Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

>===== Original Message From Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org> =====
>But Semitists do deal with living languages: Hebrew, Arabic,
>neo-Aramaic, Amharic etc, modern South Arabian. Or they should - they
>ignore at their peril modern Semitic languages.

Deal with them, yes. But most who focus on ancient languages do not also 
specialize in modern languages. The amount of interaction is minimal and 
arguably should be, because of the degree of change in the languages over 
time. This observation should not be taken too far--I'm not denying the value 
of a spoken fluency in, say, Modern Arabic or Hebrew, for gaining a higher 
comfort level with the ancient languages. My point is simply that the 
character of most modern Semitic languages has changed significantly, has 
been 
subject to influence from other languages for too long, and as such must be 
treated with due caution. Regardless of the reasons, it is a simple reality 
of 
the field that most Semitic philologists are not so heavily involved in 
modern 
Semitic language study that they have any serious need for reproducing them 
in 
native script in their publications or informal communications. You can say 
I'm wrong, you can say it's an unfortunate state of affairs, but just check 
the archives of this list and the ANE list to see how much modern Semitic 
languages comes into the discussion. It's not a serious need.
>
[snipped]

>Well, unless you are talking about several years back, your recall
>incorrectly. There are now at least three freely available Unicode texts
>of the Hebrew Bible, from http://www.anastesontai.com/,
>http://www.mechon-mamre.org/, and
>http://whi.wts.edu/WHI/Members/klowery/eL/index_html.

Perhaps the issue before was whether BHS was available. None of these three 
is, so choosing to use them for intensive scholarly work introduces the new 
issue of evaluating how good the texts are in their own right. Plus, the 
first 
and last at least are very up-front about the errors and problems that 
remain. 
I'd have to spend some time actually trying to work with them to determine 
whether it's a bigger headache to proof everything I use from these texts or 
to re-key everything I need to reproduce myself.

>It is also
>possible to convert MCW texts to Unicode; I have a draft converter which
>I can make available if anyone would like it.

I would be interested. As far as I know, the only (reasonably) reliable 
electronic text file of BHS is in MCW.
>
>>... This, BTW, is one of my considerations in all
>>of this--if I am starting a dissertation right now that will probably 
require
>>me to quote frequently from the Hebrew Bible, should I enter everything
>>manually so I can take advantage of Unicode?) For more general 
communication,
>>it is not so important to be able to use native script. ...
>>
>Maybe not important, but if e-mail means that we can't do what we were
>able to do in the days of pen and paper, it's a step backwards. Did 19th
>century scholars use transliteration in letters they sent to one
>another? I doubt it. Why should we put up with less for e-mail, and on
>this list?

Well, for one thing, it saves some headaches. If I were to handwrite a letter 
to a colleague, do you know how many would be unable to read the Hebrew? The 
reason is that I prefer to use modern cursive script when handwriting, but a 
lot of non-Jewish Hebraists (not all, by any means) never bother to learn it. 
With most good transliteration systems, just about anyone can decipher them, 
and without the headache of having to read someone's (like mine) bad 
handwriting. So I wouldn't call it a step backward to have to transliterate. 
That's not to say that I personally don't like the option of being able to 
use 
Hebrew script when I type an e-mail. On the other hand, I've never found it 
to 
be a major inconvenience to transliterate either.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics