Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 10/7/05, Read, James C wrote:

> a)The sin/shin were originally phonetically distinct in proto-semitic and 
> this has
> cascaded into all the daughter languages (very likely)

> All things considered, it looks like you have a good case Yitzhak. As the 
> hebrew
> of the torah is evidently a direct descendent of the hebrew that Abraham 
> spoke
> and the testimony of the torah shows that Egyptian was already a distinct
> language at this stage it would seem that the only reasonable possibility is
> possibility (a), although I am open to hearing any more evidence.

Having reached this conclusion we may now ask: Given that there are
letters which may
be reconstructed as referring to more than one phoneme, is it possible
that other letters
too were originally referencing more than one phoneme but that this
distinction was lost
by the time of the Massoretes.  There are several letters to which
this is believed to
apply.  Particularly, this is where Dr. Steiner's article is
interesting.  As an aside, I think
his article is also a good demonstration of the difference in quality
one finds in peer
reviewed or serious journals and books as opposed to forum posts and
popular books.
Just as an indirect example to the difference in quality that you get.

This is the link:
http://www.sbl-site.org/Publications/JBL/JBL1242.pdf

I think this specific article starts on page 31 in the pdf.  I don't
think you'd have
problems with that article as far as theological propositions and beliefs are
concerned.

Yitzhak Sapir