DATING SECOND ZECHARIAH: A LINGUISTIC REEXAMINATION

ABSTRACT: The chronological relationship of Deutero-Zechariah to the other post-Exilic prophetic literature has long been the subject of much discussion among biblical scholars. Zechariah 9-14 has been dated any-where from the 7th to the 2nd century b.c. This study of Zechariah l 0-14 features a purely linguistic analysis of the text, and consists of a systematic application of nineteen grammatical and syntactic categories developed by R. Polzin (Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward an Historical Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose, 1976) for the purpose of distinguishing the relative chronological relationships of early and late biblical Hebrew prose. Rather than relating Zechariah 10-14 to post-Exilic social conditions and historical events which presuppose an absolute chronology, this analysis relates Zechariah 10-14 (and Malachi) to post-Exilic literature, and therefore to a literary and a relative chron-ological scale. As a result, it is clear that Zechariah 10-14 (and Malachi) are lin-guistically similar to Haggai, Zechariah 1-8 and Polzin's pg corpus, in contrast to Polzin's Ps, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah2 corpora; and there-fore must be dated between ca. 515 and 450 b.c., a date of ca. 515-475 b.c. being preferred. I The date of Zechariah 9-14 and its relation to the other biblical writ-ings, especially the other post-Exilic prophetic books, has long been the *This article represents the expansion and refinement of portions of the writer's Universit