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Interesting quote
#12
oozeaddai Wrote:as a side question. When I took Biblical Hebrew 7 years ago. I think my instructor said, that they "Don't know what the oriignal letter system of the Hebew was". But they suspected that it was possibly like cuniform, before they adopted the assyrian and babylonian alphabet. Because I think that is what the Sumerians were using,a round the time of Abraham.

Do you agree?

Hi Addai,

The Sumerians long predated Abraham, and were conquered and assimilated by the Semitic-speaking Akkadians (Babylonians & Assyrians) who continued in their use of cuneiform, although adopted for a Semitic speech (Sumerian isn't Semitic, and is unrelated to any other language that's ever existed.)

The Sumerians were the original "Iraqis" (to use the modern name of the area). Sargon the Akkadian conquered them around 2370 BC, and they were finally wiped out by the Amorites (another Semitic group) around 2000 BC. I think Abraham was born in Iraq around 1,800 BC.....couple hundred years after the area became Semitic.

Anyway, these original pre-Hebrew and pre-Arab Semites continued writing in Cuneiform in the Akkadian language, which is strikingly similiar to Hebrew. Akkadian is dead now, it was replaced with Aramaic under the Assyrian empire and continued under the Chaldean and Persian empires to be the official language of the area.

So in essence, what I'm trying to say is that there was no Hebrew before Abraham. There wasn't a Hebrew even during Abraham's lifetime....or even his children's lifetime. The language we know today as "Hebrew" is really Akkadian/Aramaic mixed with Canaanite languages because Abraham went over there and his descendants lived among the Canaanites and Egyptians.

The language we know today as "Arabic" followed a similiar history, Abraham's descendants through Ishmael lived in and around Egypt (his mother's land) and the Arabian peninsula. Arabic is really Akkadian/Aramaic mixed with Egyptian and ancient South Arabian languages.

It's complicated I know, but think of Mesopotamia as England. And think of Israel as America and Arabia as Australia. Like England was the linguistic "hub" of America and Australia, so too was Mesopotamia the linguistic center of the Semitic world. Those who "migrated" to other areas from Mesopotamia took Akkadian~Aramaic with them and it became modified over time.

That's why the three languages are so close to each other. In Abraham's time, Hebrew and Arabic didn't exist because Hebrews and Arabs didn't yet exist.
+Shamasha Paul bar-Shimun de'Beth-Younan
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Messages In This Thread
Interesting quote - by judge - 05-30-2005, 10:01 PM
[No subject] - by Paul Younan - 05-31-2005, 05:06 PM
[No subject] - by oozeaddai - 06-01-2005, 02:23 PM
Koine Greek - by nashama - 06-01-2005, 07:29 PM
[No subject] - by Dave - 06-02-2005, 08:53 AM
[No subject] - by Paul Younan - 06-02-2005, 03:49 PM
[No subject] - by Paul Younan - 06-02-2005, 03:55 PM
[No subject] - by Dave - 06-03-2005, 02:52 AM
[No subject] - by Keith - 06-03-2005, 03:03 AM
[No subject] - by Dave - 06-03-2005, 04:40 AM
[No subject] - by oozeaddai - 06-10-2005, 06:13 PM
[No subject] - by Paul Younan - 06-10-2005, 07:35 PM
[No subject] - by Paul Younan - 06-10-2005, 07:47 PM
[No subject] - by oozeaddai - 06-15-2005, 06:28 PM

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