Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Jack:

You are confusing oldest surviving with earliest written.

While it is true that the earliest specific mention of writing in Hebrew is 
that of writing long books to be carried by nomads, it does not mention which 
writing materials used, though presumably ink on parchment.  Here's the 
speculation part, if Moses in the mid second millennium BC was using ink on 
parchment, what was to prevent his having older texts, also ink on parchment, 
possibly already copies of copies, that recorded all the way back to Adam? If 
this speculation is true, that would make parts of Genesis older than the 
oldest surviving Akkadian writing. It is only that ink on parchment did not 
survive, while fired clay bricks did, that leaves us with Akkadian writing 
surviving while possible Hebrew writing did not.

There is no evidence that this speculation is either correct or wrong. 
However, there are clues in Genesis that Moses used older manuscripts to make 
his Urgeschichte, original history, and that those manuscripts may have had 
their authors going back to Adam. If true, that means your whole development 
scheme below is wrong. But clues do not equal evidence.

As for "Proto-Hebrew", I'm not Mr. Smith, but I think he means the oldest 
Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.

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

> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Darrell Smith" 
> <Darrell.H.Smith AT sceptreofjudah.org>
> >
> >  Nevertheless, all Semitic languages are 
> > direct descendants of Proto-Hebrew!
> 
> This just is not true.  Akkadian was the earliest recorded Semitic 
> language. Protosemitic divided into geographic divisions and 
> Northwest Semitic consisted of Aramaic, Canaanite and Ugaritic. 
> Ugaritic is important in the development of proto-Sinaitic and 
> Canaanite and the evolution of these languages produced Phoenician, 
> Hebrew and Moabite.  You need to explain to me what "proto-Hebrew" 
> is.
> 
> Jack
-- 
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