...There are two answers here. The first is that we have (barring occasional debatable descriptions) no real way of telling how any ancient text was pronounced. But we have to go on what clues that we have, which include more modern pronunciations of the same language and related languages. I would accept that as a general principle we should assume that letters were pronounced unless there is evidence that they were not. But for the final he's there is good evidence to suggest that they or most of them were not pronounced, in the Masoretic and modern Hebrew pronunciation, in the Arabic pronunciation of cognates, and in Greek, Latin etc transliterations which never attempt to reproduce the final he but consistently transliterate as if these words ended in vowels.
You wrote: "there is no way of telling from inscriptional Hebrew which
final he's are pronounced and which are silent." Now that is an
interesting statement. Why would you insist that we have no way of
telling only which final he's are pronounced? What about medial
he's? How do we know that they are pronounced? We may ask
the same of any letter and dispute the transliteration into Greek as a
different dialect than the primary one. How do we know if final n's
are silent or pronounced, for example? In my opinion, unless it is
possible to show that a particular final he must have been silent,
there is no reason to believe otherwise. This doesn't just apply
to pre-exilic times. It applies to post-exilic times as well. It applies
to the spelling of the Torah and to the rest of the Bible. It applies to
Qumran. But each of these must be tested within their own spelling
convention. It goes for any letter, not just final he, of course.
...
EHO: (t - "(at" ["now"], a colloquial form, corresponding to the longer
literary
word, (attah. There can be no doubt that the final accented a would have been
indicated in the orthography as it is regularly after the 10th century in all
Hebrew inscriptions. ...
...
The above indicates some of the curiousities of the work. The word (atta
"now"
is seen by Cross and Friedman to have no final vowel because there is no
final he in the pre-exilic spelling. They assert this on the basis
that final vowels
were always written in the Hebrew orthography. But this example forms one of
many others that are supposed to lead to the conclusion whether or not final
vowels were used. The same can be said for the relatively similar examples
in Phoenician and Moabite ")nk" and "aby". They even recognize the original
consonantal force of the he in feminine singular words. Yet they assert (in
the
discussion of "now") that final a must have always been written down.
...
And if you want to doubt m.l. before the 9th century, well then, you are
now disputing Cross and Friedman's analysis which is essentially what
you said all scholars "know" except me. ...
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