"Certain Men" in Judges and Samuel: A Rejoinder to Mark Leuchter

Here, Frolov addresses Mark Leuchter's challenge on his major conclusion of his 2004 study of 1 Samuel 1-8. Leuchter claims that "the linguistic features of 1 Samuel 1-7 do not correspond to literature that is identifiably from the seventh to sixth centuries or later; rather, these chapters possess syntactical features similar to literature belonging to a much earlier period and of distinctly Ephraimite provenance." He demonstrates that although at first blush Leuchter may seem to marshal an impressive array of well-supported arguments, upon closer inspection each of his points proves less than compelling because of either methodological vulnerabilities or superficial understanding of the relevant data.