Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 9/16/05, Karl Randolph wrote:
> Yitzhak:
> 
> I was just commenting below on some presuppositions I
> expect to find in the article you referenced in a previous
> message. By saying "expect" leaves the door open to being
> wrong. Let's wait for the article before arguinig (afterwards
> argue at will).

What's the point of argument when you don't support your
argument with evidence?

> I'll have to admit, though, that some of my expectations
> concerning the article are based on discussions we have
> had here on this forum. What I have seen are claims that
> cannot be substantiated taken as fact, as well as
> presuppositions that have in some examples been
> contradicted by history. Unless the author references
> historical evidence that is new to me, I expect to find
> claims that cannot be substantiated.

It's not that past discussions centered on this question.  It's
that you constantly try to veer the discussion towards this
question.  The question of multiple phonemes in ancient
Hebrew has nothing to do with the date, existence, or
historicity of Moses or whether the Torah is Mosaic or not.

Anyone who has read Hebrew and Aramaic notices that
that there are sets of letters in Hebrew that have constant 
parallels in Aramaic.  Thus, in many words, there is an
equivalence between the Hebrew letters in the root and the
Aramaic letters.  For example: rb( - four - is the same in
both Hebrew and Aramaic.  Other letters have two or 
more parallels.  Thus, a Hebrew shin is sometimes found 
in the Aramaic root as a taw and sometimes as a shin.
For example, $or in Hebrew (ox) is tor in Aramaic.  This
correspondence also happens in some other letters:
Hebrew zayin which is sometimes an Aramaic zayin 
and sometimes an Aramaic dalet; Hebrew tsadi which
is sometimes an Aramaic tsadi, sometimes an ayin, and
sometimes a +eth.  When one compares these letters to
Arabic roots, one finds something very interesting: all the
letters which are both Hebrew shin and Aramaic shin, are
sin in Arabic.  And all the letters which are Hebrew shin
and Aramaic taw, are tha in Arabic.  The same goes for
the other correspondences.  And there are letters where
both Hebrew and Aramaic are generally identical but
in Arabic are split between two letters, such as ayin
and ghayin, and h.a and xa (corresponding to Hebrew
and Aramaic xet).  There is also a kind of correspondence
in Sin, where letters written in Hebrew and (in cases where
Aramaic preserves it) Aramaic Sin are transcribed Shin in
Arabic but letters written in Shin or Samekh are transcribed 
Sin in Arabic.  Thus, knowing the root in two of these
languages generally allows you to reconstruct how the
root should look like in the third, and this works in the
great majority of the roots.  Now, taking in Ugaritic, Ugaritic
also divides the phonemes of the roots exactly along these
lines, also including the two Hets and the two Ayins.  Also,
there is usually a semantic difference between the two roots.  
The simplest and most straightforward way to explain these 
correspondences is to argue that these phonemes diverged 
from an original set of phonemes that was greater than the 
22 represented by the alphabet.  The fact that the early 
inscriptions in the pictographic alphabet (known sometimes 
as the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet) represent more than 22 
phonemes supports this.  

Having argued that the original Hebrew or Canaanite or Aramaic
evolved from a language having more than 22 phonemes that
merged in different ways in the various languages, the question
is simply when did Ayin and Ghayin merge, and when did Het
and Khet merge.  As it appears that Hebrew could keep the
difference between the Shin and Sin and Samekh even until the
time of the Massoretes, it is possible that even the two Hets and
Ayins were written with the same grapheme throughout Biblical
times.

All of the above is a straightforward analysis of linguistic evidence
and has nothing to do with Moses or the 14th century or the 
Torah, except for the Torah possibly having been vocalized in
more than the 23 graphemes in which it is written (22 if one does
not include the Massoretic marks).  The issue at hand is that you
suppose, without any evidence whatsoever -- no linguistic evidence,
no statement in the Torah or Bible to that effect, and even going
against the Traditional belief that Moses received the Torah on
Mt. Sinai with the entire knowledge of which Massoretic marks go
where -- that the Torah, without the Massoretic marks, represents
all the phonemes people of the 14th century would have used, and 
that if they would have used additional phonemes they would have
marked them.  That is, you simply assume that people in the 14th
century would have written the Torah in 28 graphemes if they had 28
phonemes, but since they had only 22 phonemes they used only
22 graphemes, and that sometime later the Shin and Sin magically
diverged in ways that correspond to Arabic even though they do not
maintain the same sound, and this is how the Massoretes marked 
them differently.

The only statement in the Bible that I know of to the effect that allows us 
to reconstruct that the phonemes merged, is Gen 2:23 which suggests
a correspondence between the root )n$ (where the word )eno$, man,
comes from) and )n[th] (where the word )i$$ah, woman, comes from),
if one compares the cognate words in Aramaic, )ena$, and )itta/)itt:ta.
Generally, it is my understanding that some Semitists believe these
particular two phonemes merged already in the Canaanite of the mid-
2nd millenium, anyhow.  However, I think there are also some rare
cases where a word )i$$a (woman) can be discerned in Aramaic, so 
that it's possible that there were two words )intha and )in$a that
merged to Hebrew )i$$a.

So, again, I ask, if you've read any material in Aramaic, Arabic, or
even Ugaritic.  Because I'm not sure what evidence you have to back
up the above assumptions that you I have mentioned which I keep
seeing in your posts.

> Let's wait for the article before arguing.
> 
> Pray tell, what is the URL to the article?

The article is not yet available online.  When and if it is, it will be at 
the following link:
http://www.sbl-site.org/Publications/Publications_Journals_JBL.aspx

Yitzhak Sapir