Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 4:04 AM, K Randolph wrote:
> Yitzhak:
>
> Apparently you didn’t read my responses, neither to Jim Stinehard nor as a
> response to the moderators’ call for suggestions: I have now made it a
> policy for myself that if a message extends to more than two to three
> screens on my computer, I would neither read it nor respond to it. This
> message from you extended five screens, therefore I didn’t read it.

Well, Karl, this may be the time to inform you that I have made it *MY*
policy that I will neither read, respond, nor relate in any way to messages
that advocate a "generous" 250 word limit which are themselves over 250
words, except to say that I have made it my policy not to read, respond, or
relate to them.  Incidentally, the ~125 line response that you rejected was
in response to a ~170 line post by you.

> but publishing an image with your own commentary is fair use, i.e. allowed.

No, it is not.  See for example the Use Agreement at
http://www.inscriptifact.com/

> I suspect you don’t have any Hebrew examples, only
> those from cognate languages; those I have already rejected for reasons
> already given. I have photographs of both the Gezar calendar and the Siloam
> inscription, neither of which back up your claims. So which Hebrew
> inscriptions are there that do support your claims?

This is really interesting, because I consider the Gezer calendar to be in a
possibly cognate language.  In any case, the following are signficant
differences
in orthography between the Bible and the above two mentioned inscriptions.
See the response to James (probably over your limit) for other examples from
Lachish 3:

Siloam -

אש - The word 'man' is always spelled איש in the Bible, well over a
thousand times,
and never with yodh.   The spelling אש is reserved in the Bible for 'fire'.

הית - The 3fs form appears in the Bible only in 2 Ki 9:37 without a
final he.  All other
3fs forms occur with a final he.  That is over 200 times.  The form of the 
verb
without a he is used for the 2ms and 2fs forms.  In other words, the
form appears
in this spelling in the Bible less than half a percent.

חצבם - The word appears in the Bible four times, with both a waw and yodh, all
those times.  The use of yodh for the plural is predominant in the
Bible, but never
appears in the epigraphic pre-exilic inscriptions -- something like 20
times only in
Hebrew inscriptions.  There are furthermore cases where the spelling
of the Bible
appears to suggest an original reading lacking a yodh -- such as 1 Sam 1:24
reading פרים שלשה in the MT, but apparently a misreading of פר משלש.

Gezer -

My reading is either one of verbal nouns (אסיף, עציד) or one of verbs
(איספו, עצדו).
In either case, the spelling is different from the Bible in
practically every line.
Again, you have the lack of yodh (as always in epigraphic inscriptions) in 
שערם.
But you also have lexical differences - the word ירח in the Gezer inscription
appears practically the same amount of times as it appears in the entire 
Bible.
In epigraphy, חדש is used for new moon only, but in the Bible it is used for
"period of a month."  You even have a whole new morphological category -
dual (probably absolute) - with a final waw.

Just how can you say that neither the Siloam nor Gezer backs up my claims?
Just exactly how don't they?

Yitzhak Sapir