Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

I'm sorry that I am not going to crop this post.  List members know
that I generally do.  I think it is relevant to see the entire post and
its response (I did crop out the part about Kitchen's analysis on
Daniel, though):

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 9:12 PM, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> Hello James,
>
> I am going to elaborate on the example of Lachish 3 that I used
> regarding your point about the lazy scribes and their yodhs.  You
> have several times now said you are scratching your head
> wondering why it is relevant.  I hope the following elaboration will
> help you see the relevance.
>
> If the scribes were lazy, we would expect that at times they would
> use the yodh and at times they would not.  Also, we would not
> expect that they would be lazy just with the yodhs in this example.
> Why not other yodhs.

This gives me a chance to make a slight correction:
"Also, we would not expect that they would be lazy just with the
yodhs.  Why not be lazy with other letters, such as He?"

> You said the yodhs are superfluous.  But in Siloam, the yodh is
> not superfluous.  It would have served to identify the word as
> "man" rather than "fire."  In the Bible, over a thousand times,
> this is always the spelling - with a yodh.
>
> In Lachish 3, we have an additional phenomenon.  The use of -th
> suffixes for 2ms verbs.  Thus, we have:
> ... לספר אשר שלחתה אל עבדך אמש ...
> "regarding the message that you sent to your servant yesterday night"
> ... כיאמר אדני לא ידעתה קרא ספר ...
> "and so my lord said: you don't know how to read a message"
>
> In the Bible, the spelling is almost always with a -t for these
> verbs.  In the Qumran spelling, the -th is usually used as you
> saw from the quote George provided the other day.
>
> Now, if the scribe was lazy with the yodhs, why isn't he lazy
> with the 2ms verbal suffixes?  True, in the Lachish 3 ostracon
> we have no examples of plurals, specifically.  But we do have
> examples without a yodh, as I pointed out:
>
> להגד - Karl pointed out that the text is shown as a lacuna in the
> online transcription.  The text is not a lacuna, it is just hard to
> read.  In the original publication, the author places just the ד in
> the completion.  In Tov's publication, there is no lacuna at all.
> Indeed, I can make out in Tov's photo of Lachish 3 the strokes
> that Tov shows in the accompanying drawing.
>
> An additional example is הנבא.  In both of these, there is no
> yodh.  If the reason for the missing yodhs in plurals is that the
> author was being lazy, why then is he only lazy with yodhs and
> not the he of the 2ms verbal suffixes?
>
> Furthermore, in Lachish 3, we have the word ועת "and now."
> This word is only rarely spelled in the Bible without an he,
> about twice as compared to hundreds of times with the he.
> Why is the author stingy with the he on ועת but not with the
> he of the 2ms suffix?
>
> This is not just in Lachish 3.  The spelling without the he is
> found in all the pre-exilic inscriptions, always.  There are
> sufficient instances to make a conclusion that this 100%
> use of the non-he spelling is not accidental.  Furthermore,
> it also appears on the one pre-exilic document that we still
> have on papyrus.  So the argument of being stingy or
> lazy because we are talking about an "inscription" is further
> weakened.
>
> Now, supposedly you can say, well, the missing yodh on
> plurals and various other words is one issue of laziness,
> but the missing or extra he is not.  It is a different issue.
> But the argument of laziness only works if the author
> was always lazy.  It just doesn't make sense that the
> author wanted to be concise with one letter and not with
> others.
>
> So really, the argument of laziness doesn't work.
>
> I hope that now that I have carefully elaborated my
> example, you will be able to follow the logic and not
> claim as you have done that I have refused to interact
> with the suggestion.

To which James replied:

> Anyway, getting back to the point I was a little
> disappointed by your response. My comments on
> frequencies were not targeted at the -m versus -ym
> phenomenon. I clearly suggested to you this could
> have been common practise as there really is no
> ambiguity and it is much quicker to carve -m into a
> rock that it is to carve -ym. We see the same
> phenomenon in modern text messaging. It is much
> quicker to type '2' than 'to'.

> My comments on frequencies were aimed at your
> completely unrelated observation that some other
> phenomenon of alternative spellings is testified in
> the inscriptional corpus with anti polaric frequency
> with respect to the frequencies in the b-hebrew
> corpus.

James,

You have complained that I don't address the possibility
that you raised regarding the -ym/-m being as you write
above "this could have been common practise as there
really is no ambiguity and it is much quicker to carve -m
into a rock that it is to carve -ym."  James, I think the
above reply nicely addresses this claim.  In fact, I think
the fact that you continue to ignore the counter-
arguments that I raised is very problematic.  James,
instead of bickering on how I addressed your
comments on frequencies (and honestly, I have no
idea which comments you're referring to here),
just answer the arguments.  The discussion will progress
when you find it possible to deal with the arguments.

There are some other points that come up from your
restatement of your position:

"as there is really no ambiguity" -- James, Karl has
now suggested that the word hxcbm is "their
excavating" rather than "the excavators."  This is
a clear ambiguity!  The lack of the -y- in plurals
does create ambiguity.  So too does the lack of
the -y- in  אש, as I wrote above:

> You said the yodhs are superfluous.  But in Siloam, the yodh is
> not superfluous.  It would have served to identify the word as
> "man" rather than "fire."  In the Bible, over a thousand times,
> this is always the spelling - with a yodh.

"much quicker to carve -m into a rock"

James, most of the inscriptions we have are not carved
in a rock.  They are written with ink and pen on clay or
papyrus.  So it is not much quicker.  I raised the issue in
the message above:

> This is not just in Lachish 3.  The spelling without the he is
> found in all the pre-exilic inscriptions, always.  There are
> sufficient instances to make a conclusion that this 100%
> use of the non-he spelling is not accidental.  Furthermore,
> it also appears on the one pre-exilic document that we still
> have on papyrus.  So the argument of being stingy or
> lazy because we are talking about an "inscription" is further
> weakened.

You ignored this issue as well.  James, instead of bickering
about how I addressed frequencies, just address the counter
arguments I raised.  Also, I would appreciate it if you could
define "anti-polaric" for me.  I have no idea what it means
and when I tried to look it up the only references I found
were to Star Trek: Voyager.

Yitzhak Sapir