Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Yitzhak:

Let me tell you a story.

In our town, the city government thought it would 
be a good idea to install cameras to catch drivers 
running red lights. But then because of political 
corruption, the overpriced cameras that were bought 
were of such bad quality that only about one in 
five pictures can be used. The person who 
complained the loudest was the cop whose job it was 
to bring these cases to court. On his last case, 
the lawyer for the driver opened with the argument 
that it was well known that these pictures usually 
are bad, therefore his client should get off, upon 
which the cop answered that this was one of the few 
pictures that was good.

My complaint is that most of the pictures I have 
found on the internet are of such bad quality that 
I cannot use them as evidence for Hebrew language. 
But there are a few, rare exceptions, that are 
good, and I have referred to this example in the 
past. The language on this stone is not Ugaritic, 
but recognizable Biblical Hebrew. From the shape of 
the letters, I would guess that the inscription is 
late proto-Sinaitic, or maybe even during the early 
transition period between proto-Sinaitic and 
"Phoenician" writing. You can find previous 
references to this stone in b-hebrew archives.

Karl W. Randolph.

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
> 
...
> 
> > ...  the use of a waw as an indicator for the
> > masculine singular possessive is attested to as
> > early as proto-Sinaitic, as well as an internal
> > yod as a mater lectionis.
> 
> Would you care to elaborate?  I find this comment
> odd given that you repeatedly complain that you
> cannot investigate the proto-Sinaitic evidence
> sufficiently because of poor photographs available
> to you.  But really, who said that just because authors
> of proto-Sinaitic inscriptions used a waw as a
> mater lectionis for masculine singular possessive
> (if they did, which is unlikely) this means the Israelites
> did too or had any relation to their language?  Why do
> you deny the value of Ugaritic to learn something about
> Biblical Hebrew but accept the value of the proto-
> Sinaitic inscriptions (when it suits you)?
> 
> Yitzhak Sapir

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