Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Jack:
 
You wrote:  “Jim, Matres lectionis can also be found in Phoenician and 
Moabite which predate the Tanakh. Alef, heh, waw and yod were used but waw 
and 
yod are the most common. Are you saying that the use of matres lectionis was 
a post-exilic practice?”
 
1.  This thread will focus on proper names (not common words).  As to 
proper names, what you say about Phoenician is not correct:  “The writing of 
Phoenician-Punic names was consonantal, corresponding to the writing of the 
language generally.  However, a few examples of matres lectionis are found, 
mostly in the Punic group.”  Franz L. Benz, “Personal Names in the Phoenician 
and Punic Inscriptions” (1982), at p. 199.
 
2.  However, having said that, I see that I spoke way too loosely in my 
first post on this new thread.  I should not have used the term “post-exilic”.
 
The general view is that matres lectionis in Hebrew likely do not pre-date 
the 1st millennium BCE.  For example, in “Matres Lectionis in Ancient Hebrew 
Epigraphs” (1980), Ziony Zevit starts with the 8th century BCE.  Yes, there 
are some Ugaritic examples from much earlier, but I think that many people 
see the use of interior yods and vavs in Hebrew as not pre-dating the 1st 
millennium BCE.  However, some proper names in the Patriarchal narratives, 
especially in chapter 14 of Genesis, very likely long pre-date the 1st 
millennium BCE.  Indeed, many scholars would place the composition of part of 
the 
Patriarchal narratives earlier than Phoenician, though the final form of 
Genesis, including the many interior yods and vavs, post-dates Phoenician.
 
What I meant to say was that the oldest part of the Bible, including at a 
minimum chapter 14 of Genesis, but arguably much more of the Patriarchal 
narratives, very likely pre-dates the use in Hebrew of interior vavs and yods 
as 
vowel indicators.  In most cases, the proper names in this old part of the 
Bible were never updated to plene spelling.  Yet there are some obvious, 
prominent exceptions to that general rule, where a proper name that should be 
truly ancient nevertheless has, or at least appears to have, plene spelling.
 
The oldest proper names in the Patriarchal narratives, in their original 
written form, likely did not contain any interior yods or vavs used as vowel 
indicators.  One reason for that view of mine is that when I look at old 
proper names in Genesis, it seems to me that the occasional presence of an 
interior yod or vav as a vowel indicator is not random, but rather had a 
distinct 
purpose.  You’ll see what I mean when I give some actual examples.  Without 
regard to when in the 1st millennium BCE vowel indicators were added, the 
oldest proper names in the Bible likely pre-date the use in Hebrew of vav and 
yod as vowel indicators.  (But you are right that I should not have used 
the term “post-exilic”.)
 
3.  I am planning to make the following two points on this thread.
 
(i)  For old proper names in the Bible, where an interior vav or yod was 
later added as a vowel indicator, we should re-examine those pre-1st 
millennium BCE proper names on the basis of their original form, omitting the 
later-added interior vav or yod.
 
(ii) But arguably even more exciting than that is the following new 
proposition of mine.  In some cases, an interior vav in an old proper name in 
the 
Bible is not a later-added vowel indicator (in my controversial opinion), 
neither being later-added nor having anything to do whatsoever with a vowel 
indicator or a vowel.  Rather, for a Biblical proper name that dates all the 
long way back to the Late Bronze Age, we should consider, for the first time, 
a Late Bronze Age historical analysis of such proper name, where that 
interior vav was there from day #1, and it is a true ancient consonant 
functioning 
exclusively as a true consonant.  The Patriarchal narratives reflect (at 
least in part) a world in which, as verified by the Amarna Letters, a 
majority 
of the princeling rulers throughout Canaan had non-Semitic names.  Jack, 
that may be a way to prove that the Patriarchal narratives are far older, at 
least as to some of their proper names, than JEP in the 1st millennium BCE.  
So it’s a very exciting proposition.  Few things in life are more exciting 
than an interior vav in an old proper name in the Bible that is not a 
later-added vowel indicator.  
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois