is that the quantitative revolution that has happened in historical linguistic research on many other languages is barely underway in our field. 220 It  remains the case that many and probably most Hebraists with diachronic interests continue to work on the basis of only their 'knowledge of the language, including sets of collected examples, or on impressions  of  general  patterns,  sometimes  using  individual  examples  taken  from  secondary sources...[or]...a set of examples systematically collected from a sample of texts.' This is not too unexpected since the quantitative turn has taken place after many established scholars were settled in their ways, but it is also a little surprising since Bible software with a morphologically parsed  text  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  (MT)  has  been  available  to  the  wider  public  since  the  early 1990s, and now there are also two and almost three complete syntactically annotated texts of the Hebrew Bible (MT) and other texts. 221 While these digital resources may not be intended to re- place printed concordances of words and lists of grammatical phenomena in grammars and elsewhere, it is precisely because of them that there has been a significant move in the past ten to fifteen  years  toward  comprehensive  data-driven  analysis,  and  especially  of  morphological  and syntactic phenomena that may not be fully documented in printed resources. Furthermore, it is only in more recent times that diachronic studies of ancient Hebrew have moved beyond complete lists of data, and sometimes tables comparing frequencies of distribution, to various other kinds of illustrative figures (bar graphs, line charts, tree diagrams, cluster diagrams, scatter plots, etc.), and statistical analyses and comparisons. The application of data science and computational linguistics to ancient Hebrew has entered a new and exciting stage.

219   R.  Köhler and G. Altmann, 'Quantitative Linguistics,' in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences (ed. P. C. Hogan; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 695-697 (697).

220  However, the use of quantitative methods in historical linguistics in general still lags behind the use of them in some other branches of linguistics. For discussion of this issue, and other relevant issues such as problems with the example-based approach (which is still the modus operandi in our field) and what it means to be 'empirical' in historical linguistics (which is a matter of transparency and objective verifiability),  see  G. B. Janset and B. McGillivray, Quantitative Historical Linguistics: A Corpus Framework (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1-35.

221  The commercial software packages include Accordance, with the Groves-Wheeler Westminster morphology (ver. 4.2, 2016), the Holmstedt-Abegg syntax (ver. 3.0, 2018; nearly completed), and the ETCBC (WIVU until 2012) morphology and syntax (ver. 1.0, 2014), and Logos, with the Groves-Wheeler Westminster morphology (ver. 3.5, 2001), the WIVU (ETCBC since 2012) morphology and syntax ('constituency trees'; 2005), and the Andersen-Forbes morphology and syntax (ver. 0.97, 2012). BibleWorks recently discontinued its operation. For recent detailed discussions of the databases in these packages, see C. L. Miller-Naudé and J. A. Naudé, 'New Directions in the Computational Analysis of Biblical Hebrew Grammar,' JSem 27  (2018),  17  pages  (http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1013-8471/4628);  C.  Kingham  and  W. van Peursen, 'The ETCBC Database of the Hebrew Bible,' JSem 27 (2018), 13 pages (https://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1013-8471/2974); R. D. Holmstedt and J. A. Cook, 'The Accordance Hebrew Syntactic Database Project,' JSem 27  (2018),  23  pages  (http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1013-8471/3010); and A.  D.  Forbes  and  F.  I.  Andersen,  'The  Andersen-Forbes  Computational  Analysis  of  Biblical  Hebrew Grammar,' JSem 27 (2018), 22 pages (http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1013-8471/2936). The ETCBC (Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer) database (with morphology and syntax) is freely available online in various formats and locations, for example at the main data repository, https://github.com/Dans-labs/textfabric,  and  in  several  query  interfaces,  https://shebanq.ancient-data.org  (SHEBANQ:  System  for  Hebrew

When looking at the volumes under review, conspicuously only a handful of contributors give complete datasets or anchor their analyses in full data that is given elsewhere. A notable example is  Hornkohl who routinely aims to give exhaustive data in his case studies. 222 The other major examples are Jacobs, and Naaijer and Roorda. 223 Among these, however, statistics and statistical relevance/significance are taken up by only Jacobs. Forbes also gives many valuable insights on

Text: Annotations for Queries and Markup) and https://bibleol.3bmoodle.dk (Bible Online Learner). Accordance and the ETCBC database also include various morphologically analyzed non-MT biblical and extra-biblical  texts,  and  the  ETCBC  database  already  contains  some  syntactically  analyzed  ones.  The ETCBC database will eventually contain richly annotated texts of all of ancient Hebrew. See the project page of CACCHT: Creating Annotated Corpora of Classical Hebrew Texts at https://github.com/ETCBC/CACCHT, as well as the discussion of the new Text-Fabric module of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Martijn Naaijer and Jarod Jacobs at http://etcbc.nl/computational-linguistics/new-text-fabricmodule-the-dead-sea-scrolls. Some recent and relevant publications that are based on the ETCBC database include E. P. van de Bijl, C. Kingham, W. van Peursen, and S. Bhulai, 'A Probabilistic Approach to Syntactic Variation in Biblical Hebrew,' Proceedings of the Network Institute Academy Assistants Program 2017/2018  (http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2546802);  J.  Dyk,  'Traces  of  Valence  Shift  in  Classical  Hebrew,'  in Discourse,  Dialogue  and  Debate in the  Bible:  Essays  in  Honour  of  Frank  H.  Polak (ed.  A. Brenner-Idan; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2014), 48-65; Naaijer and Roorda, 'Syntactic Variation in Masoretic Hebrew'; Oosting, 'Changes of Syntactic Patterns in the Textual Tradition of the Book of Isaiah'; R. Oosting and J. Dyk, 'Valence Patterns of Motion Verbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Linguistic Variation,' JNSL 43 (2017): 63-85; and so on. Finally, note that the ETCBC database is used in various theoretical frameworks. Consider, for example, Winther-Nielsen's contribution related to Role and Reference Grammar in the Moshavi and Notarius volume (N. Winther-Nielsen, 'Corpus-Driven Valence: Give and the Meaning of נתן , Nātan , in Genesis,' in Advances in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics: Data, Methods, and Analyses [ed.  A.  Moshavi  and  T.  Notarius;  LSAWS,  12;  Winona  Lake,  IN:  Eisenbrauns,  2017],  363385).

222   Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost'; idem, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts.' Mizrahi comes close to citing complete data in one of his contributions ('The Numeral 11 and the Linguistic Dating of P') but the relevant occurrences of the אחד compound in the DSS are omitted.

223  Jacobs, 'The Balance of Probability'; Naaijer and Roorda, 'Syntactic Variation in Masoretic Hebrew.'

statistical  issues. 224 Other  substantial  contributions  along  these  lines  have  been  published  only recently or are still underway. 225

Despite Köhler and Altmann's remark that 'quantitative concepts and methods are superior to the qualitative ones on principled grounds,' he, others, and we are not suggesting that qualitative (non-numerical)  data  and  methods  should  actually  be  exchanged  for  quantitative  (numerical) ones. Rather, the two approaches should be combined and integrated. 226 This is partly because things have to be qualitatively assessed before they can be quantified. After all, one must decide that apples are apples and oranges are oranges, or nouns are abstract or concrete or common or proper-in short, divide the data into classes-before the numbers of each are counted and compared. Accordingly Köhler and Altmann make this remark before the one cited at the start of this section:

Any science begins with categorical, qualitative concepts, which divide the field of interest into delimited classes as clearly as possible. A linguistic example of this kind of concept is the  classical  category parts  of  speech ....It  is  possible  to  decide  whether  a  word  should  be considered as, for example, a noun or not. Every statement based on categories can be reduced to dichotomies (having exactly two values, such as {true, false}, {1, 0}, {yes, no}). This  kind  of  concept  is  fundamental  and  indispensable  but  insufficient  for  a  deeper  insight. 227

224  Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods.'

225  Examples are Jacobs, Statistics, Linguistics, and the 'Biblical' Dead Sea Scrolls; B. J. Noonan, NonSemitic Loanwords in the Hebrew Bible: A Lexicon of Language Contact (LSAWS, 14; University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2019); on Aramaic texts see J. Starr, Classifying the  Aramaic texts from Qumran: A Statistical  Analysis  of  Linguistic  Features (LSTS, 89; London: Bloomsbury, 2017); see also Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew ,  410-411 with nn. 8-9. In addition, there are several ongoing research projects, for example in Amsterdam (http://www.nwo.nl/onderzoek-enresultaten/onderzoeksprojecten/i/30/9930.html, http://etcbc.nl/projects) and Leuven (https://www.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/portaal/#/projecten/3H150603),  and  various  other  PhD  theses  underway as well as some papers at last year's and this year's annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature illustrate the 'quantitative turn' in our field. While some of the afore- and above-mentioned projects and publications may have had their impetus in some of our publications, such as our Linguistic Dating of Biblical  Texts and Historical  Linguistics  and  Biblical  Hebrew ,  the  quantitative  and  statistical  methods that are currently being developed and applied to the linguistic sources go beyond what we accomplished in these works.

226   See  for  example  J.  Angouri,  'Quantitative,  Qualitative  or  Both?  Combining  Methods  in  Linguistic Research,' in Research Methods in Linguistics (ed. L. Litosseliti; London: Continuum, 2010), 29-45. Part II  of  the  book  is  'Quantitative  and  Corpus  Research  Methods'  and  Part  III  is  'Qualitative  Research Methods.'

227  Köhler and Altmann, 'Quantitative Linguistics,' 696.

In addition, and especially in corpus-based research whether of spoken or written specimens, it is also the case that quantitative information serves as a check on qualitative information. 228 First, quantitative analysis shows that a form/use is meaningful rather than random. 229 Second, quantitative  analysis  in  historical  research  effectively  functions  as  the  equivalent  of  native  speaker judgments of grammaticality thus ruling out the possibility of accidental gaps in the evidence. 230

228   An additional point, which we do not develop here, is that quantitative analysis is also essential for hypothesis testing (cf. Jacobs, 'The Balance of Probability,' 928-936; ibid., Statistics, Linguistics, and the 'Biblical' Dead Sea Scrolls , 61-68).

229   M. Penke and A. Rosenbach, 'What Counts as Evidence in Linguistics?: An Introduction,' in What Counts as Evidence in Linguistics: The Case of Innateness (ed. M. Penke and A. Rosenbach; Benjamins Current Topics, 7; Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007), 1-49 (esp. 7-9 on 'qualitative vs. quantitative evidence'): 'Using data qualitatively simply means  that we  use data to show  that a certain form/construction is possible in a specific context or that a certain experimental effect occurs in an experimental setting'  (ibid.,  7);  'Positive  evidence  certainly  constitutes  first-order  evidence  in  empirical  research, but this evidence should be based on solid ground, i.e. on a systematic collection of data. Isolated or dubious cases require further, independent, and systematically collected evidence to distinguish mere 'garbage' from meaningful evidence...' (ibid., 8); 'To work quantitatively means that we do not use data solely to show that a form/construction or effect exists but rather how much of it exists, i.e. we quantify the data...Statistical methods help to decide whether the differences found are meaningful (= significant) or random' (ibid., 9; emphasis original).

230  Pintzuk, Taylor, and Warner, 'Corpora and Quantitative Methods,' 218-221: 'Corpora are particularly important in historical research, since there is no route to I-language through the judgements of native speakers. The main use of quantitative data in diachronic syntax is the analysis of variation and change. Frequencies, properly underpinned by a careful theoretical/structural analysis, can provide missing evidence, as we demonstrate below' (ibid., 218); 'While corpora particularly lend themselves to quantitative research, they can also be used for qualitative research. A good syntactic analysis makes predictions beyond the construction under consideration. In studies of living languages, these predictions are checked using grammaticality judgements; for dead languages, a search for the construction in a sufficiently large corpus can provide similar confirmation' (ibid., 219); 'It is important to note, however, that the presence/absence of a construction in a corpus  does not straightforwardly equate to  grammaticality/ungrammaticality. The absence of a construction, in particular, can be difficult to interpret. The crucial construction type may be rare (e.g. parasitic gaps), or unlikely to occur in the text types available, which are necessarily written and restricted in genre. The possibility that a gap is simply accidental is difficult to rule  out. The interpretation of absence is always a judgement call on the part of the researcher' (ibid., 220); 'Positive evidence must also be handled with care. A single example may indicate grammaticality, but given the nature of the text production process, it might equally be an error or misinterpreted' (ibid., 220); 'Even in qualitative studies, therefore, it is important to give some indication of the frequency of crucial examples. This kind of information is impossible to provide when relying on secondary sources, but can easily be extracted from a corpus' (ibid., 220); 'Beware of statements about frequency based on secondary sources when true quantitative data are not available!' (ibid., 220); 'Corpora make the reporting of actual frequencies and proportions straightforward, giving the reader the information to evaluate an author's claims' (ibid., 221); 'In conclusion, Pintzuk and Taylor...show that in cases where more than one analysis  of  a  linguistic  change  is  possible  on  the  basis  of  qualitative  data  (i.e.  the  presence/absence  of

In the light of this discussion, we believe that the Naudés' claim that 'the evidence for syntactic change in left dislocation thus provides qualitative evidence of language change, thus mitigating the need for quantitative evidence ( pace Rezetko... 231 ),' is highly problematic. 232 We will return to this issue below.

## 4.10. Accumulation of 'Late' Language

The word 'accumulation' (sometimes 'concentration' or 'clustering') means this in our field: 'a given composition of unknown date may be judged late only if its language exhibits an accumulation  of  linguistic  features  distinctively  characteristic  of  LBH,  the  presence  of  which  cannot otherwise be explained....Conversely, a text lacking such an accumulation is judged to be early, i.e., pre-exilic.' 233 This notion of accumulation is a keystone of the conventional linguistic dating method. It is also a concept that we have yet to encounter in any other field of historical linguistic  inquiry,  for  the  reason  that  dating  elsewhere  is  a  task  of  philological  analysis  in  its  broad sense 234 and historical linguistic research is preferably, and most often, based on dated and localized texts. We have dealt with accumulation in many previous publications, 235 so  here we will deal with ongoing controversial points and some specific responses to our work in the publications under review.

To set the context, in a nutshell, these are the main points that we have argued about Hurvitz's linguistic dating criterion of accumulation:

- (a) The underlying assumption entails literary-linguistic circularity since late features are identified by their appearance (mainly or only) in a small set of undisputed late writings (EstherChronicles), and writings without those late features (e.g., Genesis-Kings) are deemed early.

particular constructions), quantitative data extracted from parsed corpora may be the only way to determine which analysis has empirical support' (ibid., 227).

231  R. Rezetko, 'Thoughts on Language Periodization with a Response to Jacobus A. Naudé and Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé, 'The Contribution of Qumran to Historical Hebrew Linguistics: Evidence from the Syntax of Participial Negation,' HTS  Teologiese  Studies/Theological Studies 72 (2016), 10 pages' (http://www.academia.edu/28030916/2016m\_Rezetko\_Thoughts\_on\_Language\_Periodization\_with\_a\_Respon se\_to\_Naude\_and\_Miller-Naude\_The\_Contribution\_of\_Qumran\_to\_Historical\_Hebrew\_Linguistics).

232   Naudé and Miller-Naudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew,' 855 (emphasis original).

233  Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 7-8; cf. 37-41; Hurvitz et al., A Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew , 8, 10-11.

234   Like many others, we understand philology as the full range of critical scholarship on written documents, including linguistic, textual, literary, historical, and other methods of analysis. For references and discussion, see Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 26-29.

235  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:22-23, 92-94, 129-141, 163171, 271-279; 2:85-91, 97-98, 285 (index); Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 84-89, 113-114, 196-202, 596-598; and in other publications cited in these works and/or available at http://independent.academia.edu/RobertRezetko and https://sydney.academia.edu/IanYoung.

- (b) Many late features are evidently not absolutely late based on their distribution (mainly or only) in  late  writings,  or  their  opposition/contrast  to  corresponding  early  features  in  early writings, or their attestation/corroboration in late extra-biblical writings, or their appearance in late writings due to language contact or typological development or other factors. Related to this, many typical late features appear (occasionally) in early writings; in fact, all early writings have at least some late features.
- (c) The degree of accumulation of late features that is required to determine that a writing is late is left undefined and in reality is interpreted with great flexibility.
- (d) The accumulation of late features in particular writings sometimes defies expectations; there can be a relative accumulation of late features in some early (biblical and non-biblical) writings and a relative non-accumulation of late features in some late (biblical and non-biblical) writings.
- (e) Consequently, we have suggested that a possible logical outcome of the criterion of accumulation is that all writings could be late (although we do not argue or believe this ourselves), because all writings have late features and there are early and late writings that have a similar degree of accumulation of late features.
- (f) The evidence of linguistic variants between parallel passages in the MT and between MT and non-MT manuscripts demonstrates that the distribution and therefore accumulation of late features is due (to some degree) to editorial and scribal factors in addition to authorial ones.

Several of the contributors to the publications under review, especially Forbes and Hornkohl 236 (and Young), engage with some of these points. We will review them in the order given and then comment on several additional issues.

(a) The underlying assumption entails literary-linguistic circularity since late features are identified  by  their  appearance (mainly or only) in a small set of undisputed late writings (EstherChronicles),  and  writings  without  those  late  features  (e.g.,  Genesis-Kings)  are  deemed  early. We discussed this issue previously (see section 3.3.2). In other words, the default position is that a biblical writing is early unless it is demonstrated to be late by an accumulation of LBH features, but those features are defined as late because they occur (mainly or only) in late writings. Some scholars argue that 'the burden of proof must lie with those who suppose that late writers were able to imitate the classical style without betraying their late context' 237 and 'the sort of evidence  required  would  consist  of  copious  amounts  (not  just  an  example  or  two)  of  nonlinguistically datable post-classical compositions (not just copies of earlier material) employing pure  CBH,' 238 that  is,  late  writings  without  'a  conspicuous  accumulation  of  distinctive  postclassical linguistic features.' 239 Despite the fact that we and others have argued that there are in fact late biblical and extra-biblical writings that meet this definition, we believe that the burden of proof argument should be reversed and defined differently, in order to avoid the problem of circular argumentation: The 'classical style' should be defined and described positively, by the presence of specific (recurrent and prevalent) linguistic traits, rather than negatively, by the absence of specific (mainly sporadic and idiosyncratic) linguistic features. What is 'classical style' other  than  'not  post-classical  style'? 240 Until  this  is  accomplished-and  we  challenge  other scholars to attempt to do this-it will remain impossible to escape the charge of circular argumentation. 241

236  In writing this discussion we have considered Forbes' and Hornkohl's contributions to the publications under review and several of their other publications where they discuss accumulation: Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: Perspectives from Pattern Recognition and Meta-Analysis,' HS 53  (2012): 7-42; idem, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial on Methods'; Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah ;  idem,  'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts.' Forbes' main points are summarized in Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: Perspectives from Pattern  Recognition and Meta-Analysis,' 40-42; idem, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial on Methods,' 883-889, 922. There are a few passing comments on accumulation in Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost,' 54-55, 66, 75; idem, 'Transitional Biblical Hebrew,' 32-34. Hornkohl deals with accumulation in some other essays as well but his comments there are essentially the same (sometimes verbatim) as those cited here.

237  Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 30.

(b) Many late features are evidently not absolutely late based on their distribution (mainly or only) in late writings, or their opposition/contrast to corresponding early features in early writings, or their attestation/corroboration in late extra-biblical writings, or their appearance in late writings due to language contact or typological development or other factors. Related to this, many typical late features appear (occasionally) in early writings; in fact, all early writings have at least some late features. According to Hornkohl, who cites Forbes, 242 in our treatment of accumulation in Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , we 'fail to exercise sufficient discrimination in the selection of features...and/or in the identification of relevant cases,' and he goes on to say, 'by their own admission, Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd 243 ...'follow a loose definition of LBH features,' accepting 'any feature cited by an authority as LBH provided that it occurs in more than one core LBH book (including…Qohelet).' This can hardly be described as adherence to Hurvitz's  approach,  which  is  characterised  by  far  greater  discernment.  For  example,  Young, Rezetko,  and  Ehrensvärd's  list  of  late lexical features 244 ...numbers  372  entries,  whereas Hurvitz'[s] entire LBH lexicon 245 has just 80.' 246 This criticism by Hornkohl and Forbes, if sus- tained, would be a strong response to our points (d) and (e) above. But their criticism is not without its own problems.

238  Hornkohl, 'Diachronic Exceptions in the Comparison of Tiberian and Qumran Hebrew,' 70.

239 Ibid.

240  Cf. Young, 'Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew,' 114.

241   In  their recent book, Hendel and Joosten cite a handful of linguistic features which they believe are 'positive markers' of CBH (Hendel and Joosten, How Old is the Hebrew Bible? , 43-45), but the features cited are far from characteristic of the 'classical style' (cf. Young and Rezetko, 'Can the Ages of Biblical Literature be Discerned Without Literary Analysis?,' 8-12, and also our appendix 2 on the qal passive, https://www.academia.edu/38112870/2019c\_Young\_Rezetko\_Review\_of\_Hendel\_and\_Joosten\_How\_Old\_Is\_ The\_Hebrew\_Bible\_Appendix\_2).

242  Hornkohl cites 'Forbes 2012:267-269, 289-291, 294' and 'Forbes 2012:282-288, 294' but note that Forbes' essay falls on pp. 7-42.

243  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:130-131.

244  Ibid., 2:179-214.

245 Hurvitz et al., A Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew.

First of all, we feel that our application of Hurvitz's criterion of accumulation was clearer and more refined than Hornkohl and Forbes seem willing to allow. All of the features we included are  commonly-accepted LBH features. 247 We are happy for them to experiment with different features. For example, how about using only LBH features that Hurvitz has used? It would be helpful if they used their own set of features to produce samples of accumulation to see if they agree  with  ours,  and  if  not,  why  not?  Second,  Forbes  does  make  an  effort  to  do  this,  but  his treatment  of  candidate  features  has  many  errors.  He  claims  to  identify  false  positives/falselydeclared features and false negatives/missed features in our work and attempts to rework some of the text samples on the basis of his corrections, but very many of his corrections are erroneous. For example, he claims that we overlooked two features in 2 Chr 18:16 while including the parallel ones in synoptic 1 Kgs 22:17, thus we 'robbed the Chronicles passage of two accumulation points,' 248 but  both  his  additions  to  Chronicles  are  incorrect. 249 Third,  Hornkohl undertakes to illustrate  his  criticisms  with  concrete  examples,  but  in  many  cases  he  appears  to  hold  us  to  a stricter standard than others. For example, he comments that 'it is not the mere presence of the feature that indicates late linguistic tendencies-as these are in fact documented in texts thought to be classical-but their increased or frequent use,' 250 and one of the illustrations he cites is רצה ('to want'), but it is arguable that if the occurrence in (our) Arad 40:6-7 251 is  to  be  excluded, then the instance of the semantically similar צוֹן ר ָ ('want') in (Hurvitz's) Ps 145:19 252 should be excluded too. Fourth, such details could be debated, but it is not debatable whether Hornkohl and Forbes use our tables of linguistic features 253 in a different way than we expressly intended them - they do. We cited above Hornkohl's comment that 'Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd's list of

246 Hornkohl,  'Hebrew  Diachrony  and  the  Linguistic  Periodisation  of  Biblical  Texts,'  1010  n.  10;  cf. 1008 n. 8 ('overly-inclusive list'); idem, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 39: 'Third, the selection of characteristically late linguistic features on which Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd base their counts is maximal, mixing late elements of undisputed diachronic significance with elements of more dubious diagnostic value. Fourth, the treatment of individual linguistic elements is sometimes superficial, glossing over important details...'

247  Consider, for example, that many of the features in our accumulation studies are the same as those in Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1022-1054.

248  Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: Perspectives from Pattern Recognition and Meta-Analysis,' 32.

ֶ

249   Confusion of א ֶ ל for ע ַ ל is evident in 1 Kgs 22:17 ( ִ ים ָ ר ֶ ה א ֶ ל־ה ), not in 2 Chr 18:16 ( ִ ים ָ ר ֶ ה ע ַ ל־ה ); cf. Young, Rezetko,  and  Ehrensvärd, Linguistic  Dating  of  Biblical  Texts ,  1:134  nn.  59,  62,  356-357.  In  the  same verse, Chronicles' ן ל ָ ה agrees with the gender of the antecedent צ ֹ אן , Kings' ֶ ם ל ָ ה does not; cf. ibid., 1:134 nn. 59, 62, 357.

250  Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 39.

251  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:134 n. 55, 167, 217.

252  Hurvitz, The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew , 73-78, 110, 126, 175.

253  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 2:179-214.

late lexical features...numbers 372 entries, whereas Hurvitz'[s] entire LBH lexicon has just 80,' which is intended as a criticism of our lack of 'discrimination' and 'discernment' in our accumulation experiments. Similarly, Forbes argues that many of the features in the tables are 'inappropriate' for describing the texts 254 and then proceeds to reassess many of the text samples on the basis of the features in the tables and in the light of what he regards as falsely-declared features, missed features, and overfitting. 255 The problem is that both these scholars overlook our introduction to the tables where we clarify that they are intended to be helpful catalogs of items that are cited in a dozen major secondary sources, but that we ourselves actually doubt the validity of many of them: 'It is important to point out that many of the linguistic features, grammatical and lexical alike, suggested by scholars to be LBH are doubtfully so...' 256 Consequently, Forbes is  mistaken to use them indiscriminately and undiscerningly in his lengthy attempt to reassess our accumulation experiments. 257 What is the point of this brief response to Forbes' and Hornkohl's  criticism  that  we  'fail  to  exercise  sufficient  discrimination  in  the  selection  of  features...and/or in the identification of relevant cases'? Returning to the start of this point (b), our first point is that many LBH features are doubtful - Which features are really late ? - and our second point is that in order to carry out accumulation experiments on which we all can agree, we first have to agree on which LBH features are valid, and persuasive, and which are not, because otherwise the results will not be reproducible.

(c) The degree of accumulation of late features that is required to determine that a writing is late is left undefined and in reality is interpreted with great flexibility. There are various issues involved here: the quantity of unique late features, the usefulness of common versus uncommon late features, and single versus multiple occurrences of a particular late feature in the same text specimen.

The main problem is easy to illustrate. We discovered in our accumulation experiments in Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts that while samples in Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and (nonsynoptic) Chronicles usually have a much higher accumulation of LBH features, many other bib-

254  Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: Perspectives from Pattern Recognition and Meta-Analysis,' 14-16.

255 Ibid., 28-38.

256  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:111-112 nn. 1-2; 2:160-161.

ֻ

257  For example, as one example of very many, Forbes remarks: 'L7, אחז (shut), was included in error as a feature of 2 Chr 30:1. In their footnote, Young et al. have simply ' ז ָה א ֲ ח (31.1)' [Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts ,  1:132 n. 47]. Andersen and Forbes classify this word as a noun, 'possession,' rather than the verb 'shut' specified by Sáenz-Badillos [cf. Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic  Dating  of  Biblical  Texts ,  2:179].'  The  problem  is  that ז ָה א ֲ ח in  the  text  sample  has nothing to do with אחז in the table or in the volume by Sáenz-Badillos. Rather, on ז ָה א ֲ ח , see A. Hurvitz, 'Dating the Priestly Source in Light of the Historical Study of Biblical Hebrew: A Century After Wellhausen,' ZAW 100 (1988): 88-100 (91-97); cf. Rezetko, ''Late' Common Nouns in the Book of Chronicles,'  394-395. This example shows clearly that Forbes, despite our disclaimer, somehow managed to conflate two different entities, the (more certain) features in our accumulation experiments and the (many doubtful) features in our tables, and consequently this confusion repeatedly calls into question his discussions and criticisms of our text samples.

ֻ

ֻ

lical  and  extra-biblical  writings that are  conventionally dated to either the pre-exilic, exilic, or post-exilic period exhibit (high or low) concentrations of LBH features that are at variance with their purported (early or late, respectively) dates of composition. 258 Or, despite many conceivable LBH features (which they regard as features of a northern dialect), including one Persian loanword ( ֵּ ס ְּ ד פ ַ ר ,  Song  4:13,  which  they  regard  as  the  product  of  linguistic  updating),  Noegel  and Rendsburg date the Song of Songs to the pre-exilic period. 259 In  contrast,  Joosten  dates  Num 36:1-12 to the post-exilic period because of a single 'late' expression ( דבר ְל ִ פ ְּ נ ֵּ י ,  'to speak before ', Num 36:1). 260 Or, there are six or seven LBH features in the Prose Tale of Job (Job 1:12:13; 42:7-17). Hurvitz dates it to the post-exilic period, Joosten to the exilic period, and Young allows  that  it  could  date  to  either  of  these  or  to  the  pre-exilic  period. 261 Or,  in  his  influential monograph on Psalms, Hurvitz determines that eight psalms (103, 117, 119, 124, 125, 133, 144, 145) and three short doxologies (41:14, 72:18-20, 106:47-48) are definitely late, because of the concentrations of late features in them, but the late dating of 23 other psalms is unsettled due to the isolated or lesser degree of late features in them. 262 Upon closer examination, however, one uncovers that while three late psalms have a much higher number of distinct late features (103,

258  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 132-136. In addition, on Isaiah and 1QIsa a see Young, ''Loose' Language in 1QIsa a '; on Haggai see R. Rezetko, 'Response to Gary A. Rendsburg, 'Late Biblical Hebrew in the Book of Haggai,' in Language and Nature: Papers Presented to John Huehnergard on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (ed.  Rebecca Hasselbach and Naʿama Pat-El; Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, 67; Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2012), 329-344'

(http://www.academia.edu/26097650/2016l\_Rezetko\_Response\_to\_Rendsburg\_Late\_Biblical\_Hebrew\_in\_the \_Book\_of\_Haggai); idem, 'Response to Seoung-Yun Shin, 'A Diachronic Study of the Language of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi,' JBL 135 (2016): 265-281' (http://www.academia.edu/25884135/2016j\_Rezetko\_Response\_to\_Shin\_A\_Diachronic\_Study\_of\_the\_Langu age\_of\_Haggai\_Zechariah\_and\_Malachi).

259  Noegel and Rendsburg, Solomon's Vineyard , 174-184.

260   Joosten, 'Diachronic Linguistics and the Date of the Pentateuch,' 338-340. He explains: 'One does not normally date a text on the basis of a single linguistic feature. An accumulation of data is necessary. [n. 42: This is one of the methodological points on which Avi Hurvitz has insisted in many of his publications.] One feature might be just a blip; if a text is late, this should show up in several usages. In the present case, however, the late character of the expression is particularly clear. Moreover, the language of the rest of the passage is amenable to a late date, even though it contains no other features demanding such a date. The paucity of marked features may reflect the fact that much of the passage is faithful to the phraseology of Num 27:1-11. In aggregate, the linguistic data may be taken to indicate that Num 36:1-12 was written during the Persian period or later' (ibid., 339-340).

261  A. Hurvitz, 'The Date of the Prose-Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered,' HTR 67 (1974): 17-34; J.  Joosten,  'Linguistic  Clues  as  to  the  Date  of  the  Book  of  Job:  A  Mediating  Position,'  in Interested Readers: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David J. A. Clines (ed. J. K. Aitken, J. M. S. Clines, and C. M. Maier; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 347-357; I. Young, 'Is the Prose Tale of Job in Late Biblical Hebrew?,' VT 59 (2009): 606-629.

262  Hurvitz, The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew.

119, 145), five other late psalms have only two or four distinct late features (117, 124, 125, 133, 144), and the 23 psalms of uncertain late date also have one (13 psalms), two (8 psalms), or three (2 psalms) distinct late features. 263 Compare, for instance, late Psalm 124 with two distinct late features with uncertain late Psalm 137 also with two distinct late features. 264  Furthermore, many of the late features in the uncertain late psalms are the same evidence that is cited in other psalms that  are  regarded  as  late,  such  as ְְּ מ ַ לכוּת in  Ps  45:7  (uncertain  late  psalm)  versus  Pss  103:19; 145:11, 12, 13 (twice) (definitely late psalms). 265 Many other illustrations with various nuances are  available.  In  short,  what  counts  as  an  'accumulation'  of  late  language  is  interpreted  very broadly.

Hurvitz himself has expressed various opinions about what amounts to an abundant, considerable, heavy, meaningful, outstanding, and so on, accumulation or concentration of late linguistic elements. For example: 'A text suspected of being of post-Classical provenance can be so classified only if it contains an abundance of late linguistic features.' 266  Elsewhere, 'abundance' apparently means an 'assortment' or at least more than 'one or two': 'This criterion demonstrates that we are not dealing with a text that includes one or two isolated cases of nonstandard CBH only by chance but, rather, with a text, the language of which as a whole is marked unambiguously as late owing to an assortment of features characteristic of the postexilic period.' 267 On the other hand, 'abundance' is indefinite: 'This accumulation is relative. It is very doubtful whether we can mechanically apply statistical criteria to linguistic issues like these.' 268

It  is  difficult to see how the linguistic dating criterion of accumulation can be of any practical value when it is interpreted with such leeway and so subjectively. The results are the very fluid situations that we described above. The Prose Tale of Job, with six or seven LBH features, could belong to any historical period! What constitutes a sufficient quantity of LBH features for a text specimen  to  be  considered  late,  exilic  or  post-exilic?  One,  two,  five,  ten,  twenty?  Hornkohl commends  us  for  '[t]he  aim  of  establishing  objectively  quantifiable  accumulation  benchmarks,' 269 for  having  'pressed  for  greater  quantitative  precision  (e.g.,  how  should  one  define 'accumulation'?),' 270 for [t]he call for more objective quantification...and the attempt to develop and apply just such a methodology,' 271 and he acknowledges that 'we are still in need of a nuanced and finely-tuned method for quantifying accumulation.' 272 Forbes suggests that 'we might attempt to define an optimal cut-off level in the accumulation totals above which lie LBH texts and below which lie EBH texts. Alternatively, we might explore means of classification more sophisticated than this....One way to do this would involve supervised learning...and a formalism called 'Classification and Regression Trees' or CART.' 273 Unfortunately, neither scholar has so far taken any real steps toward grounding accumulation in some degree of scientific rigor rather than intuitional judgment. We would invite them to develop their suggestions, either as modifications of our earlier method, or by proposing a new method to evaluate accumulation.

263  We discuss below the issues of the repetition of the same feature(s) and the length of the psalms and sample size in general.

264  Hurvitz, The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew , 160-163, 174. The two psalms are relatively similar in length. Psalm 124 has 74 words (57 graphic units) and Psalm 137 has 98 words (84 graphic units).

265  Ibid., 79-82, 110, 175.

266 Hurvitz et al., A Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew , 10.

267  A. Hurvitz, 'The 'Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts': Comments on Methodological Guidelines and Philological Procedures,' in Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew (ed. C. Miller-Naudé and Z. Zevit; LSAWS, 8; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 265-279 (276).

268  A. Hurvitz, 'Linguistic Criteria for Dating Problematic Biblical Texts,' Hebrew Abstracts 14 (1973): 74-79 (76); cf. idem, The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew , 69 n. *.

269  Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 38.

270  Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1009.

In addition to which features are really late and how many of them render a text specimen late, 274 there is the question of the usefulness of common versus uncommon late features. Most common LBH lexical  and  grammatical  features  are  attested  somewhere  in  CBH  writings,  and  most  of those that do not appear in CBH writings are mainly lexical items that are rare (i.e., are used relatively few times) and idiosyncratic (i.e., are used by relatively few writers) in LBH writings. 275 'With this in mind,' Hornkohl remarks, 'it seems likely that statistical presentations can provide a helpful picture only in the case of commonly occurring phenomena, but not necessarily in the case  of  the  odd  classical  or  post-classical  lexeme  or  even  a  concentration  of  individual  lexemes.' 276 However, given that most distinctive LBH items are 'odd'-rare and idiosyncratic-it seems to us that lest we develop a more objective way to incorporate them in our accumulation experiments, the linguistic dating criterion of accumulation will continue to hinge on the whims of the individual scholar and consequently will have little if any scientific basis.

This brings us to one final issue related to point (c): single versus multiple occurrences of a particular late feature in the same text specimen. In our original accumulation experiment we stated: 'Within this sample we count how many distinct LBH features there are. We do not count repetitions of the same feature. Once an author has demonstrated the possibility of using a particular LBH feature, there is no reason it cannot be repeated as many times as opportunity presents itself. Thus, for example, the LBH order of substantive before numeral occurs seven times in Ezra 1.9-11 simply because this is a list.' 277 In addition, we describe a 'preference for' facet to our accumulation studies: 'In regard to 'preference for' categories, we decided to score this as an LBH feature if the feature in question occurs five times or more in the 500-word section with no examples of the EBH form or a ratio of 10 to 1 if the data so permitted....The 'preference for' categories in the following table include preference for collectives as plurals, preference for verb suffixes, and preference for א ֲ נ ִ י over נֹכ ִ י א ָ .' 278 This 'preference for' approach could be viewed as a rudimentary but incomplete way of dealing with the issue of repetitions (and also diffusion). We still think there is some reasonableness to this approach when it comes to the linguistic dating criterion of accumulation, but we also agree with our critics that we should aim for a higher standard,  for  at  least  these  reasons.  First,  why  squander any potentially  valuable  information? Second, it would be optimal to integrate (historical linguistic) diffusion with (linguistic dating) accumulation in a comprehensive way. Third: 'Because of the ever-present threats of noise [e.g., transmission noise], not taking repetitions into account throws away potential information. While any single observation may simply be a result of noise, repeated observations tend to reinforce one another.' 279

271 Ibid., 1010 n. 10.

272 Ibid., 1058.

273  Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: Perspectives from Pattern Recognition and Meta-Analysis,' 887, 889.

274   One naturally asks why one or two definitely late features does not definitely make a text specimen late? The answers within the conventional linguistic dating perspective tend to relate to either statistical chance or sporadic updating.

275  We have documented these facts at great length in Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts ; Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew ; Rezetko and Naaijer, 'An Alternative Approach to the Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew'; etc.

276  Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 41.

277  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:130.

The question then becomes: How should we properly quantify repeated instances of a LBH phenomenon in a text specimen? First, though, there are two other relevant points here. One is that the issue of repetitions barely applies to most LBH features , because most of them are rare and idiosyncratic. 280 For example, in his study of the Prose Tale of Job, Hurvitz includes one feature that occurs eleven times ( ן ָ ט ָ ה ַ ש ), one that occurs twice, and five that occur once; 281 in his study of

Psalm 145, he includes one feature that occurs four times ( ל ְּ כוּת מ ַ ) and eight that occur once; 282 and so on. Chiding us, Hornkohl claims that 'Hurvitz'[s] notion of accumulation considers both features and frequency,' 283 but we are unaware of any references in support of this claim, and in any case it is irrelevant to most LBH features in our and Hurvitz's accumulation studies. There is a  second  point  related  to  this  same  comment  by  Hornkohl,  which  continues:  'while,  as  noted above, Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd...count features, not tokens, meaning that their methodology cannot distinguish between rare phenomena and elements genuinely characteristic of a text or period.' 284 The flaw in Hornkohl's argument is that he has confused and conflated two separate issues, two different phenomena and methodologies, namely accumulation (or concentration or frequency) of LBH features in a particular passage or book versus diffusion (or spread or frequency) of LBH features through a 'population' of writings. 285

278  Ibid., 131; cf. 131-136.

279   Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: Perspectives from Pattern Recognition and Meta-Analysis,' 27; cf. 38-39; idem, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial on Methods,' 886-887: 'There is a flaw in this argument. We read: 'Once an author has demonstrated the possibility of using a particular LBH form...' But, of course, the texts that we study have passed through the transmission channel...and so any given run of text  may  be  contaminated  as  a  result  of  transmission  noise  quite  disconnected  from  the  author  of  the text....Consequently, we hold that each instance of a proposed LBH feature should enter into the accumulation sum.'

280   Notarius comments in a discussion of ABH that '[t]he requirement of systematicity...correlates with Hurvitz's criterion of concentration' (Notarius, 'Lexical Isoglosses of Archaic Hebrew,' 83 n. 3), but it is extremely rare in ABH poems that particular ABH features are used consistently and in place of CBH ones (see Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts ,  1:327-338; cf. Young, 'Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew,' 101-103), and likewise it is very unusual in LBH writings that particular LBH features are used regularly and instead of CBH ones (see, e.g., Rezetko and Naaijer, 'An Alternative Approach to the Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew').

281  Hurvitz, 'The Date of the Prose-Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered.'

282  Hurvitz, The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew , 70-107.

283  Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1010 n. 10.

(d) and (e). See (b).

(f) The evidence of linguistic variants between parallel passages in the MT and between MT and non-MT manuscripts demonstrates that the distribution and therefore accumulation of late features is due (to some degree) to editorial and scribal factors in addition to authorial ones. We base this claim on our detailed studies of texts in the MT versus other textual traditions, especially  the  DSS, Samaritan Pentateuch, and Septuagint (Pentateuch poetry, Judges, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Song of Songs, Daniel), and on parallel texts within the MT (Samuel//Psalms, Samuel//Chronicles,  Kings//Isaiah,  Kings//Jeremiah,  Kings//Chronicles). 286 We  have  addressed  the main issues relevant to this point, especially in response to some of Hornkohl's assessments, 287 above in section 3 (especially 3.4), section 4.3, and section 4.5.

Two other issues related to accumulation require brief treatment.

First, in our previous accumulation experiments we chose to compare the concentration of LBH features in text samples of 500 graphic units. As an example, וּב ַ יוֹם is one graphic unit but four words. Our text samples of 500 graphic units usually correspond to 750 or more words. We considered using longer samples but finally decided that 500 graphic units represented a pragmatic compromise between having a large enough sample and having to exclude texts of a size similar to biblical Habakkuk or Pesher Habakkuk (two of our 28 text samples). 288 Our text block size has been  criticized  by  Forbes,  followed  by  Hornkohl:  'While  Young's  accumulation  is  a  genuine advance, it fluctuates needlessly because it is based on too-small blocks of text. As I have shown elsewhere,  doubled  block  sizes  of  ~1  000  words  each  should  lead  to  much  more  stable  results.' 289 If  we  were  to  go  back  to  the  beginning  we  might  decide  to  establish  text  blocks  by words rather than graphic units. We also agree with Forbes that longer text blocks might lead to much more stable results, but the practical issue would remain. Text blocks of 1000 words would render the method useless for all Hebrew inscriptions, many DSS, the biblical books of Obadiah, Jonah,  Nahum,  Habakkuk,  and  Haggai,  all  psalms  except  119, 290 and  the  Prose  Tale  of  Job (psalms and the Prose Tale of Job being two of Hurvitz's major applications of his method).

284  Ibid., 1010 n. 10; cf. idem, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 38-40, 45-46.

285  Diffusion is usually described as taking place among the members of a social system, but as is customary in historical linguistics, we are using the term in relation to a corpus of historical text specimens. Note that  Hornkohl's  misunderstanding  is  evidenced  by  his  references  to  some  discussions  by  J.  A.  Cook, Dresher, Forbes, Holmstedt, and Naudé, which deal with diffusion, but Hornkohl's discussion is about accumulation. At the same time, some of the scholars cited by Hornkohl seem to misunderstand several of our references to tendency or statistical divergence as referring to diffusion rather than rate of accumulation (Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:81, 117, 140). This criticism applies especially to this remark by Holmstedt: 'Thus, the common refrain from the challengers that 'the existence of a supposed late feature in a supposedly earlier text invalidates the entire approach' falls on its face for lack of linguistic awareness. Again, it is simply a fact that old and new forms do coexist, often for hundreds of years' (Holmstedt, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 103).

286 For references, see n. 72.

287  In particular, Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 3037;  idem,  'Diachronic  Exceptions in the  Comparison of Tiberian and Qumran Hebrew,' 63-70; idem, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1012-1022.

Second, twice above we brought up the issue of the connection between accumulation and diffusion. We commented, first, that some scholars such as Hornkohl and others have confused and conflated these two separate issues, two different phenomena and methodologies, namely accumulation (or concentration or frequency) of LBH features in a particular passage or book versus diffusion (or spread or frequency) of LBH features through a 'population' of writings, but second, that to the extent that linguistic dating is concerned, it would be optimal to integrate (historical linguistic) diffusion with (linguistic dating) accumulation in a comprehensive way. Hurvitz's accumulation is concerned with individuals (or authors of individual writings or individual writings themselves) but it is well known that contemporaneous individuals can have very different tendencies with regard to early and late linguistic items, 291 so unless there is very good evidence related to the 'population' of which the individual is a member, accumulation means very little with respect to items that cannot be shown to be late innovations absolutely (by distribution, typological development, etc.) or to have replaced early items (nearly) completely or systematically. We emphasize again, it is extremely important to be very clear, we must keep in mind that we are dealing with two separate issues, which we contextualize here in the framework of textual analysis: accumulation (including repetitions) in an individual text versus diffusion in a group of texts. Far too much of what has been regarded as late linguistic features for the purpose of linguistic dating accumulation has relatively little or even no support when those features are examined from the standpoint of historical linguistic diffusion. 292 The major problem with the criterion of accumulation is that it should tally genuinely late linguistic features, but the often overlooked fact of the matter, we repeat, is that what is generally called 'late' language is a rare and idiosyncratic part, a very thin layer of the language of the corpus of late books. So, what is our conclusion about accumulation? We have addressed a variety of issues in this section. Most importantly, we agree with Forbes and Hornkohl that more work has to be done on refining accumulation, especially if, as we believe, it should have a measure of 'scientific objectivity' rather than mere personal and intuitional significance. That said, we must clarify that even though we share some similar aims with other scholars in our desire to find the best way of expressing accumulation, it should not be forgotten that our aims may be somewhat different that theirs. Our methods  of  quantification  led  us  to  discover  further  flaws  in  the  traditional  linguistic  dating method, which contributed to our rejection of that method, whereas others may more conventionally be wishing to still use it as a tool for dating biblical texts.

288  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:130 n. 41.

289   Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial on Methods,' 888; cf. 885-886; idem, 'The Diachrony Debate: Perspectives from Pattern Recognition and Meta-Analysis,' 23-27, 41; Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah ,  39;  idem,  'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1010 n. 10. Forbes claims that 'Young et al. silently reduce this to 500-word samples' (Forbes, 'The Diachrony Debate: Perspectives from Pattern Recognition and Meta-Analysis,'  24;  emphasis  added),  but  our  reduction  of  Biber's  1000  words  to  500  graphic  units (~750+ words) was hardly done 'silently' since we explicitly discuss our reasoning behind that decision. Hornkohl claims that in Hurvitz's method 'texts [are] marked as late only if they contain an accumulation of post-exilic features relative to length ' (Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1006 n. 5; emphasis added), but we do not believe Hurvitz has ever connected accumulation with length of text (if so, where?).

290  It is worth mentioning that even Psalm 119 would not qualify as LBH using the same criteria as our other  accumulation  experiments.  The  psalm  has  1061  graphic  units  or  1332  words,  and  according  to Hurvitz twelve unique LBH features. (As an aside, note that 11 of 12 occur only 1-3 times, and 4 relate to the same semantic field [ ק ִ ים ח ֻ , ְּ וֹת מ ִ צ , ע ֵּ דֹת , ִ ים פ ִ קוּד , ָ ה תוֹר ].) 12 unique LBH features in 1061 graphic units, or 6 in about 500 words, aligns Psalm 119 with most of our CBH text samples.

291  That there can be considerable differences in the participation of individuals in an ongoing changei.e., conservatives, moderates, and progressives-is discussed in detail in Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 51-52, 223-228, 240-242. Such variation is an element of 'noise' or a 'nondiachronic factor' that is inadequately considered by Forbes and Hornkohl, though they are hardly the only ones to overlook this problem for linguistic dating.

292  In some previous publications we have described this problem as overestimation of linguistic contrast between CBH and LBH or 'early' and 'late' BH (see, e.g., ibid., 241-242, 399-400, and the other publications cited there).

## 5. Periodization Issues 293

## 5.1. MH as a Continuation of BH or QH (or CBH > LBH > QH > MH)? 294

In a recent essay E. M. Cook 295 examines four alleged archaic elements in MH and concludes, first, that they are not archaisms and, second, that MH is a 'continuation of BH itself' 296 rather than (as we-and others-have argued) 'an independent dialect from BH, whose ancestor coexisted with BH for an unknown length of time in the biblical period.' 297 This issue of the relationship of MH to other stages or varieties of ancient Hebrew is touched on in several of the publications under review, and it is plainly an issue that requires more research, including more systematic and exhaustive linguistic analysis. 298 Despite the red flags that we and others have raised, the work of scholars whose work fits largely in the framework of the conventional linguistic dating  approach 299 continues  by  and  large  to  regard  MH-like  lexical  or  grammatical  items  or 'Mishnaisms' in BH as absolutely late or sometimes only relatively late. Here we would just like to distinguish several different viewpoints or general stances on MH. In some of their case studies, Hornkohl and Samet cite MH as evidence that particular linguistic features in reworked Pentateuchal material at Qumran and in MT Qoheleth, respectively, are late phenomena. 300 Along similar lines, the Naudés talk about new syntactic constructions that diffused and persisted in QH and (then) in MH/Rabbinic Hebrew (RH). 301 A different view is signaled in passing comments by several others. Bloch discusses the use of the verb יכל as a participle in Arad ostracon no. 40 and in MH-but not in BH-and the probability that MH developed out of a spoken dialect of Hebrew. 302 Notarius  refers  to  certain  data  in  our Historical  Linguistics  of  Biblical  Hebrew as additional evidence for the view that 'MH is a typologically different linguistic stage, rather than a continuation of QH.' 303 Along similar lines, Naaijer and Roorda discuss examples of rare syntactic phenomena in BH that challenge the claim (by Bergey and others) that LBH is a 'forerunner' of MH. 304 Finally, we would like to remark briefly on the following comment by Klein, who of BH ֶ ר א ֲ ש '  (Cook, 'On Some Supposed Archaisms in Mishnaic Hebrew,' 15). However, Holmstedt's detailed analysis of this issue challenges the reconstruction by Huehnergard (and Pat-El), but Cook does not engage it (see Holmstedt, The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew , 85-101; cf. Cook, 'On Some Supposed Archaisms in Mishnaic Hebrew,' 14 n. 14). Holmstedt himself concludes that 'the separate etymology analysis...remains the most coherent and compelling among the possibilities: אשר is derived from a common Semitic noun 'place', and ש is cognate with the East Semitic (and Phoenician and Ammonite) š -relative' (Holmstedt, The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew , 101), that is, ש is not a reduced form of ֶ ר א ֲ ש .

293   Background reading: Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew ,  49-56, 318327, 395-402.

294  In this section we focus on MH as a continuation of (L)BH or QH, but an analogous issue is QH as a continuation of (L)BH. This matter receives less explicit attention in the publications under review. See especially  Joosten,  'The  Hebrew  of  the  Dead  Sea  Scrolls';  idem,  'Late  Biblical  Hebrew  and  Qumran Hebrew.' The main problem with these particular discussions is that they gloss over the problem of sporadic  versus  systematic  variation  (see  above  in  section  4.2).  In  particular,  the  phenomena  that  Joosten discusses, such as the modal use of the participle in QH, are so marginal in usage that they can hardly be seen as evidence for his larger argument about 'systemic changes' and 'structural difference[s]' between (L)BH and QH. The application of quantitative methods (see above in section 4.9) would go a long way toward clarifying potential systematic variations and changes between (L)BH and QH.

295  E. M. Cook, 'On Some Supposed Archaisms in Mishnaic Hebrew,' Maarav 22 (2018): 11-20.

296  Against Bar-Asher's comment that 'MH is the continuation not of BH itself, but of a related dialect' (M.  Bar-Asher,  'Mishnaic  Hebrew:  An  Introductory  Survey,'  in Studies  in  Classical  Hebrew [ed.  A. Koller; Studia Judaica, 71; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014], 229-261 [235]; repr. of his essay published in HS 40 [1999]: 115-151).

297  Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:246.

298  Cook's essay is problematic for at least three reasons. First, Cook frames his essay as a response to our argument in Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (Cook, 'On Some Supposed Archaisms in Mishnaic Hebrew,' 11-12, 20), but in actuality he does not engage our data or analysis and he even misrepresents what we say when he claims that we say that 'Mishnaisms' have ' no chronological implications' (ibid., 11; emphasis added) and 'the lexical and grammatical differences found in the books of the Hebrew Bible are never indications of chronological change, but are always and only stylistic variants' (ibid., 11; emphasis added). We have addressed such straw man caricatures of our work previously, for example, in Rezetko  and  Young, Historical  Linguistics  and  Biblical  Hebrew ,  594-596;  Young,  Rezetko,  and  Ehrensvärd, 'Do We Really Think That Ancient Hebrew Had No Chronology?' Second, Cook engages several of the proponents of the argument which he is opposing (e.g., Bar-Asher, Kutscher, Pérez Fernández), but other significant work on dialects, diglossia, and MH by Qimron, Young, and especially Rendsburg is ignored (for references and discussion, see Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical  Texts ,  1:173-200,  223-249;  2:75-77).  Third,  Cook's  analysis  of  the  four  alleged  archaic  elements in MH is less persuasive than he lets on. As an example, and aside from difficulties with some of his specific points, he latches on to Huehnergard's work for his argument that 'the use of ש cannot be used to argue that MH is derived from a dialect genetically separate from BH, since ש is a reduced form

299  In particular, the criterion of extra-biblical attestation, according to which alleged late or LBH linguistic features in BH should be corroborated by their appearance also in biblical or post-biblical Aramaic, or in post-exilic Hebrew sources outside the Hebrew Bible (MT), such as the Wisdom of Ben Sira, the nonbiblical DSS (QH), the Bar Kochba letters, or Rabbinic Hebrew (RH/MH), or which are Persian or Greek loanwords or loan translations, or even which occur in non-MT biblical texts such as the biblical DSS or the Samaritan Pentateuch. See, for example, Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah , 7, 23-25; Hurvitz et al., A Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew , 5, 10. Note, however, that Hornkohl and Hurvitz have a more critical perspective on 'Mishnaisms' than the view that is advocated by Cook (see above).

300   Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1008 n. 7 and in some of his case studies; Samet, 'The Validity of the Masoretic Text as a Basis for Diachronic Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Texts,' 1064-1065 and in her case studies.

301   Naudé and Miller-Naudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew,' 857-860. See also the (less clear) remark in Jacobs, 'The Balance of Probability,' 940-941.

302   Bloch,  'Aramaic  Influence  and  Inner  Diachronic  Development  in  Hebrew  Inscriptions  of  the  Iron Age,' 103-105 with n. 57 (citing the work of Talshir).

303  Notarius, 'Just a Little Bend on the S-Curve,' 210 n. 29 (citing also the work of Qimron).

304  Naaijer and Roorda, 'Syntactic Variation in Masoretic Hebrew,' 965, 967-969.

is  thinking  along  the  lines  of  a  'trajectory'  of  change  from  BH  to  MH  (he  does  not  address QH): 305

Note that the prehistory of MH is irrelevant to these considerations. There can be no doubt that this stage of the language is a continuation of one or more spoken dialects tracing their roots to the very origin of Hebrew itself. But any feature of MH not itself a characteristic of BH generally that penetrates the literary language only in books of the Tanak that can justifiably be considered late on non-linguistic grounds must be said to be late relative to the timestream of BH. 306

While like Klein we would stress that particular features must be treated on a case-by-case basis, it is uncertain in our minds, for both theoretical and methodological reasons, that 'the prehistory of  MH is irrelevant  to  these  considerations'  (emphasis  added).  For  example,  there  are  several heavily-'Mishnaizing' biblical writings that some Hebraists have been reticent to date relatively late in the time-stream of BH, including Qoheleth and especially the Song of Songs. 307 In particular, we feel that the potential colloquial and dialectal issues have not been adequately factored into Klein's perspective. Thus in one of the most recent and extensive studies of the book's language, Noegel and Rendsburg argue that 'the Song of Songs was written circa 900 B.C.E., in the northern dialect of ancient Hebrew.' 308

## 5.2. Further Thoughts On Language Periodization

Moshavi and Notarius note that the periodization of BH is an issue about which less consensus exists in the current scholarly discussion. 309 As far as we know, we were among the first to discuss theoretical and methodological issues related to the periodization of BH in the context of general historical linguistics and comparative research on other languages. 310 Four years later, it still seems true that Hebraists have not thought much about the highly complex, and very problematic, idea of language periodization, and what would be required to construct a periodization of BH on the basis of empirical evidence. Even the most recent publications that deal explicitly with the periodization of BH totally disregard the recent discussion. 311

305  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 868-869, 874-875, 877-879; cf. Naudé and Miller-Naudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew,' 835-837.

306  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 874-875.

307  For discussions with references to particular scholars, see Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , 1:195-199, 242-248; 2:60-65; and also D. M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 432-455.

308  S. B. Noegel and G. A. Rendsburg, Solomon's Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs (SBLAIL, 1; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 184.

309  Moshavi and Notarius, 'Biblical Hebrew Linguistics,' 16.

310 See,  in  addition  to  the  reference  in  n.  293,  for  example,  Rezetko  and  Naaijer,  'An  Alternative  Approach  to  the  Lexicon  of  Late  Biblical  Hebrew,'  35-36;  Rezetko,  'Response  to  William  A.  Schniedewind, 'Do Difficult Hapax  Legomena Illustrate a Gap in the Hebrew  Scribal Tradition?'' (http://www.academia.edu/34516509/2017d\_Rezetko\_Response\_to\_Schniedewind\_Do\_Difficult\_Hapax\_Lego mena\_Illustrate\_a\_Gap\_in\_the\_Hebrew\_Scribal\_Tradition);  idem,  'Thoughts  on  Language  Periodization with a Response to Jacobus A. Naudé and Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé.' In Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 396-398, we refer to the discussions of periodization by J. A. Cook, De Caën,  Dresher,  Holmstedt,  Kim,  and  Naudé,  which  question  the  empirical  status  of  the  conventional

Generally a language periodization is simply the recognition of two widely separated, in time (by generations  or  centuries),  and  divergent,  in  type,  forms  or  systems  of  language.  This  simple statement  conceals  problems  such  as  the  endpoints,  duration,  separation,  and  homogeneity/heterogeneity of language periods. 312 In  previous publications we attempted to define a  language periodization on the basis of linguistic criteria and we suggested how one might construct a language periodization on the basis of linguistic criteria:

Definition of a language periodization : 'A division of language with a (statistical) combination of linguistic attributes which is not identical to another division of the same language with its (statistical) combination of linguistic attributes.' 313

Construction of a language periodization :  'Identify  specific  language  properties  that  have adequate tokens (probably morphosyntactic features) and that ideally are represented by old (archaisms, retained versus lost) and new (innovations) variants, which when studied in relation to presence or absence and shifts in markedness, demonstrate that different collections of individual constituents (that is, books or sources) each has some statistical properties that define them individually and collectively.' 314

This may not be the only or best way to construct a language periodization based on empirical linguistic evidence, but it seems to us that this approach is preferable to the current one which

CBH, TBH, and LBH periodization, but these authors do not discuss most of the theoretical and methodological issues involved.

311 In  particular,  Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah ; idem, 'All Is Not Lost: Linguistic Periodization in the Face of Textual and Literary Pluriformity'; idem, 'Biblical Hebrew: Periodization'; idem, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts'; idem, 'Transitional Biblical Hebrew'; and, especially, idem, 'Biblical Hebrew Periodization,' in Textual History of the Hebrew Bible, Volume 3: A Companion to Textual Criticism (ed. A. Lange and E. Tov; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming; digital version accessed online at  https://referenceworks.brillonline.com on  17/11/2018);  similarly,  Schniedewind,  'Linguistic  Dating,  Writing  Systems,  and  the  Pentateuchal Sources'; idem, 'The Linguistics of Writing Systems and the Gap in the Hebrew Scribal Tradition'; so also, in the volume edited by Garr and Fassberg, A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew , the conventional phases of BH are the working framework.

312  Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 50-56

313 Ibid., 50 n. 135.

314  Rezetko, 'Thoughts on Language Periodization with a Response to Jacobus A. Naudé and Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé.' Note that this necessarily involves distinguishing between sporadic and systematic variants (see above in section 4.2).

depends on disputed historical and literary presuppositions (including literary-linguistic circularity, on which see above in section 3.3.2 and section 4.10). 315

To date nobody in our  field  has  disputed  or  discussed  these  issues,  with  the  exception  of  the Naudés who mainly address one aspect of the topic but with regard to QH in particular. Their main points are, first, QH reflects a distinct stage in the development of Hebrew between BH and MH, 316 and second: 'The evidence for syntactic change in left dislocation thus provides qualitative evidence  of  language  change,  thus  mitigating  the  need  for quantitative evidence  ( pace Rezetko...).' 317 To begin, we and the Naudés seem to agree that any periodization of ancient Hebrew should be worked out from the linguistic data; it should be based on a bottom-up approach, instead of the conventional top-down one (i.e., literary periodization → linguistic periodization) that imposes itself on the linguistic facts. That said, the principal idea we want to put forward here in response to the Naudés is that qualitative evidence cannot substitute for quantitative (or statistical) evidence when it comes to the matter of language periodization. Above in section 4.9 we mentioned two connected points: quantitative analysis shows that a form/use is meaningful rather than random, and quantitative analysis in historical research effectively functions as the equivalent of native speaker judgments of grammaticality thus ruling out the possibility of accidental gaps in the evidence. Specifically, the linguistic data adduced by the Naudés, especially regarding the negation of the participle with special reference to constructions involving left dislocation, is equivocal, because it exhibits both insufficient frequency (number of tokens in the corpus) and incomplete diffusion (spread through the corpus). Stated differently, their data does not display replacement and systematicity. We believe, in agreement with some other historical linguists who have treated this issue explicitly, that the absence of replacement and systematicity (i.e., no completed change) controverts the empirical usefulness of their linguistic data with regard to corroborating language periodization. Klein's description of 'a linguistic period, which for [him] relates primarily to systemic diachronic change' 318 represents the consensus. 319 Finally,

315  In some ways, the question is not far from the one Young asked fifteen years ago: 'If Samuel-Kings are older than Chronicles then it is obviously most likely that linguistic contrasts between them reflect that chronological difference. However, can the argument be reversed, and the linguistic contrasts be used to show that Samuel and Kings are in fact older than Chronicles?' (I. Young, 'Introduction: The Origin of the Problem,' in Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology [ed.  I.  Young; JSOTSup, 369; London: T&T Clark International, 2003], 1-6 [2]).

316  Naudé and Miller-Naudé, 'Historical Linguistics, Editorial Theory, and Biblical Hebrew,' 842-860. In our opinion there is some tension in the Naudés' approach. They say: 'We do not argue that such changes can be used to assign dates to texts, especially since linguistic change necessarily involves variation and thus overlapping constructions. What we do argue, however, is that if a feature reflects deep, syntactic structure,  it  can  be  used  to  place  related  constructions  in  a  typologically  related  diachronic  seriation' (ibid., 847). At the same time, however, they speak about QH as a distinct stage in the development of Hebrew, and they reach that conclusion about periodization on the basis of linguistic criteria ('typologically related diachronic seriation' of language features).

317 Ibid., 855.

318  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 868 n. 7. Note also his further references to 'systemic diachronic change' (ibid., 877) and 'systemic replacement' (ibid., 879).

319  There is an additional problem with the Naudés' view of QH as a distinct stage from (L)BH, and that is whether the timespan between these is sufficiently long (cf. Bynon's remark below; cf. Klein, 'Historical Linguistics  and  Biblical  Hebrew,'  878).  For  those  interested  in  exploring  further  the  theoretical  and methodological issues  of language  periodization,  we  highly  recommend  the following  literature:  A.  R. Barros, 'Periodization,' in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (ed. W. A. Darity, Jr.; 2nd edn;  9  vols;  Detroit:  Macmillan,  2008),  6:210-211  (note  this  statement  on  the  link  between  quantitative/statistical and qualitative evidence: 'The origin of the idea of periodization is rooted in the old philosophical principle that there are possible quantitative variations in most concepts associated with social phenomena. Such quantitative variations can lead to qualitative changes in some features of social reality that can be used to define different periods' [210]); T. Bynon, Historical Linguistics (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 1-14 (note this statement on successive language states and completed changes: 'It can, in fact, be said that there is an optimal time-lapse of say four or five centuries which is most favourable for the systematic study of change. This is so because on the one hand the differences between successive language states are then sufficiently large to allow the statement in the form of rules of completed changes and on the other continuity is not at stake one is clearly still dealing with 'the same language'' [6]); A. Curzan, 'Interdisciplinarity and Historiography: Periodization in the History of the English language,' in Historical Linguistics of English (ed. A. Bergs and L. Brinton; HSK 34.1; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 1233-1256; J. Fife, 'On Defining Linguistic Periods: Gradients and Nuclei,' Word: Journal of the International Linguistic Association 43.1 (1992): 114; J. Fisiak, 'Linguistic Reality of Middle English,' in English Historical Linguistics 1992: Papers from the 7th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Valencia, 22-26 September 1992 (ed. F. Fernández, M. Fuster, and J. J. Calvo; Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 113; Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1994), 47-61; W. A. Green, 'Periodization in European and World History,' Journal of World History 3 (1992): 13-53; J. Kopaczyk, 'Rethinking the Traditional Periodisation of the Scots Language,' in After the Storm: Papers from the Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster Triennial Meeting, Aberdeen 2012 (ed. J. Cruickshank and R. M. Millar; Aberdeen: Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ireland, 2013), 233-260; W. Labov, Principles of Linguistic Change, Volume 1: Internal Factors (Language in Society, 20; Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 43-44; R. Lass, 'Language Periodization and the Concept 'Middle,'' in Placing Middle English in Context (ed. I. Taavitsainen, T. Nevalainen, P. Pahta, and M. Rissanen; TEL, 35; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000), 7-41; E. Rinke and M. Elsig, 'Quantitative Evidence and Diachronic Syntax,' Lingua 120 (2010): 2557-2568 (note these comments on the necessity of quantitative/statistical evidence for diachronic syntax: 'We nevertheless think that, to a certain extent, generalizations about the grammar generating the actual utterances can be obtained on the basis of textual sources. In our view, this is only possible with recourse to quantitative evidence. Therefore, quantitative corpus studies are absolutely indispensable in diachronic syntax' [2557]; 'In the following, we will argue that although frequency, if taken by itself, is not a reliable criterion for the reconstruction of the underlying grammatical system, quantitative data are nevertheless indispensable for the study of diachronic syntax. We will discuss the advantages and limitations of quantitative evidence in diachronic syntax by illustrating it with concrete examples from our own work' [2558]); 'Quantitative evidence is indispensable for the analysis of historical language data and can be very helpful in different respects. The application of the sociolinguistic variationist methodology - elaborated for the study of language use can support the exclusion of artefacts from the corpus and the distinction of differences in use between different grammatical options' [2567]; etc.); J. H-Y. Tai and M. K.M. Chan, 'Some Reflections on the Periodization of the Chinese Language,' in Studies in Chinese Historical Syntax and Morphology: Linguistic  Essays  in  Honor  of  Mei  Tsu-lin (ed.  A.  Peyraube  and  C.  Sun;  CLAO;  Paris:  École  des  Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1998), 223-239; R. Wright, 'Periodization,' in The Cambridge History of until Hebraists attempt to discuss the theoretical and methodological issues and present convincing linguistic evidence for the periodization of ancient Hebrew, for now we are happy to end this discussion with the words of Klein:

So where does all of this leave us? Is it possible to produce a scientifically demonstrable, as opposed to an intuitional, periodisation of BH that is based on more than just one or two features? As an outsider, my view is that we may have to be satisfied with something less than this. There can be no doubt that the underlying linguistic system of which BH is a stylistically more or less rigid reflection changed over eight hundred years or so. It is also clear to me that such books as Song of Songs and Qoheleth, irrespective of when they may have been composed, have the special status  they  do precisely because  in  them  some  of the  barriers elsewhere erected between the literary language and the living language have broken down. This can be imputed to any number of factors, beginning with the societal strata from which they emerged and extending to dialect, place of composition, time of composition, and genre. Otherwise, the more or less closed nature of the BH literary language affords us few opportunities to see real systemic diachronic change at work. As far as I can see, the only kinds of authoritative  statements  we  can  make  are  statements  about  the  history  of  Hebrew  in  general. 320

Or, as stated in his final words in his original paper:

I know that some major scholars of Biblical Hebrew have posited periodizations of the language; and perhaps, according to some unattainable external omniscient perspective, these are correct; but external omniscience is antithetical to scholarship, which is based on human standards of argumentation; and I now see, based on my reading of Rezetko and Young's book, that periodization of Biblical Hebrew is largely intuitional. One may choose to accept it as a working hypothesis; but in doing so, one should also understand that this is in large measure an act of faith. 321

## 6. Conclusions

Research on the historical linguistics and linguistic dating of the Hebrew Bible entered a new stage about fifteen years ago and has advanced rapidly in the last five years or so. The diachronic study of BH is a vibrant field that is currently undergoing dramatic changes thanks to advances in our appreciation of language variation and change, consideration of the history of the biblical writings in their literary and textual dimensions, and the application of far more in-depth, datadriven, and methodologically sound methods of collecting and analyzing linguistic phenomena.

the  Romance  Languages; Volume  II:  Contexts (ed.  M.  Maiden,  J.  C.  Smith,  and  A.  Ledgeway;  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 107-124.

320  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 876-877.

321  J. S. Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Ancient Religious Texts,' paper delivered in the session 'Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew' at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, in conjunction with the National Association of Professors of Hebrew, Atlanta, 23 November 2015; cf. idem, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 866 n. 2.

Here we have interacted with dozens of publications from the recent several  years in order to characterize the present state of investigation on diachrony in BH. We organized the contemporary 'currents' around the themes of research objectives, perspectives on sources, documentation of variation and change, and periodization issues, similar to the contents of our Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , and comparable to some of the main points in the recent summaries of research by Naudé and Miller-Naude and Moshavi and Notarius.

To summarize the status quaestionis and bring this discussion to an end, we would like to highlight some of the conclusions we have reached on various general and specific issues.

## General issues:

- (a) There are many interesting and valuable contributions in the publications we have reviewed, and there are also quite a few contributions that contribute very little that has not been said previously. As we said in the beginning, on the whole, we see a significant progression in the application of historical linguistic theory and method as we move from the volumes edited by Garr and  Fassberg  and  Gertz  et  al.  which  by  and  large  reflect  a  conventional  and  somewhat  dated stage of scholarship on language chronology, to the volume edited by Moshavi and Notarius, to the two journal issues which are the most up-to-date in their historical linguistic ideas and approaches. There continue to be some stalwarts of run-of-the-mill views, but even among those there are also some in the 'new generation' who are willing to engage with selected issues, even if they have a tendency to caricature the other side of the discussion.
- (b) We  have  discovered,  as  acknowledged  also  by  Gesundheit,  Naudé  and  Miller-Naudé,  and Moshavi and Notarius, that there is still a far-reaching lack of consensus on many general and specific issues. This is due partly to a refusal by some to sincerely research and engage competing perspectives and approaches, but it is also a situation that is normal as old and new views and methods  collide  with  one  another  in  scholarly  dialogue;  the  consensus  of  our  precursors  is  a strong force.
- (c) Some positives and/or advances in the field include a willingness by some to respond to general and specific criticisms and to converse with one another with sincere consideration of divergent viewpoints; some serious dialogue about literary and textual issues; an ongoing transition from a linguistic dating to a historical linguistic framework; increasing recourse to corpus-based methods that include variationist analysis and quantitative methods and statistics; and advances in the use of diachronic typology.
- (d) Some negatives and/or stoppages in the field include a refusal by some others to engage critiques and to dialogue with perspectives that they find objectionable. In particular, they summarily dismiss or silently ignore particular theoretical and methodological issues that have fundamental  and  critical  importance,  such  as  the  proper  use  of  the  s-curve  model  and  the  problems  and procedures  of  language  periodization.  Also,  while  there  are  some  interesting  and  helpful  new case studies, more than a few scholars continue to use the same illustrations without interacting with or even acknowledging conflicting data or valid criticisms or out-and-out rebuttals. It is also unacceptable that some act like the debate ended in 2012, dealing for example with Young's Biblical Hebrew , our Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts , and Miller-Naudé and Zevit's Diachrony

in  Biblical  Hebrew ,  while  disregarding  subsequent  publications  such  as  Kim's Early  Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Linguistic Variability , our Historical Linguistics and Biblical  Hebrew ,  and  the  relevant Journal  for  Semitics issue  (25.2)  (see  section  1).  On  a  personal note,  we  consider  it  a  scholarly  misfortune  that  some  scholars  continue  to  caricature  our  approach to ancient Hebrew as 'anti-diachronic,' 'non-diachronic,' and the like, 322 and to  reference a review of our Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts as if it were a substantive review of that work or as if it had any relevance to the content or argument of our Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 323 both despite our clarifications and rejoinders. 324

Specific issues: 325

(a) Historical linguistics : Our field is slowly advancing from a prescriptive linguistic dating to a descriptive historical linguistic research framework. Many have not yet come to grasp the literary-linguistic circularity of the popular linguistic dating approach. Variationist analysis and diachronic typology-and also cross-textual variable analysis which we have not addressed in this review-essay-are several linguistic methods that are gaining ground.

322  As for example in Hornkohl, 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1012 n. 12.

323  J. Joosten, review of 'I. Young, R. Rezetko, with the assistance of M. Ehrensvärd. Linguistic Dating of Biblical  Texts.  An  Introduction  to  Approaches  and  Problems [sic]  2  vols.  London-Oakville:  Equinox, 2009 [sic]. xii, 361, x and 379 pages,' Babel und Bibel 6 (2012): 535-542, cited by Hornkohl, 'All Is Not Lost,' 54 n. 2; ibid., 'Diachronic Exceptions in the Comparison of Tiberian and Qumran Hebrew,' 65 n. 5; ibid., 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts,' 1005 n. 2; Mizrahi, 'The Numeral 11 and the Linguistic Dating of P,' 372 n. 2; Morgenstern, 'Late Biblical Hebrew,' 45; Notarius, 'Just a Little Bend on the S-Curve,' 202 n. 1; Polak, 'Oral Platform and Language Usage in the Abraham Narrative,' 432 n. 106; Schniedewind, 'The Linguistics of Writing Systems and the Gap in the Hebrew Scribal Tradition,' 119 n. 6.

324  See, for example, R. Rezetko, I. Young, and M. Ehrensvärd, 'A Very Tall 'Cautionary Tale': A Response  to  Ron  Hendel,' B&I September  2011  (http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/rez358028.shtml); Young and Rezetko, 'Can the Ages of Biblical Literature be Discerned Without Literary Analysis?,' 1516; Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd, 'Do We Really Think That Ancient Hebrew Had No Chronology?' (https://www.academia.edu/24578410/2016b\_Young\_Rezetko\_Ehrensvärd\_Do\_We\_Really\_Think\_That\_Anci ent\_Hebrew\_Had\_No\_Chronology); Rezetko and Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 593600.

325   This review-essay has interacted with over 1000 pages of recent publications (800 pages in the five main publications). We could not comment on every issue. We have focused on the major points of discussion and debate. In other places we have looked more deeply at some other issues, such as Joosten's pseudo-classicisms and Schniedewind's hapax legomena . We have focused on issues that are set within the conventional CBH-TBH-LBH framework; we have said very little about ABH. Some other matters that have come up in the publications which we have not discussed include the use of epigraphic Hebrew as a pre-exilic anchor for CBH; the nature of BH as a natural/spoken or unnatural/literary language; the role  of  orality  in  textual  production;  register  and  style  (including  'change  from  above');  diglossia  and dialect; Aramaic influence and Aramaisms, and also other loanwords from Iranian and other languages.

- (b) Corpus linguistics : Variationist analysis overlaps with corpus linguistics. As remarked above, there is increasing recourse to corpus-based methods that include variationist analysis and quantitative methods and statistics, and attention is turning toward far more in-depth, data-driven, and methodologically  sound  methods  of  collecting  and  analyzing  linguistic  phenomena.  However, many discussions of linguistic phenomena continue to be based on examples, prooftexts, small samples, incomplete documentation, etc. Also, assertions of systematic differences between purported stages of ancient Hebrew are poorly defined and insufficiently corroborated.
- (c) Diachronic approaches : There remains a significant chasm between scholars who claim to do diachronic analysis but whose approach excludes linguistic analysis on the one hand or literary (including source and redaction) analysis and textual analysis on the other. In our estimation, the 'biblicists' are interacting with the 'linguists' more than the other way around, and this seems to relate to Hebraists belief in the 'objectivity' of the linguistic evidence and the 'conjecture' of literary and textual analyses.
- (d) Textual properties : There has been some progress in dialogue on the extent of textual stability vs. fluidity and its implications for language variation and change, but much more systematic research still  has  to  be  done.  Preliminary  results  suggest  that  the  situation  varies  according  to books and sections of the Hebrew Bible.
- (e) S-curve model : A few scholars continue to use the s-curve as a diagnostic tool (for sequencing, relative dating, periodizing, etc.) against the normal (illustrative, descriptive, etc.) practice of historical  linguists,  and  without  considering  the  theoretical  and  methodological  problems  involved.
- (f) Language periodization : The notion of language periodization remains one of if not the most neglected issues in our field such that scholars continue to talk about and work within the conventional  CBH-TBH-LBH  framework  without  considering  the  theoretical  and  methodological issues involved.
- (g) Late accumulation : The conventional linguistic dating concept of accumulation of 'late' language continues to be poorly defined and is applied with so much flexibility that one can legitimately doubt its value as a working principle. Scholars who adhere to the concept do not agree on which features are really late and how many of them render a text specimen late.

## 7. Concise Statement of Our Current Views

The Hebrew Bible evidences countless instances of language variation and change in progress, but  it  displays  very  few  and  perhaps  no  completed  changes.  Furthermore,  the  Hebrew  Bible's complex production  history  prevents  us  from  sequencing  the  individual  writings  according  to those  ongoing  diachronic  linguistic  developments.  Historical  linguistics,  diachronic  development:  Yes!  Linguistic  dating:  No!  The  conventional  Hurvitzian  linguistic  dating  method  has proven  inadequate  to  the  task.  We  are  open  to  such  ideas  as  Holmstedt's  many  overlaid  s- curves 326 and Forbes' seriation 327 as attempts toward the sequencing (relative dating) of biblical writings, but seeing is believing, so we invite them to do it.  The current large-scale Dutch research project, 'Does Syntactic Variation reflect Language Change? Tracing Syntactic Diversity in Biblical Hebrew Texts,' may show something. Otherwise, for the time being, we share Klein's view: 'So where does all of this leave us? Is it possible to produce a scientifically demonstrable, as opposed to an intuitional, periodisation of BH that is based on more than just one or two features? As [insiders, our {= RR/IY}] view is that we may have to be satisfied with something less than this.' 328

## 8. Bibliography for 2015-2018 329

Aḥituv, S., W. R. Garr, and S. E. Fassberg.  'Epigraphic Hebrew,' in A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions; Volume 2: Selected Texts (ed. W. R. Garr and S. E. Fassberg; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 55-68.

Andruska, J. Wise and Foolish Love in the Song of Songs (OTS, 75; Leiden: Brill, 2019), esp. 25-29.

Armgardt, M., B. Kilchör, and M. Zehnder (eds.). Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research (BZAR, 22; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2019), esp. section 'IV. Dating Issues.'

Bakker, D. 'Syntactic Variation in Text Grammar in Biblical Hebrew' (Postdoc project, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, in preparation).

Bar-Asher,  M.  'The  Clause  'The  Lord  is  a  Man  of  War'  ( ה׳ א ִ יש ָ מ ָ ה ְּ ח מ ִ ל )  and  its  Reflexes throughout  the  Generations,'  in The  Reconfiguration  of  Hebrew  in  the  Hellenistic  Period: Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 (ed. J. Joosten, D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey; STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018), 1-15.

Barmash, P. 'Symposium: Does Archaic Biblical Hebrew Exist? A Note from the Editor,' HS 58 (2017): 47.

326 Holmstedt, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 103.

327   Forbes,  'The  Diachrony  Debate:  A  Tutorial  On  Methods,'  914-921;  idem,  'Two  Candidate  Approaches to Text Sequencing,' 715.

328  Klein, 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew,' 876. The final sentence in his statement is: 'As an outsider, my view is that we may have to be satisfied with something less than this.'

329  Previous thorough bibliographies related to the topics of this review-essay were published in Young's Biblical Hebrew, 318-366, our Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts ,  2:215-283, and our Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew , 601-644. This bibliography is intended to bring the latter up-to-date. The items included here were published in 2015-2018 or are in preparation, in press, or forthcoming, with the exceptions of some items published in early 2019, and in 2013-2014 that we did not know about or had not seen at the time of publication of Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew .

Barmash, P. (ed.). 'Symposium: Does Archaic Biblical Hebrew Exist?,' HS 58 (2017): 47-118.

Bautch, R. J. and M. Lackowski (eds.). On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period: Discerning Criteria and Establishing Epochs (FAT, 101; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019).

Bekins, P. 'The Difficulty with Diagnosing Lamed Objecti ,' JNSL 42 (2016): 1-22.

Bergland, K. 'Review of Aaron D. Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah: The Case for a Sixth-Century Date of Composition ,' BBR 25 (2015): 99-101.

Bergström,  U.  'The  Progressive-Imperfective  Path  from  Standard  to  Late  Biblical  Hebrew,' OTE 28 (2015): 606-635.

Bijl,  E.  P.  van  de,  C.  Kingham,  W.  van  Peursen,  and  S.  Bhulai.  'A Probabilistic Approach to Syntactic Variation in Biblical Hebrew,' Proceedings of the Network Institute Academy Assistants Program 2017/2018 (http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2546802).

Bloch, Y. 'Aramaic Influence and Inner Diachronic Development in Hebrew Inscriptions of the Iron  Age,'  in Advances  in  Biblical  Hebrew  Linguistics:  Data,  Methods,  and  Analyses (ed.  A. Moshavi and T. Notarius; LSAWS, 12; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 83-112.

Blum, E. 'The Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts: An Approach with Methodological Limitations,' in The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (ed. J. C. Gertz, B. M. Levinson, D. Rom-Shiloni, and K. Schmid; FAT, 111; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 303-325.

Blumfield,  F.  'Medieval Jewish  Exegetical  Insights  into  the  Use  of  Infinitive  Absolute  as  the Equivalent of a Preceding Finite Form,' in Studies in  Semitic  Linguistics  and  Manuscripts:  A Liber  Discipulorum  in  Honour  of  Professor  Geoffrey  Khan (ed.  N.  Vidro,  R.  Vollandt,  E.-M. Wagner, and J. Olszowy-Schlanger; AAUSSU, 30; Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2018), 181199.

Bodine, W. R. 'Review of R. Rezetko and I. Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: Steps Toward an Integrated Approach ,' JAOS 138 (2018): 632-635.

Boyd, S. L. 'Contact and Context: Studies in Language Contact and Literary Strata in the Hebrew Bible' (PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2014).

Brenner-Idan, A. (ed.). Discourse, Dialogue and Debate in the Bible: Essays in Honour of Frank H. Polak (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2014).

Byun, S. L. The Influence of Post-Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic on the Translator of Septuagint Isaiah (LHBOTS, 635; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017).

Carr, D. M. 'Criteria and Periodization in Dating Biblical Texts to Parts of the Persian Period,' in On Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period: Discerning Criteria and Establishing Epochs (ed. R. J. Bautch and M. Lackowski; FAT II, 101; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 11-18.

Cohen, O. 'Linguistics and the Dating of Biblical Literature,' in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel (ed. S. Niditch; Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 118-130.

Colasuonno, M. M. 'Some Considerations on the Problem of Diglossia,' Annali, Sezione orientale 76 (2016): 124-145.

Cook, E. M. 'On Some Supposed Archaisms in Mishnaic Hebrew,' Maarav 22 (2018): 11-20.

Dean, R. 'Aramaisms: Not What They Used to Be,' JSem 25 (2016): 1080-1103.

Dietrich, W. 'Hebräische Hapaxlegomena in den Samuelbüchern,' in Biblical Lexicology: Hebrew  and  Greek  Semantics,  Exegesis,  Translation (ed.  E.  Bons,  J.  Joosten,  and  R.  HunzikerRodewald; BZAW, 443; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 103-129.

Driesbach, J. K. 4QSamuel a  and the Text of Samuel (VTSup, 171; Leiden: Brill, 2016), esp. 102131.

Dyk, J. 'Traces of Valence Shift in Classical Hebrew,' in Discourse, Dialogue and Debate in the Bible: Essays in Honour of Frank H. Polak (ed. A. Brenner-Idan; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2014), 48-65.

Edenburg, C. Dismembering the Whole: Composition and Purpose of Judges 19-21 (AIL,  24; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), esp. 7, 115-159, 312-319, 321, 323-324.

Ehrensvärd, M. 'The Contemporary Debate Over Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts,' in History, Archaeology and the Bible Forty Years After 'Historicity' (ed. I. Hjelm and T. L. Thompson; Changing Perspectives, 6; London: Routledge, 2016), 60-67.

Ehrensvärd, M., R. Rezetko, and I. Young. 'An Unsettling Divide in Linguistic Dating and Historical Linguistics,' B&I February 2016 (http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/2016/02/ehr408024.shtml).

Ehrensvärd, M., R. Rezetko, and I. Young. 'Counting and Weighing: On the Role of Intuition in Philology and Linguistics, with Some Thoughts on Linguistic Comments by R. E. Friedman in The Exodus ,' B&I November 2017 (http://bibleinterp.com/articles/2017/12/ehr418003.shtml).

Elitzur, Y. 'The Interface between Language and Realia in the Preexilic Books of the Bible,' HS 59 (2018): 129-147.

Elitzur,  Y.  'Diachrony  in  Standard  Biblical  Hebrew:  The  Pentateuch  vis-à-vis  the  Prophets/Writings,' JNSL 44 (2018): 81-101.

Emanuel, D. 'The Diachronic Order of Psalms 134-136,' HS 54 (2013): 79-92.

Eskhult, M. 'The Literary Style and Linguistic Stage of Ruth as Compared to Esther,' in Discourse, Dialogue and Debate in the Bible: Essays in Honour of Frank H. Polak (ed. A. BrennerIdan; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2014), 66-78.

Eskhult, M. 'Tense Forms and Time Frames in Qumran Hebrew Prose and Poetry,' in The Reconfiguration  of  Hebrew  in  the  Hellenistic  Period:  Proceedings  of  the  Seventh  International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 (ed. J. Joosten, D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey; STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018), 16-29.

Exum, J. C. 'Unity, Date, Authorship and the 'Wisdom' of the Song of Songs,' in Goochem in Mokum, Wisdom in Amsterdam: Papers on Biblical and Related Wisdom Read at the Fifteenth Joint Meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study and the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap, Amsterdam, July 2012 (ed. G. J. Brooke and P. van Hecke; OTS, 68; Leiden: Brill, 2016), 53-68.

Fassberg, S. E. 'The Nature and Extent of Aramaisms in the Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls,' in Hebrew of the Late Second Temple Period: Proceedings of a Sixth International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira (ed. E. Tigchelaar and P. van Hecke; STDJ, 114; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 7-24.

Fassberg, S. E. 'What is Late Biblical Hebrew?,' ZAW 128 (2016): 1-15.

Fassberg,  S.  E.  'Gutturals  and  Gemination  in  Samaritan  Hebrew,'  in The  Reconfiguration  of Hebrew in the Hellenistic Period: Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 (ed. J. Joosten, D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey; STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018), 30-43.

Felushko,  B.  G.  'Linguistic  Dating  of  Biblical  Texts:  Proponents,  Challengers  and  Judges  5' (MA thesis, University of British Columbia, 2018).

Fontaine, D. 'Linguistique historique et hébreu biblique' [Review of R. Rezetko and I. Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: Steps Toward an Integrated Approach ] (http://areopage.net/blog/2014/11/16/linguistique-historique-et-hebreu-biblique).

Forbes, A. D. 'The Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial on Methods,' JSem 25 (2016): 881-926.

Forbes, A. D. 'On Dating Biblical Hebrew Texts: Sources of Uncertainty/Analytic Options,' in From  Ancient  Manuscripts  to  Modern  Dictionaries:  Select  Studies  in  Aramaic,  Hebrew,  and Greek (ed.  T.  Li  and  K.  Dyer;  Perspectives  on  Linguistics  and  Ancient  Languages,  9;  Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2017), 247-272.

Forbes,  A.  D.  'Two  Candidate  Approaches  to  Text  Sequencing:  An  Addendum  to  'The  Diachrony Debate: A Tutorial On Methods,'' JSem 26 (2017): 710-716.

Fredrickson, E. S. 'Dates of Composition for the Joseph Story: A Data Science Approach' (PhD thesis, Harvard University, in preparation).

Garr, W. R. אשר and ש in the Book of Ecclesiastes (AOS, 14; University Park: PA: Penn State University Press, 2017).

Garr, W. R. and S. E. Fassberg (eds.). A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions, Volume 2: Selected Texts (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016).

Gertz, J. C., B. M. Levinson, D. Rom-Shiloni, and K. Schmid (eds.). The Formation of the Pentateuch:  Bridging  the  Academic  Cultures  of  Europe,  Israel,  and  North  America (FAT,  111; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).

Gesundheit, S. 'The Strengths and Weaknesses of Linguistic Dating,' in The Formation of the Pentateuch:  Bridging  the  Academic  Cultures  of  Europe,  Israel,  and  North  America (ed.  J.  C. Gertz, B. M. Levinson, D. Rom-Shiloni, and K. Schmid; FAT, 111; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 295-302.

Gianto, A. 'Archaic Biblical Hebrew,' in A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions; Volume 2: Selected Texts (ed. W. R. Garr and S. E. Fassberg; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 19-29.

Gonzalez, H. 'No Prophetic Texts from the Hellenistic Period? Methodological, Philological and Historical  Observations  on  the  Writing  of  Prophecy  in  Early-Hellenistic  Judea,'  in Judea and Judeans in the Third Century B.C.E . (ed. S. Honigman, O. Lipschits, and N. Shalom; University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming).

Gzella, H. 'Untypical Wayyiqṭol Forms in Hebrew and Early Linguistic Diversity,' in The Unfolding of Your Words Gives Light: Studies on Biblical Hebrew in Honor of George L. Klein (ed. E. C. Jones; University Park: PA: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 21-37.

Heide, M. 'Review of Aaron D. Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the  Book  of  Jeremiah:  The  Case  for  a  Sixth-Century  Date  of  Composition ,' OLZ 111  (2016): 147-149.

Hendel, R. S. and J. Joosten. How Old is the Hebrew Bible? A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study (AYBRL; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).

Hendel, R. S. and J. Joosten. 'Flawed Philology,' B&I March 2019 (https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/flawed-philology).

Holmstedt, R. D. 'The Grammar of ש and אשר in Qohelet,' in The Words of the Wise Are like Goads: Engaging Qohelet in the 21st Century (ed. M. J. Boda, T. Longman III, and C. G. Rata; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013).

Holmstedt, R. D. 'Investigating the Possible Verb-Subject to Subject-Verb Shift in Ancient Hebrew: Methodological First Steps,' KUSATU 15 (2013): 3-31.

Holmstedt, R. D. 'Analyzing ז ֶה Grammar and Reading ז ֶה Texts of Ps 68:9 and Judg 5:5,' JHS 14 (2014) (http://jhsonline.org/Articles/article\_202.pdf).

Holmstedt, R. D. The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew (LSAWS, 10; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), esp. 215-247.

Holmstedt,  R.  D.  'Writing  a  Descriptive  Grammar  of  the  Syntax  and  Semantics  of  the  War Scroll (1QM)-Laying the Groundwork,' in The Reconfiguration of Hebrew in the Hellenistic Period:  Proceedings  of  the  Seventh  International  Symposium  on  the  Hebrew  of  the  Dead  Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 (ed. J. Joosten, D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey; STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018), 44-60.

Holmstedt, R. D., J. A. Cook, and P. S. Marshall. Qoheleth: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text (Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible; Waco: Baylor University Press, 2017), esp. 33-45.

Holmstedt, R. D. and A. T. Kirk.  'Subversive  Boundary  Drawing in  Jonah:  The  Variation  of אשר and ש as Literary Code-Switching,' VT 66 (2016): 542-555.

Hornkohl, A. D. 'Characteristically Late Spellings in the Hebrew Bible: With Special Reference to the Plene Spelling of the o -vowel in the Qal Infinitive Construct,' JAOS 134 (2014): 643-671.

Hornkohl, A. D. 'Hebrew Diachrony and the Linguistic Periodisation of Biblical Texts: Observations from the Perspective of Reworked Pentateuchal Material,' JSem 25 (2016): 1004-1063.

Hornkohl, A. D. 'Transitional Biblical Hebrew,' in A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions; Volume 2: Selected Texts (ed. W. R. Garr and S. E. Fassberg; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 31-42.

Hornkohl, A. D. 'All Is Not Lost: Linguistic Periodization in the Face of Textual and Literary Pluriformity,' in Advances in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics: Data, Methods, and Analyses (ed. A. Moshavi and T. Notarius; LSAWS, 12; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 53-80.

Hornkohl, A. D. 'Diachronic Exceptions in the Comparison of Tiberian and Qumran Hebrew: The Preservation of Early Linguistic Features in Dead Sea Scrolls Biblical Hebrew,' in The Reconfiguration  of  Hebrew  in  the  Hellenistic  Period:  Proceedings  of  the  Seventh  International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 (ed. J. Joosten, D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey; STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018), 61-92.

Hornkohl, A. D. 'Biblical Hebrew Periodization,' in Textual History of the Hebrew Bible, Volume 3: A Companion to Textual Criticism (ed. A. Lange and E. Tov; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming; digital version accessed online at https://referenceworks.brillonline.com on 17/11/2018).

Hornkohl, A. D. 'Notes on the Linguistic Profile of Select Reworked Bible Material,' in Proceedings  of  the  Eighth  International  Symposium  on  the  Hebrew  of  the  Dead  Sea  Scrolls,  Ben Sira, and Related Fields: New Aspects of the Texts and Language of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jerusalem, June 26-29, 2016 (ed. S. Fassberg; STDJ; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

Hurvitz,  A.  'How  Biblical  Hebrew  Changed,' BAR 42  (September/October  2016),  37-40,  62 (https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-archaeology-review/42/5/4).

Hurvitz, A. From Genesis to Chronicles: Chapters in the Linguistic History of Biblical Hebrew (Hebrew; Asupot, 15; Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2017).

Jacobs, J. 'The Balance of Probability: A Statistically Based Analysis of the Linguistic Character of the 'Biblical' Dead Sea Scrolls' (PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2015).

Jacobs, J. 'The Balance of Probability: Statistics and the Diachronic Study of Ancient Hebrew,' JSem 25 (2016): 927-960.

Jacobs, J. 'Review of Aaron D. Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah: The Case for a Sixth-Century Date of Composition ,' JSS 61 (2016): 567568.

Jacobs, J. Statistics, Linguistics, and the 'Biblical' Dead Sea Scrolls (JSSSup, 40; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Jones, E. A., III. Reading Ruth in the Restoration Period: A Call for Inclusion (LHBOTS, 604; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), esp. 121-126.

Joosten, J. 'The Tiberian Vocalization and the Edition of the Hebrew Bible Text,' in Making the Biblical Text: Textual Studies in the Hebrew and Greek Bible (ed. I. Himbaza; OBO, 275; Publications of the Institute Dominique Barthélemy, 1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht/Academic, 2015), 19-32.

Joosten,  J.  'Diachronic  Linguistics  and  the  Date  of  the  Pentateuch,'  in The  Formation  of  the Pentateuch:  Bridging  the  Academic  Cultures  of  Europe,  Israel,  and  North  America (ed.  J.  C. Gertz, B. M. Levinson, D. Rom-Shiloni, and K. Schmid; FAT, 111; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 327-344.

Joosten, J. 'The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls,' in A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions; Volume 2: Selected Texts (ed. W. R. Garr and S. E. Fassberg; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 83-97.

Joosten, J. 'Pseudo-Classicisms in Late Biblical Hebrew,' ZAW 128 (2016): 16-29.

Joosten, J. 'Late Biblical Hebrew and Qumran Hebrew: A Diachronic View,' in The Reconfiguration of Hebrew in the Hellenistic Period: Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 (ed. J. Joosten, D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey; STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018), 93-103.

- Joosten, J., D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey (eds.). The Reconfiguration of Hebrew in the Hellenistic Period:  Proceedings  of  the  Seventh  International  Symposium  on  the  Hebrew  of  the  Dead  Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 (STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018). (Five of the papers announced in the original conference program were not published in this volume [Bons, Koller, Qimron, Schorch, Van Hecke].)
- Kaajan, M. E. 'Syntactic Variation in Phrase Structure in Biblical Hebrew' (PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, in preparation).
- Kim, D.-H. 'Recent Debates on the Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts: A Survey of Scholarship' (in Korean), Korean Journal of Old Testament Studies 21 (2015): 213-243 (http://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/landing/article.kci?arti\_id=ART001977236).
- Kim, D.-H. 'Review of Aaron D. Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the Book of Jeremiah: The Case for a Sixth-Century Date of Composition ,' RBL 3 (2016): 1-9 (https://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/9883\_10929.pdf).
- Klein, J. S. 'Historical Linguistics and Ancient Religious Texts,' paper delivered in the session 'Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew' at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, in conjunction with the National Association of Professors of Hebrew, Atlanta, 23 November 2015.

Klein, J. S. 'Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: An Indo-Europeanist's View,' JSem 25 (2016): 865-880.

Kogan, L. 'Semitic Etymology in a Biblical Hebrew Lexicon: The Limits of Usefulness,' in Biblical Lexicology: Hebrew and Greek Semantics, Exegesis, Translation (ed. E. Bons, J. Joosten, and R. Hunziker-Rodewald; BZAW, 443; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 93-102.

Koller,  A.  'Present  and  Future  of  the  Hebrew  Past:  On  William  M.  Schniedewind's A Social History of Hebrew ,' Marginalia: A Los Angeles Review of Books (June 23, 2015) (http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/present-and-future-of-the-hebrew-past-by-aaron-koller).

Koller,  A.  'The  Social  and  Geographic  Origins  of  Mishnaic  Hebrew,'  in Studies  in  Mishnaic Hebrew  and  Related  Fields:  Proceedings  of  the  Yale  Symposium  on  Mishnaic  Hebrew,  May 2014 (eds. E. A. Bar-Asher Siegal and A. J. Koller; Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Yale: Yale University, 2017), 149-173.

Korchin,  P.  'Glimpsing  Archaic  Biblical  Hebrew  through  Thetical  Grammar,' HS 58  (2017): 49-79.

Lam, J. and D. Pardee. 'Standard/Classical  Biblical Hebrew,' in A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions; Volume 2: Selected Texts (ed. W. R. Garr and S. E. Fassberg; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 1-18.

Lange, A. 'Ancient and Late Ancient Manuscript Evidence [of Samuel-Kings],' in Textual History  of  the  Bible,  Volume  1B:  Pentateuch,  Former  and  Latter  Prophets (ed.  A.  Lange  and  E. Tov; Leiden: Brill, 2017), 319-332.

Locatell, C. 'Grammatical Polysemy and Grammaticalization in Cognitive and Generative Perspectives: Finding Common Ground in Inter-Generational Corpora of Ancient Languages,' Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics 48 (2017): 239-253.

Loder, C. W. 'An 'I' For an 'I': The First-Person, Common, Singular Pronoun in Biblical Hebrew' (MA thesis, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2016).

Lundberg, J. M. 'Long or Short? The Use of Long and Short Wayyiqṭols in Biblical, Parabiblical and Commentary Scrolls from Qumran,' in Studies in Semitic Linguistics and Manuscripts: A Liber  Discipulorum  in  Honour  of  Professor  Geoffrey  Khan (ed.  N.  Vidro,  R.  Vollandt,  E.-M. Wagner, and J. Olszowy-Schlanger; AAUSSU, 30; Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2018), 57-74.

Machiela, D. 'The Hebrew of Tobit in 4Q200: A Contextual Reassessment,' in The Reconfiguration of Hebrew in the Hellenistic Period: Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira at Strasbourg University, June 2014 (ed. J. Joosten, D. Machiela, and J.-S. Rey; STDJ, 124; Leiden: Brill, 2018), 104-122.

Merwe, C. H. J. van der. 'How 'Direct' Can a Direct Translation Be? Some Perspectives from the Realities of a New Type of Church Bible,' HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 72 (2016), 11 pages (http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v72i3.3233).

Middlemas, J. 'Dating Esther: Historicity and the Provenance ofMasoretic Esther,' in On Dating Biblical  Texts  to  the  Persian  Period:  Discerning  Criteria  and  Establishing  Epochs (ed.  R.  J. Bautch and M. Lackowski; FAT II, 101; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 149-168.

Mizrahi, N. 'Kings or Messengers? The Text of 2 Samuel 11:1 in the Light of Hebrew Historical Phonology,' ZAH 25-28 (2012-2015): 57-83.

Mizrahi, N. 'A Matter of Choice: A Sociolinguistic Perspective on the Contact between Hebrew and Aramaic, with Special Attention to Jeremiah 10.1-16,' in Discourse, Dialogue and Debate in  the  Bible:  Essays  in  Honour  of  Frank  H.  Polak (ed.  A.  Brenner-Idan;  Sheffield:  Sheffield Phoenix, 2014), 107-124.

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Williamson, H. G. M. 'The Setting of Deutero-Isaiah: Some Linguistic Considerations,' in Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context (ed. J. Stökl and C. Waerzeggers; BZAW, 478; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 253-267.

Wilson-Wright, A. 'From Persepolis to Jerusalem: A Reevaluation of Old Persian-Hebrew Contact in the Achaemenid Period,' VT 65 (2015): 152-167.

Wöhrle, J. 'There's no Master Key! The Literary Character of the Priestly Stratum and the Formation of the Pentateuch,' in The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (ed. J. C. Gertz, B. M. Levinson, D. Rom-Shiloni, and K. Schmid; FAT, 111; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 391-403.

Young, I. 'What Do We Actually Know about Ancient Hebrew,' AJJS 27 (2013): 11-31.

Young,  I.  'The  Dead  Sea  Scrolls  and  the  Bible:  The  View  from  Qumran  Samuel,' ABR 62 (2014): 14-30.

Young, I. 'Ancient Hebrew Without Authors,' JSem 25 (2016): 972-1003.

Young, I. 'The Greek Loanwords in the Book of Daniel,' in Biblical Greek in Context: Essays in Honour of John A. L. Lee (ed. J. K. Aitken and T. V. Evans; Biblical Tools and Studies, 22; Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 247-268.

Young, I. 'Manuscripts and Authors of the Psalms,' StBiSl 8 (2016): 123-136.

Young, I. 'Literature As Flexible Communication: Variety in Hebrew Biblical Texts,' in Registers and Modes of Communication in the Ancient Near East: Getting the Message Across (ed. K. H. Keimer and G. Davis; London: Routledge, 2018), 156-173.

Young, I. 'Starting at the Beginning with Archaic Biblical Hebrew,' HS 58 (2017): 99-118.

Young, I. A Textual and Linguistic Commentary on Daniel (Text of the Hebrew Bible; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, in preparation).

Young,  I.  'Revised  Statistics:  The  Biblical  Scrolls  from  Qumran  and  the  Masoretic  Text' (http://www.academia.edu/37986280/Revised\_Statistics\_for\_The\_Biblical\_Scrolls\_From\_Qumr an\_and\_the\_Masoretic\_Text\_A\_Statistical\_Approach\_2005\_revised\_2018).

Young, I. and R. Rezetko. 'Can the Ages of Biblical Literature be Discerned Without Literary Analysis? Review-Essay of Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten, How Old is the Hebrew Bible? A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study (AYBRL; New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2018; xvi + 221),' B&I January 2019 (https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/can-ages-biblicalliterature-be-discerned-without-literary-analysis).

Young, I. and R. Rezetko. 'Can the Ages of Biblical Literature be Discerned Without Literary Analysis? Appendix 1: Summary of Contents' (https://www.academia.edu/38112859/2019b\_Young\_Rezetko\_Review\_of\_Hendel\_and\_Joosten \_How\_Old\_Is\_The\_Hebrew\_Bible\_Appendix\_1).

Young, I. and R. Rezetko. 'Can the Ages of Biblical Literature be Discerned Without Literary Analysis? Appendix 2: Comments on the Qal Passive' (https://www.academia.edu/38112870/2019c\_Young\_Rezetko\_Review\_of\_Hendel\_and\_Joosten \_How\_Old\_Is\_The\_Hebrew\_Bible\_Appendix\_2).

Young, I., R. Rezetko, and M. Ehrensvärd. 'Do We Really Think That Ancient Hebrew Had No Chronology?'

(https://www.academia.edu/24578417/Young\_Rezetko\_and\_Ehrensvard\_Do\_We\_Really\_Think \_That\_Ancient\_Hebrew\_Had\_No\_Chronology\_2016).

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