An assumption which often seems to be made by modern scholars regarding the language of the Hebrew Bible is that non-standard language usage is explicable in two main ways. This is enunciated already by Driver's statement that the peculiarities of the language in Song of Songs "show either that it must be a late work (post-exilic), or if early, that it belongs to North Israel." (1) From such a statement it seems clear that Driver presupposed that the language of early Judah was simply identical with standard biblical Hebrew. (2) The purpose of this article is to propose a number of arguments which suggest that there was more to the language of Judah (Judahite (3)) than a simple identity with standard Hebrew. We will especially focus on recent important work by G. A. Rendsburg in order to show how a shift in scholarly presuppositions can lead to a different interpretation of the evidence for variation in the text of the Hebrew Bible. I. GENERAL ARGUMENTS FOR DIVERSITY
