“A Relationship Worth Fighting For”: A Response to “Isn’t It Time to Break Up with Linguistic Dating?”This essay responds to an earlier Bible and Interpretation essay, noted here. And see also here.Linguistic dating in Biblical Hebrew research remains a valid scholarly tool despite complications arising from composition, redaction, transmission, and methodological challenges. Although weaker or overly circular approaches deserve criticism, careful, data-driven analysis of Masoretic, non-Masoretic, and extrabiblical Hebrew still reveals meaningful diachronic patterns and can thus contribute to historical periodization.
See also Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew (Cambridge, 2024).
By Aaron D. Hornkohl
Associate Professor of Hebrew
University of Cambridge, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
March 2026
The discussion is somewhat technical and has been going on for a long time. I have comments myself here and here. I think further progress will be difficult unless (hopefully, until) we find a cache of Iron Age II (i.e., pre-exilic) Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls.
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