Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 10:34 PM, James Christian wrote:
> Yitzhak,
> most of what you just said was about missing superfluous yodhs in
> inscriptions. Yet you outright rejected that inscribers may not have wanted
> to spend extra time and space carving out a consonant that wasn't really
> even needed. In terms of percentages of your data I'm guessing that a large
> percentage can be explained by superfluous yodhs right?

James, I rejected it on the basis of evidence.  You are welcome to offer a
rebuttal.  Lachish 3 is a very touching letter and has implications for 
scribal
activity and literacy.  As such it is one of the few inscriptions
available on the
web.  Here -

http://www.kchanson.com/ancdocs/westsem/lachish3.html

I think the image of the ostracon is available on Inscriptifact.

In any case, how do you conclude a yodh is superfluous.  How do you explain 
the
difference between אש in Siloam and איש in the Bible?  Do you also read it as
fire in the following sentence (as Karl suggested):

ובים הנקבה הכו החצבם אש לקרת רעו גרזן על [ג]רזן

generally translated as: "And on n the day it was pierced, the diggers
hit, each
one  toward his peer(s), the axe upon the axe"

Yitzhak Sapir