On 16/01/2021 23:54, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 5:21:00 PM UTC-8,
wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 06:11:04 +0700, John B.
wrote:
https://patternsofevidence.com/2019/...irst-alphabet/
"the first Hebrew writing is called “Old Hebrew” or
“Paleo-Hebrew.” This is known from inscriptions found from about
900 BC in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah until the destruction
of the Temple in Jerusalem and the exile of many of Judah’s
inhabitants to Babylon around 586 BC."
More on Old Hebrew:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet Compare the
Old Hebrew characters with the Hebrew characters in the right hand
column. A few a close, but most are very different.

Aramaic is the base alphabet for most of the middle eastern
languages. Notice on the chart that the Imperial Aramaic and Hebrew
characters are fairly similar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_alphabet#Letters

So, why are some characters radically different while others seem
to copied from older character sets? What happened is that the
spoken languages are not necessarily written in the written
language of the same name. Sometimes, the spoken language for a
region is a common language, such as Aramaic was in biblical times.
Everyone spoke Aramaic, but wrote it in a variety of character
sets. Sometimes, either or both the language and character set is
specific to the region, trade, politics, status, etc.

For example, the Emperor of Japan during WWII had a very different
spoke language than what was spoken by the common people. That was
to isolate the Emperor from the common people. That worked well
until the Emperor Hirohito had to give his famous "Bear the
Unbearable" speech near the end of WWII. It went out over
loudspeakers and radio to all over Japan. Nobody could understand
what he was saying, so it had to be repeated by someone else in the
language of the common people.

This kind to stratification was very common in biblical times. The
priesthood had their own language and character set. The various
merchants all spoke Aramaic, but used the written language familiar
to those with whom they were trading.

Something similar happened with the decoding of the Rosetta Stone.
It was the same proclamation written in Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Coptic, and Greek. Greek and Coptic could be read, but not the
hieroglyphics. What Champollion determined was that hieroglyphs
could be read just like Latin characters, where each symbol
represents a sound in spoken Egyptian. By substituting the similar
Coptic equivalents for the hieroglyphs, Egyptian could be read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone#Reading_the_Rosetta_Stone



If you go to Hawaii, they say Hawaiian place names in the native
Hawaiian spoken language, but since there wasn't a written
language, they just borrowed the Latin characters and
pronunciation. Same thing in biblical times. Language and
characters were fairly independent.

Modern Hebrew is also quite different from biblical Hebrew. When
the Zionist movement setup the framework for what was eventually to
become Israel, they had a problem with the language. Hebrew was the
language of the bible and was not easily converted to something
that could be used for everyday commerce. For example, it has very
few technical terms. In an effort to find a quick fix, Theodor
Hertzl wanted to use Yiddish, which is mediaeval German, as the
official language of Israel. Yiddish uses the written Hebrew
alphabet, but is spoken in German. It's much like Polish and
Russian are fairly similar spoken languages, but Polish is written
using Latin characters, while Russian uses Cyrillic (Greek)
characters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB5MtF70xe8

Anyway, I hope this helps disconnect spoken and written languages.
My mother's name was Herz which is nothing more than one of the many
spelling variations of Hertz, Hertzl , Herzle etc. which was the
Austrian Royal Family. What isn't a matter of discussion is that
Moses spoke Aramaic even if he could understand Hebrew. He also spoke
and understood middle Egyptian and Median. Moses received not just
the Ten Commandments but the Torah or "law" We have that until today.
The Talmud is a scholarly interpretation of the Torah and the
prophesies of Moses.

Yesyes, but did he vote for Trump?