Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Karl,

If you write me a message, I respond.  So, even if you write a long
message full of misinformation, I am still going to respond.  This is
not "trying to proselytize" but simply trying to set the record straight
as far as true dependable information is concerned.

As to the Safaitic inscription, there is no place to discuss it further
after it was convincingly shown to be Safaitic.  Your claims here (such
as "found far from where Safaitic inscriptions are found") are simply
either lies or ignorance.  You don't know Safaitic, you have very little
reputable information about this inscription, and you yourself said you
have had little examples of Sinaitic inscriptions to study.  If you don't
know and don't have the time or resources to search out and study
these subjects, then please leave these subjects alone.  It is best to
maintain some dignity than to continue to misinform.

Similarly, Historical/Comparative Linguistics has nothing to do with
historical claims in the content of the texts themselves.   The place
of Ugaritic in the wide range of Semitic languages has nothing to do
with the historicity of Kirta.  The place of the Greek of the Iliad in
the framework of Indoeuropean has nothing to do with the dating or
historicity of the Trojan war.  Historical/Comparative Linguistics
studies the history of the languages, not history of cultures.  A
language is not cognate if some of the historical claims made in
texts written in the language are validated, dated, or found non
historical, but rather if two languages both show independent regular
sound changes from a common base, the two are said to be cognate
languages.  If you have no knowledge or interest in learning about
Comparative Semitics, Ugaritic, and in this case, the Amarna dialects,
then again: it is best not to misinform.

An example of misinformation: In your recent response, you suggest
you don't argue against Comparative Semitics, but then go ahead and
claim that only if the historicity of Moses or your theory of relationship
between Moses and the Hyksos (or your claim that a Safaitic inscription
from the early centuries CE is a Proto-Canaanite inscription) are wrong,
could the Amarna dialect and Hebrew be claimed to be different stages
of the same language.  This is a direct contradiction to Comparative
Semitics, and Linguistics in general, so obviously you must have some
flawed understanding of what Comparative Semitics is or how it works.
Just as an example, it is possible to describe a situation whereby the
Israelites developed their tongue much quicker than the (Canaanite)
inhabitants of Jerusalem, even though they started out from the same
dialect, so that even though the Amarna dialect of Jerusalem is attested
hundreds of years after your claimed date for the Exodus, the Amarna
dialect still represents an earlier stage of the same language because it
has no independent sound changes from this stage, yet Hebrew does.

Please don't misinform and if the best source of information you have for
Sinaitic inscriptions is a website on stones left by aliens in Scandinavia,
don't discuss Sinaitic.  This is not to say that there are no dependable
sources of information on Sinaitic, Safaitic, Ugaritic, Proto-Semitic,
Historical/Comparative Linguistics, etc. that are freely available on the
web.  Our discussions are filled with links to them.  But you consistently
refuse to make use of these dependable sources or to study these subjects
from dependable sources.  While this ignorance of these subjects is
apparently your choice, this is no reason to misinform others in the guise
of a rebuttal of a post I wrote to someone who is versed and informed in
these subjects.

Yitzhak Sapir