Biblical Hebrew Forum

[belaga AT math.u-strasbg.fr]

This is a  message concerning only your last remark: my messages are  
always signed by my full name, with the address of my work, etc. It  
just was at the end of my message.

I will try to answer you in full in the days to come: we have short  
vocations here in France.


> Dear Edward,
>
> Without getting into your theory, which I have not studied enough to agree
> or disagree with, I wish to comment on the following paragraph of your post:
>
> > (4) The identification of letters of the Hebrew alphabet with numbers
> > is very old, going back to pre-Davidic period: just look at the series
> > of David's psalms which are alphabetic acrostics; by the way, the word
> > "acrostic" being of Greek origins, it does not mean that the Greeks
> > invented this poetical genre.
> >
> > Thanks a lot,
> >
> > Edward
>
> 1. While the basic order of the letters (with some variations) seems to go
> back to the very origins of the alphabet, way back in Middle Bronze Age
> Canaan (or maybe Canaanites in Egypt), the actual assignment of numbers for
> each letter (what became known as "gematria" in Jewish circles) is not
> attested in pre-Hellenistic times and seems to have been borrowed from
> Greek. The fact that various Psalm and other biblical passages were written
> as acrostics has nothing to do with the assignment of numbers.
>
> 2. Most modern scholars would argue that many of "David's Psalms" are
> actually pseudoepigraphic, but I'm not going to get into a debate on the
> issue.
>
> 3. Please sign your posts with your full name.
>
> Yigal Levin
>
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Edward G. Belaga
******************************************************
Institut de Recherche en Mathématique Avancée
Universite Louis Pasteur
7, rue René Descartes, 67084 Strasbourg Cedex, FRANCE
tel.: 333 90 24 02 35, FAX: 333 90 24 03 28
e-mail : edward.belaga AT math.u-strasbg.fr
******************************************************


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