Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Fred, you are confusing language with alphabet - or, more correctly, writing 
system, since not every writing system is an alphabet. There are plenty of 
languages that did not develop their own writing system, either remaining 
unwritten or adopting and adapting someone else's writing system. Writing 
systems often cross from one language family into another. The earliest true 
writing system that we know of was Sumerian Cuneiform, which was later 
adopted and adapted by Akkadian, Eblaite, Hittite, Elamite, Persian and a 
whole lot of other languages from different language families. Persian was 
later written using the Phlavi script, then the Aramaic alphabet and since 
the 9th century the Arabic alphabet. In some former Soviet republics, Persian 
dialects are written in Cyrillic. For another example, the Turkish 
language(s) was (were) totally oral, until the Turks arrived in the Middle 
East and adopted the Arabic alphabet, together with the Islamic religion. And 
so Turkish, which is not a Semitic language, was written for centuries with 
the Arabic alphabet, with a few extra diacritics to handle sounds that 
Turkish has and Arabic does not. Then, in the 1920, as part of his effort to 
westernize and secularize Turkey, Kemal Attaturk decreed that Turkish be 
written in the Latin alphabet, as it has been ever since (so far). This does 
not make Turkish a Romance language any more than it was a Semitic language 
before.

So yes, the Greek alphabet is a direct descendant of the 
Canaanite/Phoenician/Hebrew alphabet, which is why we have Aleph Bet Gimmel 
Dalet/Alpha Beta, Gamma, Delta. And post-biblical Hebrew was influenced by 
Greek. But this does not make Greek and Hebrew cognate languages. The two are 
from different families, and basically unrelated.

The second issue that you brought up was the Septuagint. The Septuagint is a 
Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. As such, it does provide important 
insights into the way the biblical text was understood in antiquity. It also 
gives us information about the development of the Hebrew text, since, as you 
wrote, our earliest manuscripts of the Septuagint are much earlier than out 
earliest manuscripts of the MT (although we do have the Hebrew texts of the 
Dead Sea Scrolls, which are earlier than our earliest Septuagint mss). So 
using the Septuagint as a guide to the meaning of the Hebrew text is 
certainly relevant to this list.

On the other hand, the Septuagint IS "just" a translation. We do not have the 
"original" Hebrew text that they were using. In fact, legends aside, we don't 
even really know just who "they" were and where and when they lived. The 
Septuagint is also a rather interpretive translation, often giving what the 
translator thought the text should be, not what it actually said. 

Given all that, yes, the Septuagint is important but let's not get carried 
away.

Yigal Levin


-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org 
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of fred burlingame
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 8:37 PM
To: fred putnam
Cc: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] cognate alphabet

Are not letters part and parcel of language?

Is not alphabet (consonants and vowels) of languages cognate routinely
discussed here, as a highway for understanding hebrew corresponding letters
(consonants and vowels)?

Why do hurrian or ugarit or cuneiform letters instruct the hebrew alefbet,
but greek letters do not? Or perhaps none is efficacious for guiding
understanding of the other?

regards,

fred burlingame