Biblical Hebrew Forum

[TedBro AT aol.com]

Karl:
The C-V theory is intriguing, but also appears to have some glaring  
difficulties. Since there are only 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, there  
would 
only be one possible vowel following each consonant. Do you find such a  
theory workable?
 
When the vowel points were added to the text, there were, of course,  
various vowels that could attach to each consonant. In addition, there are 
C-V-C  
syllables. Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the vowel pointing  
represented actual pronunciations in use in the Hebrew, rather than an  
artificial system? How do you get from a syllabary, with only one vowel per  
consonant, to the much more varied pronunciation schema found in the  pointed 
text?
 
Regards,
Ted Brownstein
 
 
In a message dated 7/12/2012 8:32:17 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
kwrandolph AT gmail.com writes:

Yigal:

Thank you for your quick response.

The claim  that I heard of has its roots in the temple of Karnak, with the
claim of  300 gold shields being carved in the walls. I did a Google search
and found  a few sites that repeated this  claim.

http://www.specialtyinterests.net/thutmose.html This is a site  that I have
found as questionable. This page actually shows an photograph  of the
symbols claimed to show that there were 300 shields collected. I  found a
couple of other sites that basically repeated the claims from this  site. As
I wrote before, I take the claims of this site with a big grain of  salt,
neither accepting nor rejecting its  claims.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2012/03/02/feedback-shishak-and-meg
iddoalso
points  to Thutmosis III being Shishaq. Again reference is made to 300
gold  shields.

http://www.hshideaway.com/chap15.htm gives a detailed  explanation as to why
the image should be read as 300 gold  shields.

Solomon made 300 gold shields 1 Kings 10:17, 2 Chronicles  9:16.

The Tel Amarna letters show a political and social situation  consistant
with the divided kingdom period of Biblical history.

Now  the linguistic reason I ask this question:

Previously I mentioned on  this list that I suspected that the Hebrew
alphabet was in reality a  syllabary, with each letter standing for a
syllable consisting of a  consonant followed by a vowel. My reason was from
reading the Hebrew text  using the pre-Babylonian Exile font on my computer.
Because that font  totally lacks any pronunciation dots found in the
medieval MSS, it led me  to question the multiple pronunciations for BGD-KPT
letters, making many  words impossible to pronounce without adding vowels.

Later I noticed  that poetry seems to have a rhythm when each letter is
pronounced as a  consonant followed by a vowel.

The latest is that I had a chance to  look at Waltke & O’Connor and in their
discussion on the roots of  Hebrew. cited the Amarna texts as evidence that
the language of Canaan at  the time these letters were written appeared to
be consonant followed by a  vowel. Different evidence, but coming to the
same conclusion.

If  Thutmosis III was Shishaq as proposed by the sites above, that  will
indicate that the pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew probably continued  to
have a consonant-vowel construction throughout the pre-Babylonian  Exile
period, as the Amarna letters were written during the divided  kingdom
period.

I’m not 100% convinced of the theory that Biblical  Hebrew had the
pronunciation of consonant / vowel, not yet, but the more I  see of the
evidence, the more it appears that way.

Thanks  again,

Karl W.  Randolph.