Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 9/20/05, Karl Randolph wrote:
> As far as quarks are concerned, there is a phenomenon
> that is repeatedly being observed, and that phenomenon
> is interpreted as indicating the existence of quarks.
> Whether that interpretation is correct or not does not
> negate the fact that a repeatable observation is being
> made.

I'd rather we stick to the evidence which you refuse to 
read.  Let me point out that in the bilingual inscription
found at Tell Fekherye, Hadad-yith(i, uses the 22 letter
alphabet for the Aramaic spelling.  Unlike most Old 
Aramaic inscriptions which use Shin for *th (like 
Hebrew), this inscription consistently uses Samekh as
in (sr (abundance), hebrew ($r.  Now, what's interesting
is that the inscription is bilingual.  His own name is
spelled Adad-yit'i in the Assyrian version, but "hdys(y"
in the Aramaic one.  And his father's name is spelled
"ssnwry" in the Aramaic, but it refers to Shamash-nuri.
Now, since the inscription recognizes the letter shin for
PS $ (as in m$qy - waters, $myn - heavens) and & (as 
in $m - put) it is probably reasonable to suppose that
Shamash is spelled as "ss" because it was borrowed
from Assyrian -- it is a clearly Assyrian name.  But he
spells his own name as "yit'i" - with a "t".  So he 
evidently recognized two different Assyrian values that
could be related to the Samekh.  All of this very 
strongly points to the 22 letter alphabet being used
to transcribe more than 22 phonemes at this early
stage (this is the earliest Aramaic inscription known).
And furthermore, the shifts of $ - T - S in the Aramaic
and Hebrew all point towards this particular phoneme
being "th" exactly like it is in Arabic.  That the "s"
in this phoneme is transcribed as "t" in the Assyrian
is especially suggestive of this.  Now I am not saying
that there aren't other phonetical explanations for the
particular transcriptions employed at Tell Fekherye,
but this one is probably the most straightforward one.
Really, I don't think you have any place to put down
theories until you've looked at the evidence and the
evidence is available to you and is at hand.

Yitzhak Sapir