Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Harold:

When I turned to the page, I expected to find a series of 
pictures of ancient Scandinavian "writing", some of which 
apparently were Tiffineg, others just symbols. But the top 
stone clearly was not ancient Scandinavian, but I 
recognized some of the letters immediately as 
Hebrew/Phoenician: the Qoph, Eyin, Samech, Dalet and Tau. 
The heh, mem, lamed and yod I had seen in other 
inscriptions of proto-Sinaitic. The Waw is unusual, but 
recognizable. That left Bet, Resh and Zayin in forms I 
didn't readilly recognize. The forms of the letters, some 
proto-Sinaitic, some more like archaic Hebrew, seems to 
me to be a transitional document. Furthermore, with the 
exception of "this" written as Z instead of ZH and 
"bitterness" as MRT instead of MRH, which I attribute to 
dialectal differences, this sounds like perfectly good 
Hebrew.

The web page claims that that the stone was found in 
Scandinavia ??!!?? What was it doing there?

The three lower pictures were what I expected to find.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
> 
> Dear Karl,
> 
> > I saw pictures of this stone first in books, and on the
> > following URL:
> >
> > http://www.viewzone.com/FTscandanavia.html (top picture
> > only)
> >
> > Had I not seen pictures of this stone previously in books,
> > I would not have given it a second thought as by the time
> > I reached this page, I had come to the conclusion that for
> > the most part, the writer didn't know what he was talking
> > about. In other words, I think the site as a whole is
> > weird, and I don't recommend it. This is the only picture
> > of this stone that I know of on line. If someone knows of
> > another picture of this stone on line, on a more kosher
> > site, please let us know.
> >
> > I suspect that this is a later example of proto-Sanaitic,
> > as the letters seem somewhat more stylized than earlier
> > examples: the ayin a simple circle, lamed a straight line,
> > hey like a Vee instead of a jumping man, waw upside down
> > from what is later, mem an outlined "C", resh just an arc,
> > beit an arc with hooks at top and bottom, and the whole
> > alphabet is not shown.
> >
> > I know not everyone will agree with me, but I read the
> > text as L( QBR Z LHSR H(DW DMYT LMRT .
> 
> 
> HH: Thanks for the link, but how do you know this petroglyph is
> proto-Sinaitic? I can't seem to find any explanatory text about it on
> the website.
> 
>                                       Yours,
>                                       Harold Holmyard

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