Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 6/30/06, Karl Randolph wrote:

> >  ...  To compare,
> > you do not have a version of the Torah from 1400 BCE.
> > You have a book attested in the last few centuries BCE.
> > If you claim that the internal dates allow you to date this
> > book (Torah) back from 300 BCE to 1400 BCE, then
> > perhaps the Ugaritic inscriptions could be dated back
> > by the internal dates from 1400 BCE to 2500 BCE!
>
> Don't be ridiculous!

What's ridiculous? It's simple logic!  You claim that the text and
orthography of the Torah, as you have it, dating from around 800
CE is exactly the same language on all its details as 2000 years
earlier.  Giving you a little leeway in that very similar (orthographically)
manuscripts have been found dating to the late centuries BCE at
Qumran, and taking the earliest date for these (around 300 BCE),
there is still some 1100 years of difference.  Comparative analysis
shows that the orthography seems to reflect dates of around 500 -
400 BCE.  Now, not having read historical and literary documents
from Ugarit, how can you say that my claims are ridiculous?  The
only thing ridiculous here is your assumption of 1100 years
difference with no linguistic change.  Using a more humble 300
years, based among other things on inscriptions from the late
Judaean monarchy, we'd get that the Ugaritic language may
represent the language spoken in that area from around 1700 BCE
even though only records from 1400 BCE survive.  That is probably
reasonable (and in line with claims of certain scholars, if I remember
right).

> > The real problem is that you make claims and statements
> > knowing nothing about Ugarit, or Ugaritic, and even
> > refusing to try to study Ugaritic because, well, you
> > already know it can't help you.
> >
> The main reason I don't study it is time constraints.

So you can at least refrain from bringing it in as evidence.

> I didn't answer you last time because of the
> moderators who said not to, but now that you bring
> it up again ...

Perhaps the moderators felt that discussion of North
Arabian is outside the scope of the list?

> First of all, the stone that we referenced was
> found geographically separated from Safaitic sites,
> in northern Jordan while Safaitic inscriptions are
> found in southern Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The website you quote is from an exhibition from
the Museum of Saudi Arabia.  It is no wonder then
that it concentrates on Saudi Arabian inscriptions.
Its reconstructions/transliterations are at odds with
the linguistic description of Safaitic/North Arabian
that I have at hand.  For example, the use of "al"
instead of "h-" or nothing for the definite article.  This
is what Mr. Michael C.A. MacDonald writes about Safaitic
in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient
Languages:

"This is the language of most of the graffiti found in the
deserts of black, broken-up lava in souther Syria,
northeastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia.  The
vast majority were written by the nomads who lived
in this area between roughly the first century BC and
the fourth century AD.  So far, some twenty thousand
Safaitic inscriptions have been recorded, and there are
many times this number still awaiting study, as can be
seen by any visitor to these desert areas."

Using the diagrams he provides, the inscription you gave
may possibly read: l(qr bn bn  kS+  bn S(d hdmyt zmrt
Perhaps: to (qr, member of the clan of kS+ bn S(d?  The
last word "zmrt" with the root zmr may indicate a
relationship to the flute being played and maybe we see
here the use of h- for the definite article and the use of -t
as an ending.  All this assuming I interpreted it correctly.
It was pretty straightforward, except all the letters seemed
upside down from the diagram.  I guess it was meant to
be read left-to-right with the picture facing down.

> Secondly, it was found without a historical context
> from which we can date it, making the only dating
> possible based on epigraphic studies.

How do you know this?  Until I pointed to you what it
was your only source of information was some wacko
website.  This didn't bother you from accepting its
claim that it was a find from Scandinavia, while holding
to your claim that it is Sinaitic even though you had no
idea how a Sinaitic inscription made it to Scandinavia.
Now, when you have some reputable sources, you have
an issue with its location.  While it is probably true that it
was not found in stratigraphic context (most inscriptions
appear to be graffiti found in the desert and not in
stratigraphic contexts during digs), I don't know how
you know this for this inscription.  Furthermore, the
whole body of inscriptions (>20,000) found in the
desert in similar contexts, some of which include
transliterations from greek words or names, while
apparently being hard to date exactly, does allow
some dating methodology (for example, use of
Greek suggests later than 330 BCE, I suppose).

> Thirdly, while the epigraphy shows some similarities
> to southern Semitic writings, particularly the bet and
> resh, it also has great differences from Safaitic
> writings in the letters used, e.g. the URL below,
> while showing similarities to proto-Sinaitic.

To quote another section from MacDonald's article:
"Later in the [2nd millenium BCE], two separate
traditions developed out of the proto-alphabet, each
with its own letter-forms, letter-order and (possibly)
letter-names.  One was the Phoenico-Aramaic (or
NWS) ... the other was the Arabian (or South
Semitic) alphabet tradition ... The Arabian alphabetic
tradition is divided into two families: the Ancient
South Arabian, of which Sabaic is the most famous
and from which the Ethiopic syllabary was developed
... and the Ancient North Arabian."  So there's no
reason to raise eyebrows at the similarities you note.

> The conclusion based on archeological, epigraphic
> and linguistic analysis says that that is not a
> Safaitic inscription.

Huh?  Do you have any other knowledge of Safaitic (other
than the Museum of Saudi Arabia exhibition website) when
you make this statement?

> > Besides, your theoretical situation misrepresents the
> > way linguists work.  Given a document, linguists can
> > associate the document with known sets of data,
> > based on script, orthography, and language.  Each of
> > these sets of data is large, not a single document, and
> > the language of this set can be compared with others to
> > determine if the languages are related and how.  In any
> > case, none of this relates to the "internal date" of the
> > Torah.
>
> You claim that the data sets are large. Prove it.

You say you have no time to learn Ugaritic.  Isn't that
sufficient to show that the Ugaritic inscriptions are
numerous?  The same can be said for the Massoretic
text, which constitutes another "data set" in my view,
and the Qumran finds which constitute several related
ones (based on differences in basic language -- Hebrew,
Aramaic, or Greek -- and orthography)

> In order to dismiss the internally attested to date
> of a document based on linguistic data, looking at
> how the language changed, you need to have many
> extensive documents totaling multiple hundreds if
> not thousands of words each century. Where is the
> list of such documentation for Biblical Hebrew? Eh?

I am not sure how this topic got here.  We were
discussing the evolution of Semitic languages.  What
does the "internal dating" of the Torah have to do with
it?  The only thing that has to do with it is an
assumption by *you* that Moses wrote the Torah
in Hebrew in the same orthographic conventions as
the Massoretes.  Since you've read the Mesha
inscription, you find it easy to conclude that Moabite
and Hebrew were mutually intelligible.  But rather than
trying to read Ugaritic to see how close it is to the
Hebrew language of the Bible, and not having good
sources and images to allow you to learn what Sinaitic
inscriptions were really like, you bring some undated
North Arabian inscription from some kooky website for
support that the orthography in the Bible corresponds to
the orthography used in the middle of the 2nd millenium
BCE.  Why don't you instead tell me where you learned
and where it says, internally or externally, that Moses
wrote the whole Torah in Hebrew and where it says what
orthography he used?  Shouldn't you answer this before
claiming that I should be keeping speculation apart from
evidence?

Yitzhak  Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com