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  • From: belaga AT math.u-strasbg.fr
  • To: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ktiva & Kria
  • Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 20:56:22 +0100

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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