Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

>===== Original Message From Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT ozemail.com.au> =====
> Well, I can introduce you all to millions of Semitic language
> specialists who don't know Hebrew script. They are called Arabs,
> Ethiopians, Assyrians etc.

Somehow I think you and Clay are working with different definitions of 
"specialist." I presume he means a scholar whose business is studying a 
particular field, not a native speaker who may or may not be able to comment 
intelligently on grammatical function. There is also some question as to 
whether you mean the same thing by the adjectival use of "Semitic language," 
which is ambiguous in English, referring potentially to a specialist in one 
Semitic language or several. I suspect here that Clay was referring back to 
my 
comment about people who refer to various Semitic languages for comparative 
purposes in the process of studying the whole family. What you describe is 
probably someone who uses mostly one Semitic language.

> But the other fallacy in your (plural)
> arguments is the assumption that everyone who learns Hebrew wants to
> become a leading edge Hebrew scholar or Semitic language specialists.
> They don't.

I understand this to be the case, but I think you've misread my assumptions, 
at least, and quite possibly Clay's assumptions as well. It is not that my 
view of transliteration is based on the assumption that everyone wants to be 
an expert; rather, it is that I don't see the addition of transliteration to 
the process to be all that helpful for anyone who wants to read Hebrew. If 
the 
point is to read the Hebrew text itself, rather than relying on someone 
else's 
reading, then to stop short of reading the script seems to me rather 
counterproductive. No transliteration system is perfect, and to know how it 
is 
imperfect requires the same level of knowledge that it takes to learn the 
script anyway--more so, since you also have to know the transcription system. 
Reading transcription only also restricts a person to reading only what 
someone else who can read the script deems worthy of transcription.

> From my Christian perspective, most try to learn because
> knowing Hebrew is a useful tool for their work or study, as Bible
> students, exegetes, pastors, Bible translators etc. And many give up
> Hebrew or make very slow progress because they (like me, and like Trevor
> with Akkadian and Ethiopic) find the Hebrew script very hard.

I should clarify that we have already acknowledged a distinction between more 
difficult syllabic systems and the Hebrew alphabet. Since a person who works 
with transcription must learn the values of the letters anyway, we're only 
talking about learning roughly 30 sign shapes (including vowels). And most of 
them are quite simple to draw and have rather distinctive shapes. Remember 
that I said of Akkadian, which is by far the most complicated writing system 
I've had to learn, we started working with the signs after a few weeks. If 
you're talking about someone learning Hebrew and sticking with 
transliteration 
for months or years into the process, there's a pretty serious difference 
here.

> They would
> make much faster progress with a well designed transliteration. And if
> the Bible text and commentaries etc are made available in this
> transliteration, such people would have no need to use the script.

And if they have an interlinear, they don't need to learn Hebrew at all. But 
I 
think especially in the case of Tiberian Hebrew, we need to be clear up front 
about the fact that transliteration is never anything but an interpretation. 
(The possible exception is the rigid system advocated for use on this list, 
which IMO is just as difficult to learn as the actual script.)

> Though I suppose it would be helpful to learn it enough to be able to
> read slowly from commentaries using the script.

And with a moderate amount of practice, the very same learning would lead to 
being able to read more smoothly from an actual Hebrew text. So why stop 
short?
>
> As for Sokoloff's "improvement", this is just a return to the
> uselessness (to me) of BDB's Syriac references which are not
> transliterated. Yet for some reason BDB transliterates South Arabian
> inscriptional materials - into square Hebrew script!

Probably because there was no font available and not enough demand to create 
one. Hand-drawing the letters is tedious, and transcription is not so utterly 
useless that it cannot be a last resort. And transcription into a Semitic 
script has distinct advantages over an attempt to transcribe with Latin 
characters. Yes, the words may be useless if you can't read them. But how 
much 
more useful would they be if you could? For several of these languages, you'd 
be hard pressed to find a resource for further investigation that you could 
use without knowing the script. But for those who know the languages, there 
are significant patterns that are much more readily visible in the native 
scripts, and time and trouble is saved by not having to convert back to the 
proper script when looking up a word for more information.
> 
[snipped]

> Could it be that the Semitic language specialists have a vested interest
> in keeping Hebrew and other Semitic languages hard to learn so that they
> can perpetuate their intellectual elitism?

Something like that. We eschew shortcuts that don't work, because those who 
haven't got through will think they've got to where they haven't. And when 
they've decided that their shortcuts take them far enough, who is going to 
convince them that they've settled for a watered-down version of the 
authenticity they sought in the first place?

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics