Linguistic Evidence for the Pre-Exilic Date of the Yahwistic Source (review)

Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 365 Reviews number of instances, it is easy to gloss over here what I think is a significant point with diachronic implications.) In brief, Snyman’s introduction of c-command over appropriate X-bar structures does in fact generate the correct distinctions demanded by the syntax and scope of the Biblical Hebrew negative lo}. Snyman makes an important contribution to the study of Biblical Hebrew grammar by formally and theoretically clarifying the asymmetric distinctions between sentencenegation and constituent-negation. Vincent DeCaen University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada decaen@chass.utoronto.ca LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE FOR THE PRE-EXILIC DATE OF THE YAHWISTIC SOURCE. By Richard M. Wright. LHB/OTS 419. Pp. x + 208. New York: T & T Clark, 2005. Cloth, $105.00. This is an odd book with a good title. A revised Cornell dissertation, it presents forty features of Late Biblical Hebrew that are not in the J source, many of which have contrastive features in the J source. Curiously, the author does not actually believe that there was a J source. He writes: “I am not convinced personally of the existence of a ‘J’ source. The narrative portions of the Pentateuch exhibit greater literary unity than the Documentary Hypothesis would seem to permit” (p. 4). He cites his dissertation advisor, Gary Rendsburg, to back up this position, which seems prudent. However, this position makes the rest of the study seem strangely unreal (he calls it “a useful exercise”). And it mars his analysis of the evidence when he fails to distinguish between the linguistic profile of J and P, folding both into a homogenous Pentateuch. For example, he discusses the distribution of the 1cs pronoun—yna versus ykna—and concludes rightly that the distribution in ‘J’ (he always places J in scare quotes) is pre-exilic. He notes, however, that according to his statistics “yna occurs more frequently than ykna” in pre-exilic writings (p. 80). For example , the non-J Pentateuch has a distribution of 138 (yna) to 68 (ykna). But he subsequently notes that J has a distribution of 16 (yna) to 28 (ykna). He does not comment on this striking difference—J prefers ykna by nearly 2 to 1, compared to the rest of the Pentateuch which prefers yna by nearly 2 to 1. Is there a reason for this different distribution, and is it accurate to say that the pre-exilic writings have a statistical preference for yna? Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 366 Reviews The answers are easily discovered in BDB and other standard sources. In P (according to BDB, p. 59b), the short form yna is predominant (ca. 130 times), and the long form ykna occurs only once (Gen 23:4). (This is almost exactly the same distribution as in the book of Ezekiel.) In JE, the distribution of short to long form is 48:81, which is about the same as the ratio in J alone. In other words, J and P have strikingly different distribution patterns, which are most easily understood chronologically (note that P and J both arguably stem from Jerusalem or its environs). There is a chronological shift from a roughly 2:1 distribution of ykna to yna in the earlier writings to the near-exclusive use of yna in later writings. The non-disclosure of the P data skews Wright’s statistics about relationship between J and the rest of the Pentateuch and about the relevant chronological developments in Hebrew. Since this is the chief goal of his inquiry, this non-disclosure must be deemed a serious flaw. Wright is also sometimes sloppy about the J evidence itself. He writes that “’J’ never employs the form hlfqaw” (p. 25), which is a Late Biblical Hebrew form. But on the previous page he notes that Gen 32:6 employs this form, and earlier he lists this as a J verse. How can we understand this late form in a J text? It is, in my view, reasonable to suppose that hjlCaw in Gen 32:6 is a scribal error for jlCaw, due to a simple dittography (hj). But Wright does not consider this question because he did not include this as a J text (and elsewhere he...