Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

----- Original Message -----
The Izbet Sartah inscription is assumed to be"Hebrew" because it was found
in the archaeological context of a typical Iron I hill-country village -
typical in pottery, architecture, plan etc. Izbet Sartah is as Iron I
"Israelite" as there is. Now, it is possible to argue just what "Israelite"
means in the 12-11th centuries and would the inhabitants have actually used
that term, but what would have been the linguistic difference between a
Canaanite village and an Israelite one, anyway?

Yigal


From: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
> 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
>
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