Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

It has been claimed that the evidence for "CVC" Hebrew is only
post-exilic, when Aramaic influence spread.  However, the
question is how one defines evidence.  Well, we've all been
in the evidence discussions.  I just wanted to point out various
kinds of evidence against this idea, that just happens to be
post-exilic.  Yes, it is true that pre-exilic Hebrew does not
have vowels.  However, whether Aramaic, Phoenician, Ugaritic,
or Hebrew, the orthography has an interesting peculiarity.
That is, if the letter is doubled it is written once.  Said another
way, if a letter has no vowel afterwards, and the same letter
follows, it is written down only once.  In NWS languages, another
factor is that n without a vowel assimilates to the following
consonant, so that the doubling is again shown by only one
letter.  Elements of this situation can be found in pre-exilic
inscriptions.  For example:

Siloam: mn hmwc) vs. mymn (doubling of y)
Lachish: #6 xy yhwh vs #3 xyhwh
Arad: Lachish #4 ntn (and elsewhere) vs Arad #2 wntt or
#40 nttm (doubling of the second t, in each case)

In the first two examples above we can also probably
conclude that mn and xy were single syllable words.

I'd also point out the same situation exists in Moabite, with
wkrty (doubling of t) from the root krt as in mkrtt, but I don't
consider Moabite a type of Hebrew.

Yitzhak Sapir