From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri Apr 30 2004 - 09:58:20 EDT
At 20:02 -0400 2004-04-28, Dean Snyder wrote:
>Michael Everson wrote at 12:15 PM on Wednesday, April 28, 2004:
>
>>Because Hebrew is only *one* of Phoenician's descendants and because
>>there is a requirement to distinguish the two in plain text. There
>>exist Hebrew texts and Greek texts which use this script to display
>>the Tetragrammaton, for instance.
>
>This can more be more accurately viewed as a font change.
No, it could not. Even in antiquity, as Mark Shoulson pointed out on
this topic months ago, the native users of these scripts
distinguished them. Samaritans who did not go into Exile retained
their original Phoenician script (though it developed later into
something rather different and uniquely Samaritan); Jews in Exile
gave up the Phoenician script and adopted its descendant, Aramaic
script (which developed later into something rather different and
uniquely Hebrew).
Mark quoted the following to me in a private discussion in December.
It is from the Mishna ffrom Yadayim:
"The targum [i.e. Aramaic text] in Ezra and Daniel, renders the hands
impure [long story; point being that by Rabbinic decree, holy books
render one's hands impure in a certain way]. Targum that one wrote in
Hebrew [i.e. Aramaic Biblical text translated into Hebrew] or Hebrew
written in Targum, and Hebrew script(!), do not render the hands
impure. In general, it never impurifies the hands until written in
Ashurit script, on skin, with ink."
Mark described this further. I said "That's not font variants." He said:
"Doesn't sound that way to me. The shapes of the leters in the Torah
are very closely described, and even if something has an actual
mistake (letter broken or touching another or missing), the scroll is
unfit, but I think it still has the same sanctity (though THAT we'd
have to check). Which would apply to font-variants of Asshurit
script."
(Asshurit = Assyrian = Aramaic that became Square Hebrew. Hebrew =
Palaeo-Hebrew = Phoenician here.)
-- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
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