Kantor on Greek Orthography

Benjamin Kantor has a very interesting article on using epigraphic and papyrological evidence for reconstructing spelling in the New Testament. He argues that this evidence allows the reconstruction of several spelling practices that more accurately reflect the time period of the New Testament authors than what are preserved in modern critical editions.

Smithsonian Magazine on Michael Langlois

The Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting scholar profile of Michael Langlois with lots of personal and professional details, for those who are interested.

Hebrew Inventers of the Alphabet?

A recent article publicizes the theory of Douglas Petrovich's theory that Hebrews invented the alphabet. Petrovich claims to identify new letters on inscriptions from Egypt and read them as Hebrew, from which he argues that the Hebrews invented the alphabet. Such a theory has been argued before, but it is interesting to see such a theory revived here.


It's fairly well-established that Egyptian hieroglyphs were adapted into an alphabet to write a Semitic language at an early period. What is most problematic is identifying which Semitic language. We know precious little about the earliest stages of the Northwest Semitic languages, and the language boundaries we are so used to thinking about in later periods do not easily fit the oldest evidence. I heard Petrovich give the same paper last year, and the examples he showed did not strike me as good evidence for identifying them as Hebrew as distinct from other Canaanite languages/dialects. Many of his identifications and translations seemed highly questionable; neither were they really distinctive of Hebrew. I'm willing to give him a hearing, but I remain very skeptical that he will be able to make this case in a compelling manner.


HT Agade

Update: Similar, but more detailed, thoughts from Christopher Rollston on the early Semitic inscriptions.

Samaritan Ten Commandments Tablet Sells Big

An important Samaritan Ten Commandments tablet has sold at auction for $850,000! Apparently it is dated to the 4th century, which would make it a very early witness to the Samaritan version.


HT Todd Bolen

Scrypt Software

Eythan Levy and Frédéric Pluquet have produced a nice piece of software for deciphering difficult inscriptions/ostraca called Scrypt, which is available for free online. The basic principle is that you list all of the possible letters for each broken letter and then do a dictionary search for each possible string of letters based on the input values. It seems worth checking out if you work with such materials.


See also their paper Computer Experiments on the Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon.


HT Agade