Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
> I do not deny that the Sin and Shin were different letters as early as
late Second Temple period, but were they different letters in pre-Galut
Babel Hebrew? I think the evidence is against it. The same is true for many
of the other pronunciation shifts that occured after the Galut Babel.
>

It seems to me that the opposite is true. Shin, Sin and Samekh are rarely
interchanged in the Tanakh, but often in Mishanaic Hebrew. Many words that
the Tanakh spells with sin are spelled with samekh in the Mishna, such as
yaxas, xeres, taphas. But of course, when I say "the Tanakh spells", I mean
that the Tanakh has a letter, to which the Masoretes added the left-side
dot. However since the Mishna, which is later than Tanakh but before the
Masoretes, used a Samekh, I think that the pronounciation as "s" is pretty
strong.


> Secondly, when did the ancient Hebrews become literate? I have read
acheological reports that the 22 letter Sinaitic writing was known in Egypt
before the Hyksos invasion, about the time Joseph was sold into slavery in
Egypt. So is it beyond reason to say that the ancient Hebrews were literate
when they left Egypt and it was they in about 1400 BC who brought the 22
letter alphabet to Canaan and the Phoenecians, and not the other way around?
>

The "Proto-Sinaitic" and "Proto-Canaanite" had more than 22 letters. Since
all of our inscriptions are very limited, we don't know quite how many. The
12-11th century Izbet Sartah ostracon has an "abecedary" which seems to have
the whole 22 letter alphabet, with a couple of mistakes. The context of that
seems to be "Israelite" (whatever that meant in the 12 century). As for the
rest - let's not get into a debate about the Hyksos, Joseph and the Exodus,
but suffice that you take the text more literally than i do.

Yigal

> Karl W. Randolph.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.a
> >
> > Actually, Karl, Shin and Sin were NOT the same letter. They are two
distinct
> > sounds in most Semitic languages and were in Hebrew as well. However
they
> > were not in Canaanite, and since the Israelites "took over" the
> > Canaanite/Pheonecian alphabet, they used the same letter for both
sounds.
> > The same was true for Het and Khet, Ain and Ghain and maybe some others.
> > (That the Ghain was pronounced as late as the Second Temple period is
shown
> > by the fact that the LXX knew to use a Gamma in such words as Gaza and
> > Gommora). The fact that the Mesoretes knew to invent a diacritical mark
to
> > differentiate between Shin and Sin is somwhat of a wonder in itself.
> >
> > As for the name Shemuel - whatever the original etymology (I would go
with
> > "El is His name", but there are other possibilities), the explaiantion
that
> > the writer attributed to Hannah - "for I have asked him of the Lord"
does
> > not fit. The Hebrew "asked" or "requested" is $)L - "sha)al". This would
be
> > perfect, as an explanation for the name "Shaul" - Saul. I have long
> > suspected that there is a tradition about the birth of Saul "hiding"
under
> > the Deuteronomistic version of what we now call I Samuel.
> >
> > Yigal
> --
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