Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

those who wish to study the matter further can consult the work of Naveh, 
among others.
 
Uri

Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org> wrote:
On 04/12/2003 16:39, Elaine Keown wrote:

> Elaine Keown
> central Texas
>
>Hello:
>
>I'm looking for help on the history of Aramaic or
>Hebrew square script---I'm looking at them as,
>basically, a unit. 
>
>I assume square script starts in Elephantine in Egypt
>about 495 B.C., develops into slightly later square
>script in Qumran documents, but what then? 
>
>At Qumran, so far, I think 50-60% of the letters
>(depends on document) look modern to me (for the mss
>which *are* in square script). 
>
>But after Qumran, how long is the hiatus before we get
>to 100% of the letters appearing modern? In Birnbaum,
>he seems to indicate it's another 600 years---I was
>very surprised by that........
>
>I also wondered if the Cairo Geniza had examples of
>slightly later square script development? 
>
>I'm drawing sample letters to re-use in a Web
>document, so references with photo/drawn facsimiles
>appreciated.
>
>Thanks for all help--Elaine Keown
>
> 
>
Elaine, I think this all depends on how you define "look modern". I take 
this as meaning "have almost exactly the same shape as in traditional 
printed Bible texts". At least, it would seem to mean that if you 
consider that only 50-60% of Qumran letters "look modern". If you are 
talking about having shapes that are immediately recognisable by 
Hebraists today, from a quick look at an extract from 1Q Isaiah I would 
say 80-90%. And looking at an alphabet from Elephantine, things are not 
much worse: samekh and ayin are now unrecognisable and some others 
ambiguous, but we are still talking about 50-60% with basically their 
modern shapes.

And we may be able to trace things back before Elephantine, even if 
these are the oldest surviving texts in "square" script. The Palmyrene 
alphabet given in http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2311.pdf, 
figure 5.5 column XVIII, is in fact more like modern Hebrew than 
Elephantine is; but the table in that same document suggests that it 
separated from Hebrew at a date before the Elephantine texts. But 800 
BCE Aramaic shapes seem to have been more like paleo-Hebrew.

Jack Kilmon offers fonts based on Elephantine and other early shapes, at 
http://www.historian.net/files.htm. See also 
http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm which gives Genesis 1:1 in several 
different script variants.

But I am still confused. I read, for example at 
http://www.peshitta.org/initial/aramaic.html, that:

> Aramaic can be dated to five periods, dating from inscriptions that go 
> back to the first millennium B.C.:
>
> * Old Aramaic, 925-700
> * Official or Imperial (Assyrian) Aramaic, 700-200 (when the
> language was still uniform)...
>
but I can't find any clear details or examples of what script was used 
for that "Official or Imperial Aramaic", other than the Elephantine 
papyri. So it remains unclear to me whether the square script was the 
generally used form of imperial Aramaic, as some state, or was a later 
and specifically Jewish innovation, as claimed by others. The evidence 
from Palmyrene favours the former, but I am not sure either way.

-- 
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/


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Subject: [b-hebrew] Attributes and Events
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R. de Blois* in chapters 3 and 4 defines a new (?) semantic model of
Biblical Hebrew which includes a high level category "Events" quite unlike
anything I have seen before. I am still digesting this model and haven't
made up my mind about it yet but if I end up having any serious problem with
R. de Blois' proposal I suspect it will have to do with his "Events"
category. 

For example take the following quote:

******quote******

4.5 CONCLUSION

 On the basis of what we have seen so far there does not seem to be any
convincing reason to maintain Attributes as a distinct semantic class in our
semantic framework for a lexicon of Biblical Hebrew based on semantic
domains. There are too many similarities between Attributes and Events
according to the model we have constructed for Events in chapter 3.

******end quote******

I know there are some people on this list (a few) who have reviewed this
proposal and are working on a semantic domains dictionary project
independent of the SDBH (UBS) project. I would like to know what some of
these people think about R. de Blois' treatment of Events and Attributes.

Looking over his example in 4.3.1 using GDL, I was left wondering why this
was used as evidence for his collapsing Attributes into Events. The
"behavior" of GDL in the passages cited (2 Sam 7:22,Ezek 38:23, Psa 138:2)
is comparable (is it not?) to the "behavior" of the MEGA word group in
Homeric and Attic Greek.

Anyway, I am still mulling this over and wondering if anyone else found
themselves raising their eyebrows in chapters 3 and 4.


greetings,
Clay Bartholomew 
 
*TOWARDS A NEW DICTIONARY OF BIBLICAL HEBREW BASED ON SEMANTIC DOMAINS
Reinier de Blois
United Bible Societies
Woerden (Utr.), The Netherlands