Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 03/11/2005 01:42, Kevin Riley wrote:

> ... The fact that the Phoenician letters
> seem to fit so well the consonantal structure of the Phoenician language
> makes it one of the wonders of the history of languages. ...

Well, surely there are some assumptions here. The Phoenician language 
has been reconstructed almost entirely from the rather few surviving 
texts in the Phoenician alphabet. So of course the reconstructed 
language corresponds well with the alphabet. But it is only an 
assumption that the actual spoken language corresponded well with 
written form.

For other ancient languages like early Greek the only reason that we 
know that the pronunciation differed from the alphabet was because in 
the large corpus of surviving texts there are tell-tale variations, and 
also meta-texts describing the language. In the much smaller Phoenician 
corpus there is much less variation and probably no meta-texts. So 
scholars were forced to assume that the alphabet is more-or-less 
phonetic. Of course if this is assumed at the start, it remains in the 
conclusions.

For example, we know that the Phoenicians did not distinguish ayin and 
ghayin, sin and shin etc in their writing. But is it therefore safe to 
conclude that they did not distinguish them in speech? Only if we 
presuppose that the script was phonetic - which is a very dangerous 
assumption if no other scripts in the ancient world were phonetic.

> ... As the witness of
> history is unanimous in ascribing this script to the Phoenicians ...

I'm not sure what you mean by "the witness of history", but i understand 
that the story as reconstructed by modern scholarship is by no means so 
clear cut that this script originates with the Phoenicians. The 
Phoenician script is derived from earlier proto-Canaanite scripts, with 
certain modifications. The specific form of it known as "Phoenician" may 
have been used first by the Phoenicians and then borrowed by Hebrews, 
Moabites etc. But I wonder if there is any real evidence for this, 
rather than assumptions based on uncertain sources, like the old story 
that the Greeks borrowed their script from the Phoenicians, and the 
supposed conclusion that the script is perfectly fitted to the 
Phoenician language.

> ... I see no
> reason to doubt that, especially when it does not fit the Hebrew or Aramaic
> languages as well.
>  

We know that the script does not fit Hebrew and Aramaic well because we 
know more about subsequent forms of these languages. We know little 
about later forms of Phoenician, and so we don't know that the script 
fitted Phoenician any better.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/