Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Chavoux Luyt <chavoux AT gmail.com>]

Shalom Berel


> From: Berel Beyer <berelbeyer AT gmail.com>

<snip>

> 1. This is a question of the development of the Aramaic alphabet,
> since the Paleo-Hebrew script does not make a distinction in terminal
> letters (as far as I can tell by glancing at the chart in Gesenius at
> least!).
>
At least one example of the "Paleo-Hebrew" script (or close enough anyways)
that we have (the Mesha stela), use marks (a single dot) to separate words,
so it is reasonable to assume that sofit letters were not needed to
distinguish between words in the old script.


>
> 2. The sofit letters seem to be the ones to come directly from the old
> script (so the non-terminal versions must have developed later).
>
I never really noticed this, but yes, it seems about right.


>
> > 3. My guess is that the distinctions developed for either or both of
> > the following reasons: to make writing quicker and simpler (like the
> > development of minuscule lettering with the Roman alphabet), or to
> > distinguish between orthographically similar letters (*something*
> > like the development of j, to distinguish between the consonant and
> > the vowel).
>
> My guess is that they were developed for manuscripts where the words had
> no or very little space between them, and there would be ambiguity about
> which word a letter belonged to. The sofit letters would make the word
> division unambiguous.


I seems to me still most likely that the reason for the sofit forms of the
letters were for the purpose of indicating the end of words, as Kirk also
says. Changing the "inner/starting" letters rather than the sofit letter
doesn't necessarily mean that there was another reason.

Regards
Chavoux Luyt