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  • From: Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>
  • To: 'Niels Peter Lemche' <npl AT teol.ku.dk>
  • Cc: "'b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu'" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Perspective on Phoenician and Hebrew
  • Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 08:29:12 +0100


Dear Ian,

I also think that you should consult Garbini's rather extensive discussion
of the relationship between Phonician and Hebrew in his more recent, Il
semitico nordoccidentale. Studi di storia linguistica (Dipartimento di studi
orientali. Studi Semitici NS 5; Roma, 'La sapienza', 1988, chapter II, where
he also opts for a classification of several other epigraphical material
from Palestine as 'Phoenician'.

In general, archaeologist are becomming more and more cautious when it comes
to ethnical tags to their findings. A material culture is not always
identical with an ethnic one, something anthropologists like Fredrik Barth
have maintained for years (think of the possibility of a 'Coca Cola' culture
found by archaeologist living around 4500 CE). We have a variety of
nord-west Semitic dialects, all of them more or less belonging to the same
language family, named 'Amorite', which is the most unprecise of all such
terms (it is certainly an etic ethnic term placed on this area by the
Mesopotamians). Ugaritic, e.g., is called 'Ugaritic' because it was first
found in Ugarit. But what about the Ugaritic letter from the king of Tyre,
found in the archive in the palace of Ugarit. Is this a translation from
that king's Tyrian language, as is sometimes maintained, or was it simply so
that Ugaritic was the form of Phoenician used in most western Syria in the
LBA? If, e.g. the Samaria ostraca are written in Phoenician or in a dialect
close to Phoenician, does this mean that the people who wrote also
considered themselves to be Phoenicians (another ethnical tag placed on the
Levantine population by outsiders)? can we necessarily assume an ethnic
identity between people speaking the same language?

So the Gezer calender shows peculiarities closer to Phoenician than to later
Hebrew (including mainstream biblical Hebrew), but does that mean that it is
Phoenician? It is here we may say that the ethnic argument breaks down. I
think that we can only conclude that the Gezer calender may be typical of
the kind of west Semitic in use among people living in the southern Levant
(Ayyalon Valley and environments) sometime in the 10th century BCE.

NPL





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