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  • From: fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>
  • To: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] cognate alphabet
  • Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:10:24 -0600

Hello Yigal:

Thanks for your explanatory and clear comments.

I am happy to accept the differences that you identify between ancient greek
and biblical hebrew. But ..... then what confers on ugarit, arabic, hurrian,
etc., the "blood relation" with biblical hebrew (missing from the greek)?

And if the septuagint does form a basis for interpreting biblical hebrew
language, why does academia today generally reject in english translations,
all renderings of the greek septuagint that differ from the hebrew masoretic
text? That's a fairly profound, implicit and unanimous pronouncement by the
publishers and their academic consultants; to wit: the greek septuagint old
testament inaccurate and the greek septuagint new testament accurate.

I have no problem with the relevancy or irrelevancy of other languages to
biblical hebrew. But it would be nice to know what other languages are
generally accepted as relevant and as irrelevant to the interpretation of
biblical hebrew.

regards,

fred burlingame

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 3:13 PM, Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il> wrote:

> Fred, you are confusing language with alphabet - or, more correctly,
> writing system, since not every writing system is an alphabet. There are
> plenty of languages that did not develop their own writing system, either
> remaining unwritten or adopting and adapting someone else's writing system.
> Writing systems often cross from one language family into another. The
> earliest true writing system that we know of was Sumerian Cuneiform, which
> was later adopted and adapted by Akkadian, Eblaite, Hittite, Elamite,
> Persian and a whole lot of other languages from different language families.
> Persian was later written using the Phlavi script, then the Aramaic alphabet
> and since the 9th century the Arabic alphabet. In some former Soviet
> republics, Persian dialects are written in Cyrillic. For another example,
> the Turkish language(s) was (were) totally oral, until the Turks arrived in
> the Middle East and adopted the Arabic alphabet, together with the Islamic
> religion. And so Turkish, which is
> not a Semitic language, was written for centuries with the Arabic
> alphabet, with a few extra diacritics to handle sounds that Turkish has and
> Arabic does not. Then, in the 1920, as part of his effort to westernize and
> secularize Turkey, Kemal Attaturk decreed that Turkish be written in the
> Latin alphabet, as it has been ever since (so far). This does not make
> Turkish a Romance language any more than it was a Semitic language before.
>
> So yes, the Greek alphabet is a direct descendant of the
> Canaanite/Phoenician/Hebrew alphabet, which is why we have Aleph Bet Gimmel
> Dalet/Alpha Beta, Gamma, Delta. And post-biblical Hebrew was influenced by
> Greek. But this does not make Greek and Hebrew cognate languages. The two
> are from different families, and basically unrelated.
>
> The second issue that you brought up was the Septuagint. The Septuagint is
> a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. As such, it does provide important
> insights into the way the biblical text was understood in antiquity. It also
> gives us information about the development of the Hebrew text, since, as you
> wrote, our earliest manuscripts of the Septuagint are much earlier than out
> earliest manuscripts of the MT (although we do have the Hebrew texts of the
> Dead Sea Scrolls, which are earlier than our earliest Septuagint mss). So
> using the Septuagint as a guide to the meaning of the Hebrew text is
> certainly relevant to this list.
>
> On the other hand, the Septuagint IS "just" a translation. We do not have
> the "original" Hebrew text that they were using. In fact, legends aside, we
> don't even really know just who "they" were and where and when they lived.
> The Septuagint is also a rather interpretive translation, often giving what
> the translator thought the text should be, not what it actually said.
>
> Given all that, yes, the Septuagint is important but let's not get carried
> away.
>
> Yigal Levin
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:
> b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of fred burlingame
> Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 8:37 PM
> To: fred putnam
> Cc: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] cognate alphabet
>
> Are not letters part and parcel of language?
>
> Is not alphabet (consonants and vowels) of languages cognate routinely
> discussed here, as a highway for understanding hebrew corresponding letters
> (consonants and vowels)?
>
> Why do hurrian or ugarit or cuneiform letters instruct the hebrew alefbet,
> but greek letters do not? Or perhaps none is efficacious for guiding
> understanding of the other?
>
> regards,
>
> fred burlingame
>
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