Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <davidlwashburn AT gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 4:37 AM, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:

Years ago, I saw a history book on Nineva that mentioned that the contacts with Israel transliterated the Hebrew names with all consonants followed by vowels. Waltke and O’Connor mention that apparently the Amarna letters, archeologically dated to the Divided Kingdom period, indicated that the speech in Israel had every consonant followed by a vowel. Reading poetry gives a rhythm when read with every consonant starting a syllable. The Masoretic points have a different pattern.

The biggest problem with this kind of evidence is the fact that we're transliterating the written form from an alphabetic script to a syllabic one. What it actually indicates is that the writers using Akkadian script didn't have a good way to indicate a closed syllable. Given the nature of Akkadian script, this should come as no surprise. But it's also going to be of very little value in telling us whether Hebrew did in fact have closed syllables at those times in its history. That's the nature of the Akkadian beast, and I have a problem with taking it as prima facie evidence that Hebrew was much more syllabic than we thought. It seems to me that we're putting a square peg in a round hole, and then declaring that yes, the round peg has parallel sides, just like the square one. I don't really buy it.

-- 
Dave Washburn

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