The Elijah-Elisha Narratives: A Test Case for the Northern Dialect of Hebrew

The Elijah-Elisha narratives contain a disproportionate number of linguistic anomalies which have usually been accounted for by tracing these narratives to an early collection of prophetic stories written in Northern Hebrew. Using the criteria developed by Avi Hurvitz and Gary Rendsburg, this study critiques previous studies of Northern Hebrew and provides a comprehensive analysis of the linguistic anomalies of 1 Kings 17-2 Kings 8. It is argued, first of all, that the linguistic anomalies of these narratives reflect literary stylizing by the biblical authors. In most cases, there is simply not enough evidence to point specifically to Northern Hebrew. The heaviest concentration of linguistic anomalies are in the folktales of 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 4-6, reflecting most likely the genre of these stories. A higher concentration of Aramaisms appears in 1 Kings 20 and 2 Kings 6, that is, chapters that deal with the Aramaeans. Additionally, there is a heavy concentration of linguistic anomalies in direct speech. Some text critical evidence indicates that Northern Hebrew features may have been lost in the course of the transmission of the biblical text. The overall evidence suggests that the literary dialect of Jerusalem and Samaria were remarkably similar. The main differences between Judaean and Northern Hebrew were in the spoken language.