Hello Tony, On Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:31:48 +0800 (SGT), Tory Thorpe <[email protected]> wrote: > Jim and Karl: > > I wish not to become embroiled in the seemingly > never ending back and forth on Jim's ideas. However I am interested in > the possibility of narrative material produced by some educated Asiatics > domeciled in Egypt. The story of Moses is that he was born, raised, and > educated among the elite of the elite in Egypt. This bespeaks a > literary training in hieratic. This man would have known the classics > (i.e. Sinuhe, etc.) well. All "narrative" of this time and location was > composed in hieratic. Perhaps a figure fitting the description of Moses > did know "ethnic" proto-Hebrew script. That does not a-priori mean he > would compose narrative material in that script to the exclusion of > hieratic.
Egyptian script, whether hieroglyphic or hieratic, was hard to master and required extensive training. It's not obvious that even the elite were necessarily literate - they may have preferred to hire scribes instead. (I think I vaguely remember an Assyrian king who prided himself on his ability to master the equally complex Akkadian cuneiform script, implying that not even kings where necessarily literate.) But let's suppose Moses *did* know how to write in hieratic. Hieratic is by its nature intimately bound to the Egyptian language. I'm not aware of its being adapted to other languages (unlike Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform). So if Moses wrote in it, it would have been in Egyptian, which would be unintellible to non-Egyptian speaking Hebrews. -- William Parsons _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
