From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Thu Apr 29 2004 - 04:58:28 EDT
On 28/04/2004 18:22, Patrick Andries wrote:
> ...
>
> [PA] I have a question about this. I see that your figure 14 says «
> Job 42, again containing the Tetragrammaton in Phoenician script
> alongside
> Greek text. Apparently no copies of the Septuagint dated before the
> mid-2nd century CE substitutes the Tetragrammaton with Kuros ‘LORD’.
> Sample from www.eliyah.com/lxx.html ».
> And your Figure 13 says « The Tetragrammaton in Phoenician script is
> indicated with the large black arrow; the rest of the text is Greek. »
>
> Why do you say Phoenician here while the source you mention says «
> *Notice that the Tetragrammaton is written in the ancient Hebrew
> (Paleo-Hebrew) script. Here is another example of an ancient fragment
> of the Septuagint dating to the First Century CE (AD). This fragment
> contains parts Job 42* »
>
> Ancient Hebrew or Phoenician ? Is it the same for you ?
>
I assume that this is Michael's intention. The paleo-Hebrew script is
very similar to Phoenician, and should be unified with it if a separate
Phoenician script is accepted. But for this reason the principle of a
separate script needs to be accepted by a consensus of Hebrew experts.
There are manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls written completely in
paleo-Hebrew, as well as those in which just the tetragrammaton is in
this script. Paleo-Hebrew remained in occasional use, or was perhaps
revived, long after Hebrew was more commonly written in the Aramaic
square script - which is the same as the Unicode Hebrew reference glyphs.
>
>> I am actually astonished to see it suggested that it should be
>> unified with Hebrew. Print a newspaper article in French with Fraktur
>> or Gaelic and people will be able to read it. [...] Print a newspaper
>> article in Hebrew with Phoenician letters and no one wil be able to
>> read it.
>
>
> [PA] Try with Sütterlin and I don't believe many more will be able to
> read it.
>
> http://cooptel.qc.ca/~pandries/suetterlin.jpg
>
> (This cryptic paragraph would have been written
> http://cooptel.qc.ca/~pandries/suetterlinenanglaise.jpg by my
> schoolmasters)
>
On a related issue, legibility is not the criterion. For the principle
has been accepted that cipher scripts should not be encoded separately
but considered as glyph variants of the underlying script. Phoenician
script can easily be treated as a cipher for unpointed Hebrew script.
This is not true to historical origins, but arguably it is true of
modern use.
It is worth noting that the Hebrew and Phoenician languages are very
similar. The differences are probably analogous to those between Serbian
and Croatian.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Apr 29 2004 - 05:32:54 EDT
