Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Yigal,

So what do you say about Jack's assertion that the script of the Izbet 
Sartah inscription is proto-Canaanite?

I guess if we were to take the harmonization route here, we'd come up 
with an  Israelite village where a Philistine child was learning 
Canaanite. (Sorry, couldn'y resist).

On a more serious note, do scholars assume that literacy in the ANE was 
an on-off phenomenon or was there a scale of degrees of literacy like we 
see today?

Best Salaams,

Brian Roberts


On Saturday, May 29, 2004, at 07:31  PM, Yigal Levin wrote:

> ----- 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > b-hebrew mailing list
> > b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew