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The Alphabetic Revolution, Writing Systems, and Scribal Training in Ancient Israel

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The Alphabetic Revolution, Writing Systems, and Scribal Training in Ancient Israel Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures Hornkohl and Hornkohl and New Perspectives in Biblical and Khan (eds) New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew Rabbinic Hebrew Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan (eds) EDITED BY AARON D. HORNKOHL AND GEOFFREY KHAN Most of the papers in this volume originated as presenta� ons at the conference Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew: New Perspecti ves in Philology and Linguisti ,cs which was held at the University of Cambridge, 8–10th July, 2019. The aim of the conference was to build bridges between various strands of research in the fi eld of Hebrew language studies that rarely meet, namely philologists working on Biblical Hebrew, philologists working on New Perspectives in Biblical Rabbinic Hebrew and theore� cal linguists. The volume is the published outcome of this ini� a� ve. It contains peer-reviewed papers and Rabbinic Hebrew in the fi elds of Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew that advance the fi eld by the philological inves� ga� on of primary sources and the applica� on of cu� ng-edge linguis� c theory. These include contribu� ons by established scholars and by students and early career researchers. This is the author-approved edi� on of this Open Access � tle. As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher’s website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found here: www.openbookpublishers.com Cover image: Genizah fragment of the Hebrew Bible with Babylonian vocalisati on (Num. 18.27-28, Cambridge University Library T-S A38.12; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Genizah fragment of the Mishnah (Ḥ allah 1, Cambridge University Library MS Add.470.1; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Linguisti c analysis of Ps. 1.1 (Elizabeth Robar). Images selected by Estara Arrant. Cover design: Anna Gatti book 7 ebooke and OA edi� ons also available OBP https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2021 Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan (eds). Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapters’ authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Hornkohl, Aaron D., and Khan Geoffrey, eds. New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures 7. Cambridge: University of Cambridge & Open Book Publishers, 2021, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0250 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit, https:// doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0250#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at, https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/ 10.11647/OBP.0250#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. ISBN Paperback: 978-1-80064-164-8 Semitic Languages and Cultures 7. ISBN Hardback: 978-1-80064-165-5 ISSN (print): 2632-6906 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-80064-166-2 ISSN (digital): 2632-6914 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0250 Cover image: Genizah fragment of the Hebrew Bible with Babylonian vocalisation (Num. 18.27-28, Cambridge University Library T-S A38.12; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Genizah fragment of the Mishnah (Ḥallah 1, Cambridge University Library MS Add.470.1; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Linguistic analysis of Ps. 1.1 (Elizabeth Robar). Images selected by Estara Arrant. Cover design: Anna Gatti THE ALPHABETIC REVOLUTION, WRITING SYSTEMS, AND SCRIBAL TRAINING IN ANCIENT ISRAEL Aaron Koller 1.0. Introduction The scope and methods of scribal education in ancient Israel, and even the very existence of scribal education in ancient Israel, have long been discussed and debated. Various scholars have taken different tacks in approaching this question, invoking, among other things, comparative evidence, biblical texts, archae- ological data (and its absence), and palaeographical evidence.1 In this paper I would like to suggest that the spelling practices evi- dent throughout the Hebrew Bible can themselves suggest some- thing of the extent of such scribal education—both its extent and its limitations. To get there, however, we need to begin with a discussion of early writing systems, and then turn to the alpha- betic revolution. As we will see, considering these developments from the perspective of writing systems can open entire vistas in considering the question of scribal education. 1 For the most recent contributions to this discussion, both with ample bibliography, see Schniedewind (2019) and Shupak (2019). © 2021 Aaron Koller, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0250.01 2 New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew 2.0. The Invention of Writing: Historical and Conceptual Framework We start with the invention of writing, not so much for historical context as much as for conceptual context: for orientation as to how writing systems can work, and how they did work in the ancient Near East. While the history of writing is a well-trod field, the question of how writing systems represent language(s) is far less studied (Daniels 2018, 3). We now know that writing was invented at least a few times in world history, certainly by the Maya and likely by the Chinese, in addition to its invention in the Near East, apparently in southern Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium BCE, among the Sumerians. This Mesopota- mian invention, like cylinder seals and other contemporaneous ideas and artifacts, thence spread rapidly to Egypt. Denise Schmandt-Besserat (1992) argued that the first writ- ing emerged from tokens in envelopes, a system developed en- tirely for accounting purposes. Some of the specifics of her theory rest on very little data (Zimansky 1993), but it does seem clear from the texts themselves that the invention of writing was pri- marily for bookkeeping and accounting (Robinson 1995, 11–12; Woods 2020). It cannot be a coincidence, however, that writing developed in the same time and place (late fourth-millennium Sumer) as the first states, and so the association between writing and statecraft should not be ignored either (Scott 2017, 139–42). How did the early writing system work? The first writing consisted essentially of numbers, metrics, and common nouns (for the system, see Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993). There is no grammar; there were no verbs, adjectives, or prepositions, The Alphabetic Revolution, Writing Systems, and Scribal Training 3 and even the plural on nouns, for example, is not marked. Only around 2800 BCE, nearly half a millennium after writing was in- vented, was the MEŠ sign developed to indicate plurality of nouns. Until then, a text would simply say the equivalent of ‘donkey 1’ and ‘donkey 8’. The spoken language did, of course, distinguish between singular and plural nouns, but the earliest writing does not reflect this. The writing in the earliest texts is so distant from speech, that Englund (1998, 73–81) denies that it is provable that the language being written is Sumerian. Others (Steinkeller 1995; Cooper 2004) argue that there is just a little bit of phonetic writ- ing, enough to prove that the script reflects Sumerian (probably enough to prove that the script was invented in order to write Sumerian, rather than borrowed for this purpose from some other linguistic group; Daniels 2018, 93–94). But this discussion estab- lishes the key point. It is conventional, and useful, to think of writing as potentially reflecting two different levels of the under- lying language: the sounds of the language, which are meaning- independent, and the meaning conveyed by those sounds. That is, the writing can reflect the phonemes (the sound-units) or the morphemes (meaning-units). Early cuneiform says nothing about the phonemic level altogether, and instead maps directly onto the morphemic level. In fact, Sumerian, Egyptian, and Mayan writing all use semantic classifiers, which have no phonetic value what- soever, and whose meaning is entirely on the levels of semantics and grammar. 4 New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew Writing begins as primarily conveying meaning, and only marginally conveying sound. This was possible because the earli- est cuneiform consists almost entirely of ‘morphograms’, signs representing complete, individual morphemes (up to the size of a word).2 Early writing was not meant to reflect spoken language at all, but to do jobs for which spoken language is actually quite poor, primarily lists and bureaucracy. And these it did very well: Cooper (2004, 77–78) observes that as soon as the idea struck, there was a full-blown system in place: The idea that commodities, titles, names, and transaction types could be represented graphically led almost immedi- ately to the elaboration of an entire system of signs, and, in contrast to the very simple enumeration of the earlier numerical tablets, we are confronted with an irrationally exuberant metrological system with over a dozen different sets of numerals for recording amounts of various kinds of discrete objects, weights, area, liquid and dry measures and time.3 2 For morphography rather than logography as the appropriate analyti- cal category (not in the context of Near Eastern writing systems), see Joyce (2013).
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