Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>]

-------Original Message-------
 
From: Peter Kirk
Date: 11/01/2007 1:17:39 AM
 
 
On 10/01/2007 13:49, K Randolph wrote:
> ...
> The DSS are post when that change would already have occurred and
> Ugarit is not Hebrew, nor the Amarna letters, and if the DSS are post
> event, the Cairo Geniza even more so.
>
>
The DSS do include evidence that sin and shin were pronounced distinctly
by the 1st century CE, which certainly has a bearing on your theory by
restricting the date of the change you hypothesise. Ugaritic and the
Amarna Letters give evidence for the separate pronunciation of sin and
shin (well, I think they do, but I haven't checked) in languages closely
related to Hebrew at an earlier time, and disprove one older version of
your hypothesis according to which sin and shin were not separate in any
Semitic languages until a late date.
 
The *letters* are not separate in any of the alphabets used in Canaan prior
to pointed Hebrew.  I think they may perhaps be in the longer Ugaritic
alphabet.  The main point, which has been mentioned numerous times, is that
the pointed Hebrew in most cases agrees in separating those same words as
are separated in languages that do distinguish sin from shin.  When you can
set out regular correspondences across languages it usually represents an
inherited set of differences.  Therefore it needs to be shown that Hebrew
[or Canaanite generally] lost the distinction and then re-borrowed it from
Aramaic.  Otherwise, the most likely explanation is that Canaanite dialects,
including Hebrew, preserved the sound but for some reason did not show it in
writing.  As so many other ANE languages are not phonetic [AFAIK, none],
there seems to be no basis on which to claim Hebrew alone is different. 
Karl claims, against all evidence apart from his reading of the Hebrew
scriptures, that Hebrew *must* be phonetic.  I really can't understand why
we keep arguing when he refuses to accept any evidence except that which he
is already convinced supports his theory.
 
Kevin Riley