Peter Kirk wrote:
But I accept that this Coptic to Greek compatibility has a few problems because not all characters have mappings. However, this is not a problem for Phoenician, because *every* Phoenician character has an unambiguous compatibility mapping to an existing Hebrew character.
As I've said before, final forms in Hebrew make this not 100% true, and I have seen both mappings in use in practice. For example http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%91%D7%AA_%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A2 shows the text of the Mesha stele beginning
"×××. ×××. ××. ×××.. . ×××. ×××", and I have a book (2 Kings in the "Olam Hatanach" series) which shows it beginning
"×××. ×××. ××. ×××[××] . ×××. ×××"
