Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 9/15/05, Karl Randolph wrote:

> Now the Bible claims that Torah, with minor exceptions, was
> written in the 14th century BC, a major literary work during
> the early phase of proto-Canaanite writing: if that claim is
> accurate, that means that the ancient Hebrews had alphabet
> well before the Phoenicians. That would also indicate that
> people were using perishable materials for their records even
> then, making it very unlikely to find materials prior to the
> DSS in the historical record, other than copied claims. But
> there is no independent confirmation of those claims.

Why does every argument with you have to do with the 14th
century?  Where did I say that the "ancient Hebrews" did not
have the alphabet before the Phoenicians?  How do you know
that the Phoenicians didn't write on perishable materials?
The fact of the matter is, that the alphabet originated in the
Levant, and originally had more than the 22 symbols.  The 22
letter alphabet is known from the 11th-10th centuries.  As
such, it does not fit Hebrew which distinguishes the Shin and
the Sin.  It is more likely that this alphabet simply had 
international status in the 10th century.  For example, Naveh
notes that Kilamuwa wrote his inscription in "Phoenician" 
even though it was not the local language.  So, just like
today English does not have separate graphemes for 'th'
or 'sh' even though these were in some sense at some
point of the history of the alphabet part of the alphabet 
(theta and Shin), so too Hebrew spelled its words using
the international alphabet.  Hey, we don't even need to
discuss the 14th century because even if literary works that
you hold were written in the 14th century were so written,
they could have been written using a more extensive
alphabet and simply moved over to the "concise alphabet"
later, just like today the square script is used while 
originally the Old Hebrew script was used.  Besides, Dr. 
Richard Steiner is a professor at Yeshiva University.  And 
while I don't know his particular views on the subject, it 
suggests you are not even in position to substantiate 
your claims via recourse to "tradition."

In fact, all your post above is made up of unsubstantiated
claims.  Except for two claims ("much inscriptional evidence
is written mostly in clay cuneiform and stone inscriptions" 
and "The Bible claims the Torah was written in the 14th
century"), which are very general statements, I see not one 
place in your entire post where you bring evidence to 
support your claims.  So why should I accept any 
sentence of it?  Have you even read Aramaic,
Arabic, or Ugaritic except for those portions of Aramaic
that are in the Bible?  

Yitzhak Sapir