Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

Hi Tory,

(Sorry for getting your name wrong in my previous response.)

Since this thread is shutting down, I'll try to pack as much as I can
into my one allowed reply...

On Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:12:04 +0800 (SGT), Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com> 
wrote:
> Will:
> 
> A Moses figure (real or not) would have been literate in
> Egyptian. We can at least put that question to rest.

As I wrote in my previous reply, I don't think it can be taken for granted
that even royalty were necessarily able to read and write in the complex
hieroglyphic/hieratic script.

> The question is what script and language would he use? What script
> would Asiatics from Egypt and always on the move use? I'm thinking a
> cursive script for fast transmission and recording of information on
> just about any medium available, i.e. stone, rocks, leather,
> limestone, ostraca, parchment, or whatever.

Yes, cursive is much easier to use with a variety of media than cuneiform is,
but the Egyptian writing system required a lot of study to master.

> You wrote: "So if Moses wrote in it, it would have been in Egyptian,
> which would be unintellible to non-Egyptian speaking Hebrews."
>
> They presumably were all capable of understanding and speaking
> Egyptian by the time of the Exodus even if only relatively few were
> literate.

I don't think we can presume that.  One can argue that:

o  The Israelites were in Egypt for an extended period of time, so of
   course they all learned to speak Egyptian.

o  It appears that the Israelites were pretty much located in a
   specific area and formed a cohesive enclave within Egypt, so they
   probably kept their language and only some them spoke Egyptian.

Which of these (or other) possibilities is closer to the mark is a
matter of speculation.  But if the Hebrews entered Canaan being
essentially Egyptian-speaking, and with an Egyptian-language torah,
there's a lot of explaining to be done...

> I do not see it as improbable the idea that hieratic was
> used to write some Hebrew words.

Writing "some Hebrew words" is a lot different than writing an extended
narrative.

> The Arabic script seems to have some connections to hieratic.

I don't think so.

> What I am saying is that a narrative composition in the 15th century
> BC, in the region of Egypt/Canaan is more likely to be in hieratic
> than anything else since the examples that survive are just that.

Examples of what?  Egyptian?  Are there any examples of any Canaanite
language written in hieratic?

> Even 1,000+ kilometers in Assyria and Babylonia, their narration,
> story telling, and even their year-names and annual limmu name
> recording were probably all written first on perishable mediums in a
> cursive script prior to being copied on non-perishable medium of
> clay tablets with a stylus.

Why probably?  Is there any evidence they did?  The very form of
cuneiform reflects the fact that it was developed using clay as a
medium.  They didn't have the supply of papyrus the Egyptians had, but
they had plenty of mud.

---

In a reply to Karl you wrote:

> Hieroglyphic is consonantal writing system (bi- and tri-consonants)
> with hieratic being a cursive and much faster way to do it. It can
> be used to "write" Hebrew easier than Akkadian cunieform -- which is
> where I jumped in to disagree with Jim. Hieratic is also just as
> easy to use as the method for writing Hebrew adopted on this
> b-hebrew list: i.e. ")" for aleph, "B" for beth, and "G" for gimel,
> and "$" for shin, etc. Hieratic writing is also much faster than
> carving or chiseling proto-Sinaitic or proto-Hebrew unto stone which
> takes time. Are there any examples of this other than the
> non-perishable types? So maybe the "ten commandments" were written
> this way on two tablets of stone in the non-cursive script, but not
> the larger Pentateuch in books which needed a cursive script, not if
> all of it was written down in the 15th century BCE and then copied
> and updated in the centuries that followed.

Any introductory book on Egyptian will show a hieroglypic "alphabet",
each of whose glyphs has a hieratic equivalent, so we have what could
have been used as a hieratic "alphabet".  But I've put "alphabet" in
quotes for a reason - these sets of symbols never (that I know) seem
to have been actually *used* as an alphabet, but only as part of a
script that also included more complex phonograms, logograms, and
determinatives.  A hieratic alphabet *could* have been used to
represent other languages, but assuming it *was* so used is pure
speculation.  (The Meroitic alphabet was derived from Egyptian
hieroglyphs, but that was much later than the period we're discussing,
and on the other side [South] of Egypt.)

-- 
Will Parsons
μὴ φαίνεσθαι, ἀλλ' εἶναι.