Comments on: Reviewing Joseph Naveh, The Development of the Aramaic Script http://canterbridge.org/2007/11/18/reviewing-joseph-naveh-the-development-of-the-aramaic-script/ heritage in life Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:11:20 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: markthunderson http://canterbridge.org/2007/11/18/reviewing-joseph-naveh-the-development-of-the-aramaic-script/#comment-28499 Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:05:15 +0000 http://canterbridge.org/2007/11/18/reviewing-joseph-naveh-the-development-of-the-aramaic-script/#comment-28499 While Joseph Naveh’s classic work constitutes ‘an attempt to survey the Aramaic epigraphic material,’ to assume (or buy-into) the assertion that Phoenician script is somehow related to Aramaic is completely naive. Even to assume that the “Hebrew” is related to the Phoenician is silly, unless one distinguishes between “grammar” and “symbol.”

Having said that, the correlation between Hebrew and Aramaic is religious in orientation (i.e., it is the prostitution of the Word of God by the Israelite Scribes and the veiling of the ‘broken characters’ of God). In other words, the original language of Scripture is what one only initially calls “Greek” – but then eventually abandons this descriptive tag and comes to the understanding that Scripture is a language all to itself – the Language of God.

Nonetheless, for Joseph to try to find the link between these languages is testimony to an existing link, but it surely is not proto-Canaanite. No, its idolatry and denial, sir.

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