Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca>]

> Are there scholarly publications which quote inscriptional Aramaic,
Phoenician, 
> Samaritan, paleo-Hebrew etc as well as Hebrew? In such cases, what 
> scripts are used for Aramaic, Phoenician etc? 

> I am interested in practice in 
> Israeli journals in modern Hebrew as well as in journals in western
languages.

Current scholarly practice is to transcribe such texts with either the
square "Hebrew" script (e.g., Discoveries in the Judean Desert; Syrian
Semitic Inscriptions) or transliteration (e.g., Gogel's Grammar of
Epigraphic Hebrew). As for Israeli scholars, Kutscher's _The Language and
Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll_ even transcribes Syriac and
Ugaritic and some Arabic (as well as Phoenician, Samaritan, Lachish,
Elephantine, Palmyrene, Mandean, Gaonic) into "Hebrew" script, although
El-Amarna words is transcribed into Latin characters, and Arabic words may
be also be in Arabic script or transliteration.

Two things however, may be worthwhile considering for Unicode:

(1) Although it is possible to transcribe inscriptional numerals as Arabic
(i.e. Western) numerals, some (e.g., Gogel) still reproduce their
inscriptional shapes in transcription. 

(2) Clarification on how to note uncertain readings in transcription (a
circle or dot above the uncertain letter). I've been using HEBREW MARK
MASORA CIRCLE 05AF and HEBREW MARK UPPER DOT 05C4 for this purpose, but I'm
not sure if this is recommended practice.

Ken Penner, M.C.S. (Regent College), M.A. (McMaster)
Ph.D. (cand.), Religious Studies, 
Biblical Field (Early Judaism major)
McMaster University
Hamilton, Canada
pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca
Vocabulary Memorisation Software: 
http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/westerholm/flash or http://sensoft.nav.to