Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George F Somsel <gfsomsel AT juno.com>]

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 20:44:43 -0500 "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
writes:
> 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
> -- 
> ___________________________________________________________

Karl,

This is not an acceptable academic procedure.  You apparently admit that
Hebrew is not the oldest Semitic language for which we have written
evidence, but you then procede to maintain that it is nevertheless the
oldest Semitic language.  On what basis?  It is this unsupported
NEVERTHELESS that is unacceptable.

george
gfsomsel
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