Thanks for the response.

It's not my field either. My primary interest is in the text of Genesis. I'm merely providing the claimed historical details in order to provide readers with the background to my main theme. If some of the history is not completely accurate, that is not my main concern. I'm not going to add anything further to that.

One of the problems here is that the sources that d'Olivet's claims back him up are now 200 years old, so hard to check.

As I said, I'm no expert, but if the creation of the Jews was at the time of Abraham, what does the term Hebrew actually mean? It means something more than just a language.

As you say, modern Hebrew derives from Biblical Hebrew, but what does 'derives' mean Presumably that they are not identical, that there are some discrepancies.