Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

As one who does not know cuneiform nor Akkadian, I most certainly would like 
to see the original form as well as the transliteration now that it is within 
unicode’s capability. At the very least it would force me to sit down and 
learn these writings, whereas now I can be lazy and hope the transliterations 
are accurate.

I also would like to see Tenakh in paleo-Hebrew, where the sin and shin are 
the same letter, where none of the sofit letters are found and where the 
spaces between words were written with dots. To the lexicographer, it may 
suggest connections where presently there are divisions based on modern 
(since Second Temple) Hebrew. For example, P$(  (peh sin eyen) has the 
meaning of to step, while P$(  (peh shin eyen) has the meaning of to rebel, 
step out of line. There are other words where I have found similar 
connections. To have them split apart as in modern Hebrew, the computer, 
which is too dumb to cross code differences, cannot help us see the possible 
connections. (Incidently, the “shibboleth” incident in Judges was a 
difference between a sin/shin and samekh.)

(I believe that the samekh originally had the “ks” sound. Evidences for it 
are its place in the alphabet and form were the same as the letter carrying 
the “ks” sound in those other languages that adopted the alphabet, and in 
Ezra in his Hebrew sections and Nehemiah used it to transliterate where other 
languages (in particular Greek) used their letter “x”. Interestingly, in 
Aramaic, Ezra used sin/shin.)

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>
> >===== Original Message From Peter Kirk <peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com> =====
> >It can be very useful to our understanding of Hebrew to see
> >its relation with cognate languages, where loan words come from etc.
> 
> Yes, it can. I'm not disagreeing with that. How are you going to see, 
> though, 
> if you can't read the relevant texts?
> 
> >Our
> >recent discussion on this list of the background of SARIS would have
> >been impossible, for me and for most of us on the list, if the related
> >Akkadian forms had been given in KB/HALOT etc in cuneiform - even if
> >this list could handle cuneiform.
> 
<big snip>
> I don't see where having the evidence in 
> transliteration makes a difference.
> 
> Trevor Peterson
> CUA/Semitics
-- 
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