Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== Original Message From c stirling bartholomew 
<cc.constantine AT worldnet.att.net> =====
>Are there really Semitic language specialists who cannot read biblical
>Hebrew script? Do these people really exists or is this just a myth
>propagated by publishers who just don't want to bother with the typesetting
>problems?

Dunno. I can't recall ever meeting one, but I can conceive of a person 
knowing 
how to work with the language from a comparative standpoint but not knowing 
the script. One issue could be the effort involved in retaining the script. I 
studied Ethiopic a year ago, but I probably wouldn't be able to read the 
script perfectly without a little bit of refresher (and we actually bothered 
to learn it--Lambdin's grammar works entirely in transliteration). I simply 
haven't had much occasion to read Ethiopic, and because the system is 
syllabic, it doesn't stick quite as well as an alphabetic system. The same 
can 
be said about Akkadian. I'm also probably a little bit rusty with some of the 
Syriac scripts. I've tried to keep reading it from time to time, but what I 
happen to have handy is in the Western script only. My point, then, is that I 
can see from my own experience how a person who doesn't work much with Hebrew 
but has studied the basic features of the language and refers to it primarily 
for comparative evidence might not know the script, or at least not know it 
well. Somewhat less hypothetically, I think it's reasonable to allow a common 
Semitic transcription system as a useful tool for those who deal in some 
fashion with all of the Semitic languages at one point or another but 
specialize in one or two. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like a person 
could get very far in complete ignorance of the scripts. It's well and good 
that HALOT transcribes Arabic, but I should still be able to look up the word 
in an Arabic dictionary.

It may interest some people to know that M. Sokoloff identified as an 
improvement in his dictionary of Babylonian Jewish Aramaic over the 
Palestinian that newer publishing conventions allowed it to be printed with 
Syriac fonts, instead of transliterating Syriac references.
>
>When I read in the front matter of some reference book the standard boiler
>plate about transliterating Hebrew and Greek for the "non-specialist" I
>always ask, show me someone who cannot read the script and I will show you
>that they cannot read the transliteration.

The fact remains, though, that non-specialists think they can use such 
reference books productively, and a reference book successfully marketed to 
them will sell more copies.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics