Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew: Linguistic Perspectives on Change and Variation -- Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Diachrony -- Methodological Issues in the Dating of Linguistic Forms -- Biblical Hebrew as a Diachronic Continuum -- Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew and a Theory of Language Change and Diffusion -- Detecting Development in Biblical Hebrew Using Diachronic Typology -- Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew -- Examining Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew -- Dwelling on Spelling -- The Third-Person Masculine Plural Suffixed Pronoun -mw and Its Implications for the Dating of Biblical Hebrew Poetry -- The Kethiv/Qere הוִא ,Diachrony, and Dialectology -- Discerning Diachronic Change in the Biblical Hebrew Verbal System -- The Archaic System of Verbal Tenses in "Archaic" Biblical Poetry -- Diachronic Syntactic Studies in Hebrew Pronominal Reciprocal Constructions -- Syntactic Aramaisms as a Tool for the Internal Chronology of Biblical Hebrew -- The "Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts" -- The Evolution of Literary Hebrew in Biblical Times -- Signs of Late Biblical Hebrew in Isaiah 40-66 -- Language Variation, Discourse Typology, and the Sociocultural Background of Biblical Narrative -- Northern Hebrew through Time: From the Song of Deborah to the Mishnah -- Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew Lexicography and Its Ramifications for Textual Analysis -- Comparative Semitic Perspectives on Diachrony -- Outline of Aramaic Diachrony -- Diachrony in Ugaritic -- Diachrony in Akkadian and the Dating of Literary Texts -- Afterword -- Not‑So‑Random Thoughts on Linguistic Dating and Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew -- Index of Authors -- Index of Ancient Sources -- Index of Scripture -- Index of Hebrew Words -- Index of Subjects.