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I am not surprised that some of the leading paleographical authorities in our field have so severely criticized the effort of Rogerson and Davies to place the Siloam Inscription in the Hasmonean period. Their philological handling of the Biblical and extra-Biblical data is equally unsatisfactory.
Paleography and philology have much in common; they both depend on typologies: Letter forms as well as language are subject to an unceasing process of development and innovation, marking, by and large, distinguishable historical periods.
Rogerson and Davies make no serious effort to assess the linguistic profile (lexicon, syntax) of the Hebrew in the Siloam Inscription in order to determine its location within the general history of the language.
Fortunately, we now possess incontestably dated texts composed in and around the Hasmonean period, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which clearly illustrate the kind of Hebrew employed in literary compositions at that time. On the surface, the Hebrew of these texts may strike the reader as classical Hebrew. However, it is widely recognized—by Hebrew linguists as well as Biblical philologists, in Christian as well as Jewish circles, and by conservative as well as radical scholars—that the “classical” flavor of this style, which was current in the Hasmonean period, is misleading; it is nothing more than an external facade. Beneath the surface, these compositions exhibit numerous late, post-classical features that betray their Second Temple linguistic milieu.1
The Hebrew of the Siloam Inscription is worlds apart from the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Hebrew of the apocryphal book known as Ben Sira (also known as Ecclesiasticus or “The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sira”). To anyone versed in Hebrew linguistics, the Siloam Inscription clearly does fall under the heading of classical Hebrew, as manifested in classical Biblical literature.2
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It is true that the linguistic tools at our disposal cannot tell us whether the Siloam Inscription specifically reflects the time of Hezekiah’s rule (727–698 B.C.E.). On the basis of both the Biblical and post-Biblical evidence, however, we can conclude that—linguistically—the inscription must be dated to the classical phase of ancient Hebrew, that is, to the pre-Exilic period (before 586 B.C.E.).
Indeed, the foregoing are general statements. And there is room here only for a few examples of the severe linguistic infirmities in the Rogerson and Davies article. But I think they illustrate my point.
Rogerson and Davies quote the famous passage from 2 Kings 20:20 that is generally taken to refer to what is called Hezekiah’s Tunnel, a tunnel that Rogerson and Davies suggest was created only in Hasmonean times: “The rest of the deeds of Hezekiah … and how he made the pool and the passage (Hebrew: te‘alah, hl[t) and brought the water into the city … ”
Rogerson and Davies argue that the word te‘alah refers not to a horizontal tunnel (like Hezekiah’s Tunnel), but to a vertical shaft (like Warren’s Shaft). They base their argument on a contention that the root of the word te‘alah relates to the Hebrew verb ‘i meaning “go up, rise, climb, ascend.” To understand this contention, it is important to realize that te‘alah consists of four Hebrew letters, T‘LH (hl[t). Hebrew words nearly always have a three-letter root, which, in this case, Rogerson and Davies suggest, is ‘LH (hl[), which is indeed the root of words meaning to go up or ascend, implying a vertical direction (a shaft) rather than a horizontal direction (a tunnel/channel).
Unfortunately, the alleged etymological connection between ‘LH (hl[) and T‘LH (hl[t) rests on very shaky ground. The three-letter root in this case is probably the first three letters (T‘L), not the last three.3 Also, it has been noted that ‘LH (hl[), which relates to water, is different from T‘LH (hl[t) relating to healing.4 Rogerson and Davies confuse the two.
They also distort another famous Biblical quotation that is usually understood to refer to Hezekiah’s Tunnel: “This same Hezekiah closed the motza’ of the waters of the Gihon and directed them down and west to the City of David” (2 Chronicles 32:30).
The meaning of the Hebrew motza’ (axwm), when employed in conjunction with water, is plain and unequivocal. It denotes specifically the place where the water “goes out” from the ground.5 The Hebrew phrase motza’ mayim (mym axwm) means “source, spring.”
This meaning, however, conflicts with what Rogerson and Davies want to prove; They go out of their way to convince the reader that motza’ does not mean “spring” but, rather, “pool formed by the spring.”
How do they justify their exegesis? First, they abruptly discredit—without providing any linguistic support or embarking on any philological discussion—the standard translations of this verse in which motza’ (axwm) is commonly rendered “spring,” denouncing them as nothing more than “paraphrastic translations.”
Secondly, they argue that “the Chronicler’s Hebrew can mean that Hezekiah closed off the pool formed by the spring” (italics added). This is, indeed, a surprising suggestion. It cannot be admitted in a serious philological discussion. It is simply not what the Hebrew text says. To use Rogerson and Davies’s own wording, this suggestion is at best a “paraphrastic translation.” Worse, their suggestion violates a basic methodological ground-rule of any philological analysis: that the outcome of that analysis should not be inferred from—let alone dictated by—considerations lying outside the domain of philology.
My third and final example comes from the Siloam Inscription itself. The text speaks of two teams of diggers boring toward each other. In the words of the inscription, each man tunneled toward “his comrade” until he heard the voice of “his comrade” coming from the other side. The Hebrew word for the twice-appearing “his comrade” is spelled R‘W (w[r). Rogerson and Davies correctly point out that the third-person possessive suffix is regularly written differently in pre-Exilic and post-Exilic Hebrew. In post-Exilic Hebrew, it is W (w); in pre-Exilic Hebrew it is H (h). For Rogerson and Davies, this suggests a post-Exilic date for the Siloam Inscription. But, unfortunately for their position, the situation is more complicated than this.
Morphologically, R‘ (comrade) is related to R‘H6—a noun derived from a final yod root and consequently ending in a vowel. The peculiar W of R‘W in the Siloam inscription, therefore, may well reflect these particular phonetic circumstances. This form, indeed, echoes the linguistic situation prevailing in standard Biblical Hebrew, where nouns ending in vowels and those ending in consonants take different suffixes (wrb[ vs. w{h[r).7
To argue then, that the appearance of the W as a third-person possessive suffix in the Siloam Inscription is “problematic if it [the inscription] is early [i.e., pre-Exilic]” and, therefore, to assign it to a late date is to propose a groundless hypothesis to solve a problem that does not exist in the first place!
In sum, it is the Biblical and inscriptional evidence adduced by Rogerson and Davies in support of their claim that undermines it. I would strongly suggest, therefore, that if they insist on their theory regarding the late dating of the Siloam tunnel, they should drop the linguistic argumentation from their discussion—which for them is unfamiliar territory.
