Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

The New York times relates on a Tel Zayit inscription recently found.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/international/middleeast/09alphabet.html

The following apparently has the same article without requiring registration.

http://www.lebaneselobby.org/News__index/news%202005/11%2009%2005%20A%20Is%20for%20Ancient,%20Describing%20an%20Alphabet%20Found%20Near%20Jerusalem%20By.htm

A comment in the article touches on a point recently discussed in this list:
"All successive alphabets in the ancient world, including the Greek
one, derive from this ancestor at Tel Zayit," Ron Tappy said.

>From the point of view of the Greeks, I think all "Canaanites" were
"Phoenicians," and Phoenician was only a term used by outsiders,
such as Greeks, not by the Phoenicians themselves who thought of
themselves as Canaanites.  But I still don't know how he gets that, in
view of the fact that the order of the letters is all different from Greek,
and even from Hebrew (although presumably this includes the Pe/Ayin
order that is different in Hebrew).

Like Victor Horowitz said on ANE, it's best to wait for the publication,
a reading of which I understand will take place in the SBL session next
week in Philadelphia.  It's nice to see that such an important find is
published so quickly, so that scholars can have reliable information
rather than learning what of little information they can from news
reports.

Yitzhak Sapir