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Serabit el-Khadim - important inscription

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cyberjosh

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The Serabit el-Khadim inscription is not directly tied to the Bible in any way, but it is important in two ways. #1 is its religious content/prayer to the God El. Second is its invaluable aid to linguistic studies of the pictoral origins of Hebrew. Look here at www.ancient-hebrew.org for a video on the inscription from YouTube - scroll down on the page to the bottom.

I used to be a mod on the forums there at that site - I highly recommend checking out the site - especially the alphabet & word study sections. *shameless plug* Come to think of it I have an article published on that site :-D : Hebrew Apparel - linked from "Hebrew Culture and Lifestyle".

But That YouTube video is an excerpt of the History Channel program the "Naked Archeologist" and I actually saw that on TV, and it was pretty cool, although I happened to know about the insciption prior to seeing it on the TV show thanks to Jeff Benner's site (ancient-hebrew).

I'll add more later, but I need to get to bed. Tell me what you think of the video.

~Josh
 
Here is a tourist information site that has some useful pictures of the site.

Is it just me or does the 4th picture down not look like the stereotypical shape of the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets? :)


Here is a picture of the particular inscription of interest (also shown on on the video):


144.jpg


155.jpg


These pictograms are the origin of what is thought to be proto-Canaanite, and what led Jeff Benner of the Ancient Hebrew Research Center (http://www.ancient-hebrew.org) to interpret the Hebrew alphabet and language in light of its pictographic origins. Check out his site and look at his (pretty cool) alphabet chart and alphabet evolution animations. Much more information is on the Mechanics of the Hebrew Alphabet page.

~Josh
 
*Please forgive the length of the post - but If you will be patient enough to read all of it I give a practical example at the end. Thanks*

Ahmed said:
Sorry not being rude but whats your point.

Well, it's just that it is fascinating to those who are interested in exploring the probable pictorial origins of ancient Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic (see chart here). And some people like Jeff Benner see something else interesting with the pictographs which may help explain how root words (often three letters in length) were formed, by treating each alphabetic character as representing a whole word which then by combining each pictogram with others in a sequence can create a variety of other words with more complex ideas. I don't always agree with Mr. Benner's proposed word reconstructions, but many times his theories about Hebrew root construction make a lot of sense and can help us better understand the original meaning and origin of a word in the context of the culture of that time.

Hebrew is a concrete language and has no real abstract words to speak of, and that fact alone sets it linguistically in a whole other world than English which was more influenced by abstract Greek words. For example, the word often translated "anger" (an abstract emotion) in the Bible comes from the Hebrew word aph which literally means "nose", presumably derived from the idea that the nostrils flare and one's nose gets red when a person is very angry. But a literal translation of "He was very nose at him" ( :lol: ) would not carry over very well in the American/English mind. Another example is the word for love, which in Hebrew is translated from various words representing organs in the body like the heart, kidneys, or even bowels, supposed to signify the innermost parts of the body as the seat of emotions and affection. The Apostle Paul even carries over the concrete idiom from Hebrew into a Greek context, yet clearly applied with Hebrew thinking, when he says, "For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:8 - KJV). That is bound to get a few chuckles with some people, but other translations substitute that word for its actual meaning as "love" or "compassion" of Christ.

The concrete nature of Hebrew makes sense if one views it from a perspective of having come from pictorial origins, where words had to be represented as tangible objects/ideas. One of the most interesting and plausible reconstructions though that Jeff Benner has offered for the original meaning and formation of a Hebrew word is EL, actually spelt aleph-lamed, thus better transliterated as Al, from which the word Allah also derives. El of course is the word in Hebrew for God, but infact "God" is a terrible translation and carries none of the Hebrew meaning over into the word. El literally means power, might, or strength as is evidenced by the verb forms of the word.

In Joshua 22:22 and Psalm 50:1 the Hebrew sentence begins is "El, Elohim, Yahweh" which the NASB translation very accurately translated "Mighty One, God, the Lord", and as we we see here El is translated "Mighty One" - which almost anywhere else would be simply translated "God", but since both El and Elohim - which both mean 'God' - are together they didn't want to simply put "God, God, the Lord", so they translated it literally as Mighty One - the true meaning and connotation of El as God, with a possible full meaning of "The God who is Mighty".

Jeff Benner proposes that the literal meaning of El can be explained from its pictorial origins, due to the two pictograms that make up the word:
heb_early_12.jpg
heb_early_01.jpg
. You can read his explanations of how the pictographs influence the meaning of the word here and here (official explanation). In short the Aleph, which is the picture of an ox head (and further supported by the fact that this when spelled out phonetically A-L-P is actually the word for ox) denotes strength, since the ox is the stongest of the live stock, and the Lamed is the picture of a shepherds staff which denotes the authority and guidance of the shepherd. Those two ideas combined contribute to the meaning of El. As Jeff Benner himself explains:

---------------------------------
27_god.gif


The ox represented strength and the staff of the shepherd represented authority. First, the Ancient Hebrews saw God as the strong one of authority. The shepherd staff was also understood as a staff on the shoulders, a yoke. Secondly, the Ancient Hebrews saw God as the ox in the yoke. When plowing a field two oxen were placed in a yoke, one was the older and more experienced and the other the younger and less experienced and the younger would learn from the older. The Hebrews saw God as the older experienced ox and they as the younger who learns from him.
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So anyway, in short, that's why I find it moderately interesting that Hebrew words can be explained in terms of their pictoral origins. That's why I'm fascinated by it.

God Bless,

~Josh
 
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