Historical linguistics and biblical hebrew : steps toward an integrated approach

Abstract

Introducción: A convenient point to begin telling the story behind this book is in the 1990s with the so-called “maximalist” and “minimalist” (or “traditionalist” and “revisionist”) controversy. It was then that we saw the publication of writings by Knauf, Davies, and Cryer, which in one way or another looked to undermine the conventional linguistic chronology of preexilic Early (or Classical or Standard) Biblical Hebrew (EBH, CBH, or SBH) developing into postexilic Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH). To these, Ehrensvärd and Hurvitz tried to offer strong rebuttals, emphasizing the relevance of external linguistic controls, such as the nature of the language of monarchic-era inscriptions and the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). But these only managed to intensify the debate rather than resolve it, which in turn led to the publication of a pivotal collection of essays in a book edited by Young. The contributors later became known as, in the words of Zevit, “consensus scholars” and “challengers.” But the dialogue did not end there either. It continued in three sessions of meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Antonio (2004), Philadelphia (2005), and Vienna (2007), and the proceedings were published in the journal Hebrew Studies and in a book edited by Ben Zvi and others...