“Galil said this discovery disproves the current theory, which holds that the Bible could not have been written before the 6th century B.C.E., because Hebrew writing did not exist until then.”
That’s ridiculous!!
I had never heard that claim before, concerning the use of earliest known Hebrew writing as a basis for the plausible beginning of the religious belief system we now refer to as Judaism.
Before Abraham and his descendants (that is in the time of Adam, Noah etc.), it is difficult to place most biblical characters in specific language-identifiable groups, other than the Middle East generally.
But what we now refer to as Judaism, as a systematic presentation of a common set of beliefs about God, begins with Abraham in Mesopotamia, in an ancient town known to have existed north of present-day Baghdad in Iraq (where Abraham was born and grew to adulthood) - centuries BEFORE the 6th century BC/BCE.
The tribes that later founded Israel, Judea and Samaria developed the written form of “Hebrew” later on, as did other Semitic tribes who developed other scripts, like the more generalized Aramaic, which in both written and spoken form had similarities with Hebrew - similarities that remain in some of the other languages still spoken in the Middle East.
In, sum - Abraham most likely pre-existed the written script of “Hebrew”. That does not mean that the religious roots of Judaism, in Abraham, and in his ancestors, were non-existent, as a set of beliefs, prior to the 6th century BC/BCE.
From Abraham and until Moses, the religion of “the Hebrews” was predominately passed on in the oral traditions of the people. Written recordings of them were most likely few and most often not on imperishable materials. That is true of the majority of Middle East ancient societies, which is why, whether from Abraham and his people, or others of his day, written records of the time are rare and when found are found most frequently in the form of records kept by the rulers and those that worked for them; usually not artifacts of the common people or others not in positions of high status.
None of that proves any lack of continuity of religious belief from the Hebrews of the 6th century BC/BCE back to Abraham, nor back to Abraham’s ancestors. The lack of a single continuous same-written-language “paper trail” is not evidence of a lack of a trail in peoples beliefs.
Gen 31:46 Jacob said to his kinsmen, "Gather stones." So they took stones and made a heap, and they ate there by the heap.
Gen 31:47 And Laban called it Jegarsahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed.
Gen 31:48 And Laban said, This heap is a witness between me and you this day. Therefore was the name of it called Galeed;
I checked this passage because of statements by Biblical scholars that insertion of Chaldean (Aramaic) text into these passages was proof that Genesis was written after the claimed dates.
What I found was that the only Aramaic term was Jegarsahadutha. The rest of the passage is in Hebrew. Laban was not of the line of Abraham, Jacob was. Laban called the pile of stones the Aramaic term for "heap of testimony" while Jacob called it the Hebrew term for "heap of testimony."
If the account had actually only been oral, and written down centuries later, how likely is it that the detail of Laban and Jacob calling the pile of stones "heap of testimony" in their native tongues would be considered important enough to be remembered, and how likely is it that the correct terms would be used?