Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On 1/7/07, K Randolph wrote:

> > You take the "existence of both situations" as a given assumption, and
> > you allow nothing to disprove your own interpretations of these words.
> > That is really the problem and the difference between your statement of
> > the theory and these scholars'.  For them, every assumption must be
> > proven.

> The first problem I noticed is the lack of words where sin and shin
> denote a difference in meaning.

Again, that there is no difference in meaning is something you have
to prove.  It is a theory, and if not substantiated, it is a baseless
theory.

> But in Hebrew, there are only a few roots where the sin or shin denote
> differences in meaning, about the same percentage of uses as for words
> that have the same pronunciation without a sin or shin present.

I've never seen this claim of percentages substantiated numerically.

> If the
> sin and shin were separate letters all along, theory says there should
> be many more examples, but they are not there.

Whose theory?  Maybe that theory is simply wrong?

> Sin and shin together
> are the most common letter in Biblical Hebrew.

I don't know.  Waw is probably the least common first letter in a word
(except as the conjunction "and").  Does this mean anything?  And,
I don't have numbers to substantiate your claim.

> Secondly, looking at meaning, I noticed words where the only thing
> that would indicate that two different words did not come from the
> same root was that one was with a sin, the other with a shin. The
> example I have given is &YM to place and $M that place, there, their
> meanings pointing to a common origin, common root.

This again is a theory, that appears to your modern English semantics
to describe the semantics of ancient Hebrew.

> I have noticed
> other examples as well, only that I have not made an organized study
> of the phenomenon prevents me from having an organized list of such.

Which means that you did not even try to substantiate the theory.

> Thirdly, I noticed some words where the same meaning is sometimes
> spelled with a sin, sometimes with a shin. If they originally were two
> letters, that shouldn't be found.

How is this "thirdly" much different from "secondly" or different at all
from "the first problem"?

> After having made these observations, I then go back and look at the
> theory that sin and shin were always separate letters, and say that
> these observations show that there is a problem with that theory. In
> fact, the data seem to show that they were originally one letter that
> was later split into two.
>
> What comes first: data or theory? I say data. What do you say?

The dots on the shin are evidence.   That you say they may be safely
ignored is a theory.  That Qumran manuscripts show a tendency
to correct words with the letter Shin/Sin to Samekh in cases mainly
where the letter is later identified as Sin is evidence.  That this
indicates the Qumran authors differentiated Sin and Shin is theory.
That &M "put" and $M "there" are translated in the LXX in a specific
way is evidence.  That they are identified by you as coming from the
same root is theory.  That Hebrew and Aramaic have words $QL and
TKL, respectively, is evidence.  That they are cognates is theory.
Some of these theories can be convincingly argued.  Others cannot.
You discredit evidence (the Massoretic Shin/Sin distinction) on the
basis of unsubstantiated theories (see above about your not having
made an organized study of the "phenomenon").   So, you tell me,
which comes first?

Much of this covers issues we have dealt with in the past, and which
I think convinced everyone on the list but you that you simply do not
wish to accept any evidence which can intrude on your theories.  I felt,
upon reading the article in the initial post of this thread, that it was
only proper to bring this into the discussion.  I am all for an argument
that is argued in view of the evidence even if I have to change previously
held beliefs and assumptions as a result.  As this was new information
related to this ongoing discussion, I felt it was useful to bring it in.

Yitzhak Sapir