Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 9/18/05, Karl Randolph wrote:

> Now I have another problem, and that is the lack of time. I don't
> respond to all the letters on this list that I want to for the same
> reason. And of the letters I respond to, I often give short,
> incomplete answers assuming understanding to only certain
> points brought out by the letter I'm responding to. The number
> of times I have to respond to misunderstandings shows the
> fallacy of that practice.

You'll save probably a lot of time of misunderstandings if you
become aware of the cognate evidence.  In any case, what you
are saying is that I showed you the evidence, but you have no
time to review it because it is so large.

> > Biblical Hebrew is inseparable from the Massorah.
> 
> I was taught (correct me if this information is wrong) that
> even today it is considered good form in a synagog to read
> Tanakh in unpointed Hebrew. And the scrolls used have the
> Masoretic text only without points. That is the text I have
> been using. What I use is not an artificial construction on
> my part, rather it is downloaded and I use it unchanged.

The scrolls have the Massoretic text only.  But reading them
without the Massoretic system is not "good form."  In fact, a
good case can be made that you're supposed to read them
with the Aramaic targum interspaced and some early 
manuscripts with Massoretic cantillation have the Torah
interspaced with Aramaic targum.

> > And just to make it clear, the article doesn't go through
> > explaining all this.  For some linguist to actually take the
> > time to write an article in a respectable journal defending
> > this theory, someone would have to first point out problems
> > in the above theory in such a way that is equally strong and
> > equally supported by evidence as the above theory.  "If it
> > ain't broke, don't fix it."
> >
> But that is exactly what I see, the theory is broken. 

You can't see the theory is broken if you don't understand the
sheer breadth of the evidence on which it rests.  Trust me,
learning and reading the Ugaritic and Aramaic will be both
useful for you in your own Bible study and will also save a lot
of time spent arguing on this list for your theory which simply
does not take them into account.

> It does not take into account
> 1) languages, as well as language families, gain phones and
> phonemes as well as lose them

It does recognize this, although it might be less able to detect
additional phonemes.  The problem is that an independent shift
in each of these languages (Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic)
does not explain the cognate phoneme evidence I noted before.
If you argue that the language only represents the letters it uses
to write, then you'll have to argue that Ugaritic developed
independent phonemes for various roots in the 14th century BCE,
and that 20 centuries later, Ugaritic long buried in the ground and
unknown to anyone, that Arabic developed the exact same
phonemes.  This doesn't even get close to explaining why there
is a match between various letters in Hebrew and Aramaic (such
as Hebrew $ = Aramaic t) in those cases where Ugaritic and 
Arabic, purportedly developed the phoneme independently.  The
very fact that the phonemes are related in such a way shows that
the development is not independent in each language.  Yes,
languages can develop phonemes, but this won't explain why
these languages developed these specific exact same phonemes
independently.  It also doesn't explain the q -> ( shift I noted 
earlier in Aramaic.

> 2) except in rare casees where spelling is frozen, changes to a
> language, especially one where spelling is phonetic and fluid,
> are mirrored in changes in spelling

How do you know the Hebrew spelling wasn't "frozen?"  It makes
more sense to conclude that from the point of view of Hebrew and
Aramaic, the alphabet was fixed at 22 letters, and only with the
innovation of disambiguating dots in the 2nd century CE or so,
did the various alphabets begin to denote separate phonemes that
were represented by the same grapheme for many centuries.

> 3) continuation of #2, when new phones and phonemes appear
> in a language, new letters appear in the language to express the
> new sounds. E.g. Umlauted vowels.

This is just wrong, especially for Semitic writing.  A good example
case is the Arabic alphabet: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Arabic_alphabet
Of course, I guess you'll argue that Arabic now didn't have these
28 phonemes until the 7th century CE when they were 
first clearly differentiated.  But how can you then explain that the
different phonemes developed exactly along the same lines as
Ugaritic?

> These are historically attested to uses of alphabetic writing,
> therefore when we find Hebrew, which had phonetic and fluid
> spelling for eight centuries (Moses to the Babylonian Captivity),

You don't know how Hebrew was spelled in the time of Moses and
it is not "historically attested" then, whenever you think Moses lived.

> when it used only 22 graphemes, that is not only lack of evidence
> for the greater number of phones found in later Hebrew, it is also
> evidence of lack, that those phones were never in the language
> until later. Not proof, but evidence none the less.

Yitzhak Sapir