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b-hebrew - [b-hebrew] Alphabet (WAS: chalal)

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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Alphabet (WAS: chalal)
  • Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2007 00:18:09 +0300

Isaac, are you really saying that you think that the alphabet that we use now for Hebrew was the "original" one? Any basic book on ancient Western-Semitic paleography will tell you that the alphabet first used by the Hebrews was what we today call the "Paleo-Hebrew" or "Phoenician" alphabet. Without getting into the debate about who invented it, this was the alphabet used by Israelites, Phoenicians, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites and Arameans during the Iron Age (what for Judah was the pre-exilic period), with each group slowly developing it's own distinctive style or "font". Eventually, the style used by Aramean scribes (now employed by their Assyrian, Babylonian and then Persian masters) changed more radically, becoming the block letters that we know today. As Jews, both in Babylonia and in Judah, became more familiar with Aramaic which had become the common language of the whole region, they slowly adopted this common letter-form, at first for Aramaic and "secular" documents, eventually for sacred texts as well. The Rabbis of the Talmud, looking back at this proccess from several hundered years later, claimed that the change had been authorized by Ezra. The evidence that we have now shows that it was much more gradual. But in any case, the bottom line is that the similarities between letters that are part of your theory work in the more recent script, but not in the older one. So your claim that these similarities are a part of the basic, most ancient structure of the Hebrew language does not hold.


Yigal Levin
----- Original Message ----- From: "Isaac Fried" <if AT math.bu.edu>
To: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
Cc: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 12:08 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] chalal - perforate/pierce?/KRH


Yigal,

You are right. I would not play such games with the Phoenicians; with them I would limit myself to shesh-besh. Do you think it is a mere accident of nature that the square Hebrew letters he and xet are nearly identical?

Isaac Fried, Boston University






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