B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Whilst searching on some more information on the usage of contracted and uncontracted forms of the pronominal suffix (should these be considered part of "plene" and "defective" spelling norms?), I stumbled upon the following book regarding 'Early' vs 'Late' BH - Amazon UK / Google Books.

Has anyone read the book? I haven't read much of it yet, other than the conclusion:
The synthesis will draw together the threads of the argument in this volume and argue that seeing EBH and LBH as two successive chronological phases of BH is incompatible with the evidence. We argue that a better model sees LBH as merely one style of Hebrew in the Second Temple period and quite possible First Temple period also. 'Early' BH and 'Late' BH, therefore, do not represent different chronological periods in the history of BH, but instead represent coexisting styles of literary Hebrew throughout the biblical period.

This I found rather striking, and would make quite a few people's books and studies into EBH or LBH rather moot.

Anyone else looked at this in much detail?

I looked up this tome under Google books, and read the first chapter. That’s all I needed to answer your question.

Basically, there are two claims to the ages of books in Tanakh: dates as recognized by internal claims of the books questioned, and dates as speculated by those starting in the early 19th century based on belief in evolution and anti-Semitism. The author admits that he accepts the latter dates subject to tweaking. That’s how and why he came to the conclusion that he posted.

Years ago I posted on this list something that I had noticed—if one accepts the internal dates, there is a pattern that one can notice. The early books had sort of a medium literary complexity. As time went on, the general pattern was that the literary complexity increased. Then in the books that followed the Babylonian Exile, we find a literary simplicity as done by people whose mother tongue was not Hebrew. This is a general pattern, which means that there are exceptions.

I have stated consistently that I accept the internal dates, and that the speculated dates are not worth the paper they’re written on. Secondly it’s my claim that reliance upon the speculated dates results in poor scholarship. Therefore, I see no need to read more than what I did, for GIGO, I can see that he already had garbage in, so I don’t see how he can get anything other than garbage out.

Karl W. Randolph.