Biblical Hebrew Forum

[john.leake AT yahoo.co.uk]

Not _identical_, Lewis. I mean, plurals are in -īn (admittedly as in Mishnaic Hebrew), the first person pronoun is אוך which could easily be 'anōk as in Phoenician. Doesn't it have a hištaph'el in it somewhere, a form that is hardly active in Hebrew (just the single doubly defective השתחוה, probably not seen as anything but an odd verb)? And we mustn't forget that we only have the consonantal framework - the vowelling might have been quite different from contemporary Hebrew. But of course it is very strikingly similar, down to waw-conversive or whatever the name for it is these days, and, I agree, a dialect (except משע had an army and 'a dialect with an army' is a language, so the saying goes - אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט being the original according to Wikipedia...)

John Leake
The Open University

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From: George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>;
To: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>;
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew was linguistically isolated?
Sent: Fri, Apr 12, 2013 12:10:47 AM

Posted on behalf of Lewis Reich <lewreich AT gmail.com>:

It's clear from the Mesha stela, whose inscription is linguistically identical to Biblical Hebrew, that Hebrew and Moabite ( and Ammonite and Edomite) are merely dialects off each other.

Lewis Reich