Hebrew Studies

D.-H. Kim’s book, Early Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, and Linguistic Variability: A Sociolinguistic Evaluation of the Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts, appeared in 2012. Since then, to the best of my knowledge, it has been reviewed three times: by F. Polak in the Review of Biblical Literature (2013), by R. Rezetko in the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13 (2013), and by K. Baranowski in Folia orientalia 50 (2013). Three scholarly reviews in a single year testify to the book’s relevance to the heated debate regarding the methods of linguistic text-dating in the biblical studies.¹ For a general overview of the scope, structure, methodology, and main conclusions of the monograph, the reader is invited to these reviews. In the present essay I will concentrate on the major contribution of the monograph to the goals and methods of the historical linguistics of Biblical Hebrew, emphasizing the innovative character of the research; I will then point out certain methodological problems and suggest a number of practical steps seeking to move the discussion forward.

The innovative contribution of D.-H. Kim’s monograph is evident in four areas:

1. 1. The notion of the linguistic variability (diversity) of Biblical Hebrew acquires a solid sociolinguistic grounding (see pp. 51–54; 85–88);

2. 2. In order to substantiate the historical sociolinguistic analysis of linguistic variation in Biblical Hebrew, the author postulates two independent variables (dimensions): the historical variable (i.e., the non-linguistically dated and chronologically arranged groups of books [End Page 389] and texts; see pp. 73–79) and the discursive variable (i.e., the differentiation between two text-types—recorded speech (his term for reported speech or direct discourse) and narration; see pp. 79–84);

3. 3. The method allows for identifying two types of the linguistic change: the change from below social awareness occurs unnoticed, is rooted in vernacular, and is caused by “internal, linguistic factors” (pp. 89–91) and the change from above social awareness is rooted in careful prestige speech and is not a result of natural linguistic factors (pp. 91–94).

4. 4. Assuming that change from below is more prominent in recorded speech and change from above in narrative (pp. 95–96), the author concludes that only change from below, when correlated with a historical variable proved as authentic, “may serve as a reliable indicator of the chronology of BH” (p. 155, italics mine), whereas even authentic change from above in correlation with historical variable, is “something that we can call stylistic” (p. 156, italics mine).

The main practical input of the monograph seems to be a certain compromise between the method and the claims of the so-called traditionalists (the author thus labels those biblical scholars who opt for the suitability of the linguistic methods of biblical text-dating, such as A. Hurvitz and those who follow his method) and the challengers (those scholars who challenge the traditional diachronic approach, such as I. Young). The author remains loyal to the dichotomy of diachrony versus style, as it is imposed in the existing scholarly debate between the “traditionalists” and “challengers,” finding confirmation for the claims of both parties: according to the results of his analysis the Biblical Hebrew material provides illustration for both genuine linguistic change from below (his phenomena 1, 2, and 8 in chapter five) and stylistic selection from above (his phenomena 3, 5, and 6 in chapter five).

Notwithstanding the undeniably innovative character of Kim’s contribution, certain elements of his method and some of the book’s general conclusions leave the reader with the impression that the discussion continually revolves around the same arguments, for and against “linguistic dating.” In this essay I would like to focus on three of the most crucial topics of this research, in an attempt to move the debate forward:

1. 1. The status of the written language in the linguistic research of Biblical Hebrew in correlation with Kim’s criteria of changes...