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  • From: fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>
  • To: fred putnam <fred.putnam AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] cognate alphabet
  • Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:22:12 -0600

Hello Fred:

Thanks for your helpful comments and taking the time to respond. I reply as
follows.

1. I did not intend "part & parcel" to communicate uniqueness; but rather to
convey a sense of essence. Written language, in other words, exists not,
absent letters. Hence, a distinction between cognate languages and cognate
alphabets, elevates form over substance, in terms of difference.

2. I appreciate your contrast between ancient greek; and ugarit or hurrian,
in application of the latter (but not the former) to interpret biblical
hebrew. That is the point of my post. Why the difference?

3. Brown, Driver, Briggs Lexicon surely appears to give ancient greek equal
standing with arabic, ethiopian, etc., in the determination of
individual hebrew word meanings.

4. But for some strange reason, when the matter proceeds from individual
words to entire texts, the masoretic text sails south; and the septuagint
flies west in terms of overall content and meaning (accorded the same story
or text).

5. And the inconsistency becomes all the more pronounced when the children
of biblical hebrew (aka mishnaic, medieval, modern) never become consulted
for interpretation of the parent. If "language dna" flows upward and outward
(hurrian and ugarit), why not downward? So is the case with organic dna.

6. It seems like arbitrariness rules the day.

7. If biblical hebrew presents a unique language, why then the chronic
discussion of certain other languages here. And if biblical hebrew
represents not a unique language, why then the omission of its children from
discussion, not to mention its ancient cousin greek?

regards,

fred burlingame

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:10 PM, fred putnam <fred.putnam AT gmail.com> wrote:

> The only application of grammatology (the study of lettering, or alphabets
> (crudely
> put)) to Classical Hebrew is to ask if certain text-critical variants may
> have arisen due to the similarity of the archaic letters (e.g., archaic *
> he* and *waw*), although (as many have noted) textual criticism is not an
> "alphabet game".
>
> Since the physical representation of a (any) language is always secondary
> in the language's history. That is, no known language began as writing which
> then gave rise to a system of speech; "writing", whatever its
> form--syllabic, logographic, or acrophonic (i.e., one that we would
> recognize as an "alphabet")--is always an attempt to reproduce speech.
>
> Letters are not part and parcel of language, since the same letters (such
> as these with which I type this) can be used for many languages; perhaps
> this means that we can think of writing systems as "meta-lingual", even if a
> particular system is or was used in one culture for one language.
>
> I'm not sure what the second paragraph is asking. Sorry. (I've been reading
> a lot of student papers.)
>
> Nor am I sure what the word "instruct" means in the third paragraph
> (incidentally, "Hurrian" and "Ugaritic" are *languages* which were written
> in cuneiform, which is a *writing system*). We do occasionally use the
> Greek alphabet to "understand" the Hebrew text, but this is because the
> Septuagint (LXX) transliterates proper names and a few other words, which we
> can use as a clue to the pronunciation of pre-Masoretic Hebrew. This is not,
> however, the same as using Greek to "understand" the Hebrew text in the
> sense of "interpret".
>
> We also discuss the relationships between, and apparent development of,
> different systems of writing (this is also part of grammatology), which can
> help us see that, e.g., sounds represented by two different signs or sets of
> signs in one language are represented by only one sign in another. It tends
> to be more helpful when we can be fairly certain of the chronological
> relationships between languages, which is why there is a great deal of study
> of, e.g., the grammatology of English, as when we ask how many "sounds" are
> represented by the "sign" "ou"?.
>
> And some of this discussion is related to the study of Canaanite
> inscriptions ("Canaanite" is a term given to the group of related languages
> used in and around Canaan (Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, &c.).), but this
> takes afield of the purpose of this list (if I have not already strayed too
> far), and I need to get back to reading papers. I hope that this is at least
> interesting.
>
> Best wishes.
>
> Fred
>
> On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:37 PM, fred burlingame
> <tensorpath AT gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 12:12 PM, fred putnam
>> <fred.putnam AT gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> I believe that Fred's (Burlingame) link is to the history of the
>>> alphabet.
>>>
>>> Peace.
>>>
>>> Fred
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Kirk Lowery <kirk AT grovescenter.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > On 11/24/10 12:11 PM, Christopher Kimball wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > > Is Greek usually considered a cognate language of Hebrew?
>>> >
>>> > No. Greek is Indo-European. Hebrew is a member of the Semitic family.
>>> > Naturally,
>>> > there is some influence of one on the other because of people speaking
>>> both
>>> > languages and the LXX, etc.
>>> >
>>> > Blessings,
>>> >
>>> > Kirk
>>> > --
>>> > Kirk E. Lowery, PhD
>>> > President & Senior Research Fellow
>>> > The J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research
>>> > --
>>> > $DO || ! $DO ; try
>>> > try: command not found
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > b-hebrew mailing list
>>> > b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
>>> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> --)---------------
>>> "We are not yet what we already are" (J. Pieper).
>>>
>>> Frederic Clarke Putnam, Ph.D. | Professor of Biblical Studies
>>> Philadelphia Biblical University | 200 Manor Avenue | Langhorne, PA
>>> 19047-2990
>>> http://pbu.edu | 1215-702-4502 | Fax: 1-215-702-4533 |
>>> www.fredputnam.org
>>>
>>>  Before printing this email, think green!
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> b-hebrew mailing list
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>>> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> --)---------------
> "We are not yet what we already are" (J. Pieper).
>
> Frederic Clarke Putnam, Ph.D. | Professor of Biblical Studies
> Philadelphia Biblical University | 200 Manor Avenue | Langhorne, PA
> 19047-2990
> http://pbu.edu | 1215-702-4502 | Fax: 1-215-702-4533 | www.fredputnam.org
>
>  Before printing this email, think green!
>




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