Biblical Hebrew Forum

[davidfentonism AT aim.com]

As you have observed, the Hebrew is regarded by many to be the "lashon 
haKodesh" (the holy language) which qualifies as sanctified, as you have 
said. I make no empirical claim except with respect to the assertion of how 
the tongue is regarded by many through the millenia. in addition, my poorly 
worded point about the alphabet should have indicated instead that the Hebrew 
alphabet itself connotes full meaning and symbolism individually as well as 
in combinatory ways that is missing from Greek/English translations of the 
Hebrew texts. For example, in the English, an 'a' is an 'a' and nothing more. 
But, in the Hebrew, each letter is assigned a number and word picture based 
upon ancient scripts. Thus, Hebrew words can better be understood by 
examining each letter used then how they correspond and relate to each other. 
The word "kelev," for example conveys more than just "dog" as it would be 
limited to in the English. "Ke" and "lev" in combination convey, as close as 
I can make out, 'man's best friend.' (In a related way, I think, academic 
denunciations of the Hebrew as 'the language of G-d' seem to be irrelevant to 
the historical understanding of the TNKh texts as far as the tribes are 
concerned.)
 
 Thanks for your reply, sir.
 
 Dave
 -----Original Message-----
 From: yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com
 To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
 Sent: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 11:03 PM
 Subject: [b-hebrew] Origin of the Alphabet
 
  On 11/20/06, davidfentonism AT aim.com wrote:
> But in the case of the (paleo) Hebrew, its very alphabet (i.e., its
> characters) are derived from pictograms of the things Adam
> named (e.g., animals, trees, father, etc.). This is what I have
> read, at least. The Crown Diamond Torah studies website has this:

This is a very slanted misrepresentation of the evidence.  It's not
that one cannot believe that this is so.  But it appears to suggest that
the Hebrew alphabet is somehow sanctified, was known already in
the beginning of time, and that the names of the letters correspond to
the words that Adam would have used in naming the creatures.

Practically all the alphabetic names derive from words of qal/qatl form,
or forms that began originally with a vowel *a, even if in either Phoenician
or Hebrew the word no longer maintains the vowel a in the first syllable.
For example: bet < *bayt, yod < *yad, resh/rosh < *ra)$.

Some cases where the letters seem to be derived from other forms
such as nun < *nuwn, have easy explanations (in this case, the
letter represents a snake or, in my opinion, a stream < *naxa$,
*naxl) while the fish symbol was used for d < *dagg).   The
correspondence of practically all letter names with words that originally
had an "a" vowel in the first syllable suggests that this is no accident and
that the letters were named at a stage before certain sound changes
occurred that obscured that vowel, including the Canaanite sound change
a: > o, and perhaps even an earlier change where an a followed by
unvocalized aleph was lengthened.  This must be a stage that can no
longer be considered either Hebrew or Phoenician.

Also, the idea that the Paleo-Hebrew script is somehow special or original is
wrong.  Paleo Hebrew is generally used as a term for the Old Hebrew script as
it appears in post-exilic documents.  But the Old Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Phoenician scripts are all developments of the same Phoenician script form
that is in turn a development from a script called "Proto-Canaanite".  Proto
Canaanite also developed into Old South Arabic.  But this script was not the
earliest writing system and it succeeded syllabic writing systems such
as Sumerian cuneiform as well as Hieroglyphic Egyptian scripts.  That letters
represent pictographically only "a" vowels may suggest that this was also the
case originally for the alphabet (that is, a syllabic script in which
non-"a" vowel
pictographs were dropped).

A nice description of the alphabet's development can be found here:
http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/chapters/17ABCS.htm

Yitzhak Sapir
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