Why Biblical Texts Cannot Be Dated Linguistically

Zechariah 1-8 is an important text from the point of view of the history of the Hebrew language. Everyone can agree that it is post-exilic, and yet there are only a few traces of Late Biblical Hebrew in these chapters. In this regard it equals many Early Biblical Hebrew texts. The article examines the language of Zechariah 1-8 and compares it to Early Biblical Hebrew. It finds that Zechariah 1-8 exhibits a number of traits characteristic of Early Biblical Hebrew and rare in Late Biblical Hebrew. Holding this fact together with the absence of any significant Late Biblical Hebrew features, the article concludes that the text is an Early Biblical Hebrew text. If correct, this means that knowledge of Early Biblical Hebrew did not end with the Exile and raises the question of how long this knowledge lasted.