Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donald R. Vance, Ph.D." <donaldrvance AT mac.com>
To: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 6:06 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Simple Pronunciation Question...


The Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions predate Moses by 1800 years.
***

I agree with your conclusion that Hebrews were by-standers in the creation 
of the alphabet and received it in a second time
but I do not understand the first sentence:
Moses lived ca 200 AD??

Arnaud Fournet
***


The fact
that Hebrew uses one grapheme for two sounds demonstrates that they
didn't create the alphabet (why make one sign do double duty when
you're creating the thing?): sin and shin use the same grapheme. In
fact, there may be others. Dalet for both daleth and dhalet if the
dhalet phoneme was still present in earlier Hebrew and others. There
were around 30 proto-Semitic phonemes and only 22 Hebrew graphemes.
How many survived into Hebrew is a matter of some debate and for how
long. It is most probable, most would say certain, that the Hebrews
did not invent their writing system. It is certainly true of the
script that is preserved in the Biblical mss which is the square
Aramaic script.


Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.