Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
> 
> That's the one.
> 
> Chris, without having read the article, my understanding is that Ayin and
> Ghayin, as well as the two Het's, were distinct phonemes in early Canaanite,
> and preserved in Proto-Canaanite script and in Ugaritic. ...
> 
> Yigal

Yigal:

I'd hesitate to use either proto-Canaanite 
or Ugaritic as evidence for this.

First, Ugaritic was a different language, 
and it may have had phones that Biblical 
Hebrew never had.

Secondly, proto-Canaanite apparently had 
many variations.

I have looked for what were the original 
glyphs for the Hebrew alphabet. What is 
frustrating to me is that most books as well 
as most internet sites that I have found 
that discuss the subject provide mainly the 
scholars' conclusions, and if an original 
image is provided, with rare exceptions, it 
is of such low quality that no independent 
study from the image is possible.

That being as it is, I have seen two 
variants for the lamed, ayin, and resh, 
three for he, waw, mem and sin/shin, and 
probably five for the beyt, and that's just 
counting what I can remember off the top of 
my head. Do you claim that each difference 
in glyphs refers to different phones, or are 
they merely variations along the same lines 
as our modern difference between cursive 
handwriting and printed Bodini, for example? 
I think the latter is more likely.

>From the historical record (which many 
doubt) Moses wrote in the 15th century BC, 
so he probably used "proto-Canaanite" glyphs 
while David and the united kingdom used 
"Phoenician" glyphs (did the Phoenicians 
learn the alphabet from the Hebrews? Why 
not?). At a time when alphabets, when they 
were adopted by different languages, they 
regularly added and subtracted glyphs to fit 
the phonetic patterns of their languages, 
Ugaritic being an example of this, it makes 
no sense that Biblical Hebrew did not do so, 
except that the original 22 glyphs 
represented the 22 consonantal phonemes 
extent in the Hebrew language of the time. 
Then the ayin/ghayin and sin/shin 
bifurcations are additions caused by the 
Babylonian Exile when, to a large extant if 
not totally, native speaking of the Hebrew 
language died out.

Oh, and I also don't buy the common line 
that only a small portion of the population 
were literate. While it is true that 
individual ownership of libraries was rare, 
I suspect that the majority could read. 
References to illiteracy were rare, and most 
references to the written word took for 
granted that people could read it.

Karl W. Randolph.

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