First Published in 2014. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.


Since the beginning of critical scholarship biblical texts have been dated using linguistic evidence. Until now there has been no introduction to and comprehensive overview of the field. Volume 1 introduces the linguistic dating of biblical texts. The book examines the principles and methodology used to differentiate Archaic, Early and Late biblical Hebrew; the relationship between linguistic characteristics and linguistic chronology or historical origins; the effects of dialects and diglossia on textual criticism; and the significance of extra-biblical sources. Key text samples and their linguistic features are presented, with concrete illustrations and pointers for discussion.


Since the beginning of critical scholarship biblical texts have been dated using linguistic evidence. Until now there has been no introduction to and comprehensive overview of the field. Volume 2 of Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts contains an extensive overview of dates attributed to different books and corpora of the Hebrew Bible in modern scholarship, demonstrating the lack of consensus on the dating of biblical texts. A synthesis of the main arguments of the work is presented, drawing also on many points from volume 1, followed by 50 pages of case studies, a list of linguistic features attributed to LBH in earlier research, a bibliography of 70 pages and several indexes.