James Kass wrote at 5:12 PM on Monday, May 24, 2004: >Peter Kirk writes, >> Well, if you asked the ancient Phoenicians this question, of course they >> would have said "yes" because the script used in their time for Hebrew >> was very similar to their own script.
>Of course, they'd have said "no" because modern Hebrew didn't exist >in their time. So, they'd not even know what modern Hebrew was. The >script used in their time for Hebrew wasn't "very similar to their own >script"; it *was* their own script. Modern Hebrew without the adjunct notational systems is Jewish Hebrew and DID exist while the Phoenicians were still around in the first few centuries BC. In fact Jews used both diascripts, Palaeo-Hebrew and Jewish Hebrew, contemporaneously. >"Palaeo-Hebrew" is a modern term and a modern concept. Obviously "Palaeo-Hebrew" is a modern term; the concept is however a very old one - just look at the Dead Sea scrolls, turn-of-the-era Jewish coins, etc., where it is employed in an archaizing way. Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
