Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>]

What exactly IS proto-Canaanite? What I meant to say is: how does one 
look at three inscriptions - one Canaanite, one Hebrew, and one 
"proto-Canaanite" and visually distinguish the latter from the first 
two? How large is the corpus of proto-Canaanite script?

Best Salaams,

Brian Roberts


On Saturday, May 29, 2004, at 05:59  PM, Jack Kilmon wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brian Roberts" <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>
> To: "Walter R. Mattfeld" <mattfeld12 AT charter.net>
> Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 8:08 AM
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Exodus and Hebrew Language
>
>
> > Walter,
> >
> > You're forgetting the Izbet Sartah ostracon. (Naveh 1982), which is
> > arguably 13th-11th century.
>
> I am not sure what it is that makes the Izbet Sartah inscription Hebrew.
> The script is proto-Canaanite.  Is it considered Israelite because the
> abecedary had..or was supposed to have..22 letters?   Hebrew is a 
> language
> that used the Canaanite script and some centuries later, adopted the 
> Aramaic
> script...but a script is not a language, is not a culture.  This 
> ostracon
> could have been the exercise of a Philistine child learning Canaanite.
> Maybe there is something I am missing here.
>
> Jack