From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Fri Apr 30 2004 - 16:30:58 EDT
Ernest Cline wrote:
> Is this controversy over Paleo-Hebrew occurring in any context
> other than the tetragrammaton?
Yes. Use of this style of lettering for the Tetragrammaton is a very late development and,
despite its importance in the argument that a plain text distinction needs to be made
between Hebrew and Phoenician, it is really irrelevant to what I am talking about.
What I'm referring to is the body of inscriptional and numismatic text from a period of c.
700-800 years in which the Hebrew language is written in the common North Semitic script
that is covered in Michael's proposal. The point is that this is all Hebrew language text,
easily encodable with existing Hebrew characters, and semiticists have a practical
interest in not making a distinction in the corpus of Hebrew text based on the style of
lettering used. This is why -- despite supporting the encoding of the ancient North
Semitic script, and thinking that Michael's proposal is really good -- I think this
question deserves to be addressed with something other than arrogance and defensiveness.
Michael seems to be taking it personally -- as if questioning the proposal implies
questioning his credentials or knowledge --, but all I'm personally questioning is the one
sentence in which he says the new Phoenician characters should be used used for
Palaeo-Hebrew. I'm not sure that this is the best recommendation to make to the people who
actually work with Palaeo-Hebrew.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com I often play against man, God says, but it is he who wants to lose, the idiot, and it is I who want him to win. And I succeed sometimes In making him win. - Charles Peguy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Apr 30 2004 - 17:06:02 EDT