I'm happy to respond to your question. But first, a clarification. Hornkohl is engaged in linguistic typology, which is an area of historical linguistics. I think "linguistic dating" is a misleading term, implying an analogy with carbon dating or tree-ring dating (dendrochronology). HIstorical linguistics should be used alongside other historical forms of inquiry (as I have argued elsewhere). On this I think we all agree.
Hornkohl does a granular analysis on a number of cases of diachronic change within Classical Biblical Hebrew. But naturally, not all of his analyses are equally compelling. For instance, the relative absence of personal names compounded with Yhwh in the Pentateuch has something to do with its genre, i.e., ancestral stories, compared with texts about later eras in the Former Prophets, which have plenty of names compounded with Yhwh. That is to say, some of stories told in the Pentateuch might be old, and so might the names of some of its protagonists.. But this has little or no bearing on the linguistic profile of the Pentateuch. Hence I don't see the justification for using this case as a criterion for distinguishing two phases of CBH.
The issue of short vs. long forms of the 1st person singular prefix conjugation in weak roots may have to do, as Hornkohl acknowledges, with the relative lack of linguistic updating in one textual family of the Pentateuch (proto-MT), compared to the situation for the Former Prophets. So it's also, in my view, not a strong basis for a distinction between two phases of CBH. But it's an interesting phenomenon, which I'd like to see more about (and related instances).
Having stated some reservations, I think it's exciting to see evidence of diachronic complexity within CBH. This is a rich topic of research, to which Hornkohl has impressively contributed. But I don't see any reason (yet) to revise my description of the linguistic history of Genesis.
Dear Martin,
I'm happy to respond to your question. But first, a clarification. Hornkohl is engaged in linguistic typology, which is an area of historical linguistics. I think "linguistic dating" is a misleading term, implying an analogy with carbon dating or tree-ring dating (dendrochronology). HIstorical linguistics should be used alongside other historical forms of inquiry (as I have argued elsewhere). On this I think we all agree.
Hornkohl does a granular analysis on a number of cases of diachronic change within Classical Biblical Hebrew. But naturally, not all of his analyses are equally compelling. For instance, the relative absence of personal names compounded with Yhwh in the Pentateuch has something to do with its genre, i.e., ancestral stories, compared with texts about later eras in the Former Prophets, which have plenty of names compounded with Yhwh. That is to say, some of stories told in the Pentateuch might be old, and so might the names of some of its protagonists.. But this has little or no bearing on the linguistic profile of the Pentateuch. Hence I don't see the justification for using this case as a criterion for distinguishing two phases of CBH.
The issue of short vs. long forms of the 1st person singular prefix conjugation in weak roots may have to do, as Hornkohl acknowledges, with the relative lack of linguistic updating in one textual family of the Pentateuch (proto-MT), compared to the situation for the Former Prophets. So it's also, in my view, not a strong basis for a distinction between two phases of CBH. But it's an interesting phenomenon, which I'd like to see more about (and related instances).
Having stated some reservations, I think it's exciting to see evidence of diachronic complexity within CBH. This is a rich topic of research, to which Hornkohl has impressively contributed. But I don't see any reason (yet) to revise my description of the linguistic history of Genesis.
Yours,
Ron
.