Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Donald R. Vance, Ph.D." <donaldrvance AT mac.com>]

I meant to say they date to 1800 BC and predate Moses. Mea culpa.


Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
Oral Roberts University
dvance AT oru.edu
donaldrvance AT mac.com


On Nov 17, 2010, at 12:10 PM, Arnaud Fournet wrote:

> ----- 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.