Biblical Hebrew Forum

[<gs02wmr AT panther.Gsu.EDU>]

On Sat, 7 Aug 1999, Henry Churchyard wrote:
> Yes, the original, linguistically reconstructed, theoretical
> proto-Semitic form of the word for "peace" has a long a-vowel in the
> second syllable (as in Arabic salaam), but the shift of the long
> a-vowel in this syllable to a long o-vowel has nothing whatever to do
> with Assyrian influence.  

Hmmm. I fully understand your explanation behind the evolution of the
word, but I am still a bit confused as to why exactly the shift in word
occured at all. Why wasn't the original rendition preserved? Why
specifically did the Canannites alter this to what we have today? (ShalOm) 

> I knew I would probably be sorry if I downloaded the .GIF, but
> curiosity won out over discretion and I did it anyway -- and all I
> found was a late form of the "Paleo-Hebrew" alphabet, accompanied by
> an utterly corrupt and almost incomprehensible gibberish
> transliteration scheme.

Well....cults have that tendency to mutilate facts, you know. ;-)

> But I can tell you how the word "Assyrian" actually has some remote
> shadow of relevance in all this -- it comes from the fact that the
> early Rabbis sometimes termed the Aramaic (or "square") alphabet as
> the "Assyrian" alphabet.  But in this context the term "Assyrian" is
> merely equivalent to "Aramaic" -- there is no reference here to the
> non-Aramaic (Akkadian) language which is called "Assyrian" in modern
> scholarship. 

Why did the rabbis term the Aramaic alphabet as Assyrian? Was it similar
in any way to Assyrian? Why didn't they just call it Aramaic?

> Also, the Proto-Semitic theoretical reconstructed language and the
> "Paleo-Hebrew" alphabet don't particularly have anything to do with
> each other.

I see. It's just a simple timeline involved here.

> P.S. You actually shouldn't send attachments, especially not binary
> attachments, to this list.


sorry about that....

Shalum,

Wondell M. Rachman