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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] comparative historical linguistics was Re: Nun-Tav-Vet root

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] comparative historical linguistics was Re: Nun-Tav-Vet root
  • Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 09:50:52 +0000

On 29/11/2006 23:35, K Randolph wrote:
...
.... As you say, "we have
to play with the hand we're dealt", and the hand we're dealt includes no
evidence for the 22 letter alphabet until several centuries after your
Exodus date.

This can neither be proven nor disproven. The only records we have of
writing in Tanakh indicates that the writing material was perishable,
starting with Torah. With that being the case, we can't look at stone
monuments for the record, rather we have to trust the historical
records. Or not trust them, if that fits your presuppositions
(religious faith, theology).

I don't understand you, Karl. Are you suggesting that we cannot prove that there is "no evidence for the 22 letter alphabet until several centuries after your Exodus date"? Of course it should be clear from the context that I was thinking in this case of surviving documents, not your hypothesis about the original alphabet of the Torah. On the latter point, have you considered the evidence I mentioned yesterday about the "Proto-Canaanite" abecedary text from Tel Aphek?

I looked for more on this. It seems that the text is more accurately described as from `Izbet Sartah. I came across some web pages which might interest you:

http://www.andreascenter.org/Andreas%20Center/Izbet%20Sartah.htm
http://members.bib-arch.org/nph-proxy.pl/000000A/http/www.basarchive.org/bswbSearch.asp=3fPubID=3dBSBA&Volume=3d4&Issue=3d3&ArticleID=3d5&UserID=3d0&;
http://www.telecomtally.com/blog/2006/10/on_the_izbet_sa.html (this blog seems to have a lot of interesting things about early alphabets)

This is considered to be a certainly Israelite site. And the alphabet is a 22 letter one, although apparently written left to right, and with a slightly different alphabetic order from the modern one, with ayin and pe reversed - interestingly, as in the LXX version of one acrostic psalm, which may preserve the original ordering. Well, this is not evidence for a different alphabet at the time of the Exodus.

...
I note that these kinds of script changes have been common through
history, and especially over the last century in various countries,
largely for wider political reasons; and while religious establishments
have sometimes initially rejected the script changes they have soon come
to realise the necessity of republishing even the holiest of books in
the newly accepted script.

Here's where we have to distinguish between alphabet and font face.

For example, when I was a kid, I had to learn Fraktur font face
because the hymnals and liturgy were printed in Fraktur while the
secular society had almost totally gone over to standard serif and
non-serif fonts (Yes, I lived in Germany for a while). Today all of
that is printed in standard serif and non-serif fonts, like Times and
Arial. The reason the change could go so smoothly is because only the
font face was changed, the underlying alphabet remained untouched.

I am not talking about changes of font face. I am talking about changes of script, from Arabic to Latin, Latin to Cyrillic, and Cyrillic to Latin. At least one language went through all three of these changes in the 20th century.

But the change from proto-Canaanite to modern Hebrew might have been less abrupt than this. It might have been a combination of gradual changes of font face with the dropping of certain letters. I note that English dropped the thorn, the eth, and the wynn, not because these sounds did not exist in English, but because they were not in the internationally conventional alphabet of the mediaeval period. I think they were dropped at about the time that the Norman ruling class in England started to use English rather than Norman French, but they would not have been used to the special English letters and so adapted their orthography to the French alphabet. A similar process might have led to the Israelites dropping certain letters which were not used by their neighbours.
...

If the historical records are correct (and I see no reason to doubt
them), then Torah was written in Hebrew before any of the cognate
languages (e.g. Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic) were written using a 22
letter alphabet (in the case of Ugaritic, before it was written at
all). That makes those languages interesting in that they can
sometimes clarify difficult passages and terms in Tanakh and their
literature provide background material left out of Tanakh, but they
are not ancestral to Hebrew, nor is a study of those languages
necessary for an understanding of Hebrew.

I don't think anyone has claimed that they are ancestral to Hebrew, only that they are very close sisters to Hebrew.

"As a historian, we have to play with the hand we're dealt" means that
we are to deal with hard evidence, not religious belief. ...

But, Karl, it is your religious belief that the Torah is literally accurate which leads you to insist and argue stridently, rather than hypothesise and discuss in the normal scholarly way, that Moses wrote the Torah. The line between presuppositions, to which you admit, and religious belief, which you seem to claim you are not bringing to this question, is a very fine one - except that people can reasonably claim that atheistic presuppositions are not religious, even if they are held to just as firmly and even irrationally as any religious dogma.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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