Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lewis Reich" <lbr AT sprynet.com>
To: <jimstinehart AT aol.com>; <LBReich AT alum.mit.edu>; 
<b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 7:02 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] TD(L


> Jim -
>
> Thanks for sharing with the list what I intended to post publicly but
> carelessly sent only to you.
>
> I fully recognize that "a thousand years or more" for the Masoretic oral
> tradition only gets us back to the late first millennium or so.  But I was
> being needlessly conservative, I think.  The Torah had a reading history
> going back at least to the time of Ezra, 1500 years before the Masoretes; 
> as
> you noted, parts of the written text might plausibly have been written as
> early as the 14 century BCE, and I imagine it was a recited text and not
> strictly one to be read.
***
Written?

Is there not a possibility that the text was composed orally, earlier or 
much earlier than the time when it got written on paper?

Does that mean Hebrews had to wait until they could write to have rites, 
liturgy and religion?
They composed and wrote the Torah from scratch the day they got the 
alphabet!!??

How many copies of the Torah may have existed in the 14th century BCE?
Who was in charge of creating and diffusing these copies?
They had only one copy for all Hebrews?

A.
***


I don't doubt that pronunciation might have
> shifted over that time, even in a text with a continuous reading tradition
> about how to pronounce the text.  I think that type of shift is a more
> plausible case to make than noting that the Masoretic pointing was only
> fixed in the Middle Ages.  Quite true, but that pointing fixed a much much
> earlier tradition of pronunciation, so I think we must look to how
> pronunciation might have shifted rather than to the relatively late date 
> of
> the Masoretes' contributions in assessing what the Hebrew reflects.  I'm
> sure the Ugaritic spelling may be more relevant to tell us how the name of
> the king was originally pronounced, assuming we have a strong case for how
> Ugaritic was pronounced; but it seems to me that the late date of the
> Masoretes' fixing their pointing may be something of a red herring.
> Lewis Reich
***
Ugaritic only writes consonants as far as I know, with the exception that it 
has three alephs: ?a, ?i, ?u.
So it won't provide much additional information.

Best

Arnaud Fournet