Not identical, because: identical with *what*? There was no Hebrew language in the 1st half of the 1st millennium BCE, but merely a dialect continuum of some South Levantine Canaanite languages (or dialects), which later, under the dominance of the literate Judahite, formed what later was called a "Hebrew language". The situation is still best described in short by Knauf, Ernst Axel, War "Biblisch-hebräisch" eine Sprache? Empirische Gesichtspunkte zur linguistischen Annäherung an die Sprache der althebräischen Literatur: ZAH 3 (1990) 11-23. For Moabite, see most recently the new comprehensive grammar by Klaus Beyer, Die Sprache der moabitischen Inschriften: KUSATU 11/2010, 5-41.
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨ Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann, Academic Director Research Unit on Ancient Hebrew & Epigraphy FB 01/ Faculty of Protestant Theology Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz D-55099 Mainz Germany [email protected] http://www.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de/eng 11th Mainz International Colloquium on Ancient Hebrew (MICAH) 2013: http://www.micah.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de/204.php > From: George Athas <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew was linguistically isolated? > To: B-Hebrew <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <cd8d8d41.f95a%[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Posted on behalf of Lewis Reich <[email protected]>: > > > It's clear from the Mesha stela, whose inscription is linguistically > identical to Biblical Hebrew, that Hebrew and Moabite ( and Ammonite and > Edomite) are merely dialects off each other. > > Lewis Reich > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/attachments/20130412/b50d73b8/attachment-0001.html > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 14 > Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 02:09:55 +0100 (BST) > From: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew was linguistically isolated? > To: b-hebrew <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Not _identical_, Lewis.?I mean, plurals are in -?n (admittedly as in Mishnaic > Hebrew), the first person pronoun is ??? which could easily be 'an?k as > in Phoenician. Doesn't it have a hi?taph'el in it somewhere, a form > that is hardly active in Hebrew (just the single doubly defective ??????, > probably not seen as anything but an odd verb)? And we mustn't forget > that we only have the consonantal framework - the vowelling might have been > quite different from contemporary Hebrew. But of course it is very strikingly > similar, down to waw-conversive or whatever the name for it is these days, > and, I agree, a dialect (except ??? had an army and 'a dialect with an > army' is a language, so the saying goes - ?? ??????? ??? ?? ???????? ??? > ??? ?????? ??? ?????? being the original according to Wikipedia...) > > John Leake > The Open University
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