>The all seem to really dislike what this site promotes…
That may be a bit too strong. I count myself as one of those people who know the Biblical Hebrew. I’m also a professional scientist (Immunology) and have been trained to be skeptical of absolute claims -- and I love the site. However, I also have several friends (who also are formally trained in Biblical Hebrew – a reform Rabbi, a Lutheran pastor, and a college seminary professor) and I’ve discussed the site with each of them a number of times. I would characterize their attitude toward the site as skeptical, but not antagonistic. I’m now going to try to summarize what I, and others like me, think about the ideas advanced here. The idea that written language evolved from oral traditions to pictographs and ideograms is not controversial. What is controversial is what we might claim are the meanings behind the pictures they represent. It is not unreasonable to say that Aleph is an representation of the head of an ox (the shape of the letter Aleph is thought to derive from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on a hieroglyph depicting an Ox’s head). It’s quite another to claim that words containing the letter ‘aleph’ somehow reflect the characteristics of an ox (or its head). As far as I know, there is little archeological or linguistic research supporting this idea. For example, much is made of the idea that oxen are strong and that ‘aleph’ therefore connotes strength or leadership. On the other hand, oxen are also stubborn, aggressive in the wild but easily tamed and used as beasts of burden? In Biblical times, oxen also represent wealth and were sometimes used as sacrifices. So, what meaning does the letter ‘aleph’ contribute to a given word -- strength, stubborn willfulness, slavishness, stupidity, prosperity, …? How do you choose which one? Are there formal semantic rules governing the choice? If so, what are they? Finally, it might be useful to note that the Hebraic root of oxen is Bet-Koph-Resh – the same root as three other words in the Biblical text: (1) a verb meaning to investigate carefully, (2) a sacrifice for omens, and (3) morning (as in morning, noon, and night). None of these words, including ‘oxen’ contain the letter aleph. Aleph is also not a root letter of the words for strong, stubborn, prosperity, slave/servant, or leader/leadership. On the other hand, the root letters of the Hebrew word for father are aleph-bet for which the following meanings are found in the Bible: progenitor, founder, ancestor, and protector. Aleph-bet are also the root letters of a noun meaning the shoot of a plant growing close to the ground. None of this makes the ideas advanced in this forum (or on the website) wrong. My only intent here is to recommend that you read and reflect on these ideas critically and cross-reference what you read with other sources. I love Jeff’s work and read his website frequently. There’s much to be gained here and his website has helped my understanding of Biblical Hebrew enormously. When you encounter people who ‘dislike’ the ideas here, you might want to engage them. Their dislike could be an opportunity to learn, but more importantly, may just reflect a poorly developed set of manners. Look beyond human failings. Shalom Michael _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 9:07 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ancient_hebrew] Re: I'm confused I've been reading through the site the past few months and trying to learn what I can about this approach to ancient Hebrew. I've gone through some of the educational class online as well. So I think I understand the basic idea of this groups approach and I agree with pretty much everything I read. It seems logical and based on facts and solid evidences. Actually, I ran across the site because I was plotting the script of about 5 different ancient languages and had decided that Egyptian was derived from Hebrew and that Hebrew probably came across with Noah. That's when I ran into this site and have been interested that others were instrested in the same thing. But one thing that still bugs me is that when I bounce any of this off of anyone else that has studied Hebrew, such as my pastor (PhD from DTS), most of the things I ask him, he disagrees with. Then when I look up this on the Internet and find things from PhD's in lingustics. They all seem to really dislike what this site promotes. For example, the idea that future is hidden and behind us and the past is open and in front of us, every Hebrew scholar (well, person that knows Hebrew as a native lanugage or studied it in school), which is only a few, seems to disagree with this approach. So why such a negative backlash against these ideas and why do scholars disagree? I keep reading history books (my kids history books) and they say things like Hebrew came from Egyptian. Of course, I know that mainstream is not always right. I majoried in evolutionary biology in college. So trust me, I do not always agree with the scholars and mainstream ideals. I'm teaching my 10-year old a little bit of Greek and Latin and I was thinking about adding some Hebrew as well. They are little sponges at this age and he can memorize a dozen or two vocabulary words to my one. So I figured I would see what his interest is. So far we have focused on the Greek alphabet and about 30 or so vocabulary words. So we have just started. But since Greek derives from Hebrew, I figured it would be worth looking up the roots to the Greek and let him see how some words have come down through Hebrew, Greek, and then to Latin. So here's my concern. If I am teaching this stuff to my 10-year old, I want to make sure it's right, or at least a legitamate approach. But how can I know? There seems to be a lot of disagreement with mainstream Hebrew teaching. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Are there any scholars or professors at major universities that would agree with this approach to Hebrew? If not, any thoughts or ideas as to why that is? Just how sure can I be that this approach is legit?
