Sessions on Diachrony in Hebrew at SBL

I received the following email from Ziony Zevit.

Dear Colleagues

I write to draw your attention to the two NAPH sessions at the forthcoming SBL meetings that will deal with Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew.  The catalyst for this year’s sessions, and the two (or three) planned for 2010, is the publication by Equinox of the two-volume   “Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts” written by I. Young, R. Rezetko and M. Ehrensvard.  Their book raises issues of accuracy in some diachronic studies published heretofore, the acuity of some analyses, and general methodological issues in doing historical linguistics.  It concludes that data explained by scholars as due to diachronic changes are better explained as due to different writers composing texts in different stylistic registers throughout the biblical period.

Presentations at the NAPH sessions this year—abstracts of which are attached—are intended to address the book obliquely while engaging issues directly through discussions of new and not-so-new data.

The organizing committee requested presenters to prepare their remarks for both general biblicists and Hebrew specialists so that they are technically accurate as well as comprehensible by all.  We have also invited a major presentation that will inform participants about what ideas and methodologies are current in general historical linguistics.

We hope that you will be able to attend the sessions.

Cordially,
Ziony Zevit

Attachment: Abstracts

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