Some would argue that before judging, even conditionaly, conclusions of a specific paper, it is better to read it.
As for your general point, how about using the terms 'earlier' and 'later' instead of 'dating'? Incidentally, among Richard Hess' many important works are those dealing with various historical aspects of certain PNs and toponyms in early Israel biblical texts. Uri Hurwitz Great Neck, NY I must admit that I have not read Andersen & Hess, but the conclusion strikes me as open to the charge of circular reasoning. On what do they base their dating of the texts? I think for their conclusion to stand, they would need to establish the date of the texts by non-linguistic means. Otherwise, they are using linguistic means to date a text, and then using that date of the text to confirm the linguistics. If this is what Andersen & Hess in fact argue, then they are open to the very charge that Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd make of much scholarship, namely that dating texts on the basis of linguistics and then using the linguistics to date texts is completely circular. Ergo, we need to find non-linguistic means of dating biblical texts. GEORGE ATHAS Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia) www.moore.edu.au _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
