Hebrew Diachrony and Jonah: The Periodization of a Linguistically Anomalous Work

Despite uncertainties and disagreements, there is broad agreement on the heuristic value of recognizing chronologically distinct language varieties within Biblical He-brew. The distinction between Classical and Late Biblical Hebrew is based on the lin-guistic profiles of compositions that prototypically represent their respective catego-ries. Not all texts are prototypical, though. Some deviate from more standard profiles in anomalous ways. One such work is Jonah. Early on assigned by critics to the post-exilic period based on certain linguistic peculiarities, disagreement over Jonah’s linguistic periodization persists. Many assess Jonah’s language as late, whereas others attribute its departures from classical style to non-diachronic factors, including dialect, literary artifice, and early contact with cognate languages. Few biblical compositions are the subject of opinions simultaneously characterized by such divergence and con-fidence. The present study surveys past attempts to periodize Jonah’s language, high-lights methodological challenges and pitfalls in mainstream approaches, proposes a methodological refinement to distinguish between more and less probative evidence without over- or underestimating the value of the latter, and, in rigorous adherence to accepted methodology, pronounces a verdict based on a more comprehensive eviden-tiary basis than has hitherto been offered.