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Are there scholarly publications (more recent than BDB!) which quote inscriptional Aramaic, Phoenician, Samaritan, paleo-Hebrew etc as well as Hebrew? In such cases, what scripts are used for Aramaic, Phoenician etc? BDB (1906) quoted these and even south Arabian inscriptions in Hebrew script. But what is the modern practice? Are ancient alphabets (other than Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac etc which are in modern use) ever used in such publications? Are these languages ever transcribed in Hebrew script, or only in Latin script transliteration? I am interested in practice in Israeli journals in modern Hebrew as well as in journals in western languages.
Some responses I have received:
From a PhD student in Semitics at a major US university:
From a Jewish professor at a US university:As far as I know, they are normally transcribed in Latin or Hebrew letters. There may be some need for Samaritan as its own script, but generally speaking the epigraphic scripts are better hand-drawn where necessary.
Today, even Israeli academic (Hebrew-language) journals usually preferFrom a PhD candidate in early Judaism in Canada:
Latin transcription rather than Hebrew, though publications meant for the
lay public often use Hebrew.
My personal feeling is that using specific scripts for any but the most
commonly-studies languages would be lost on the readership of all but the
most specialized publications.
I'll let you all know if I get any more relevant feedback.Current scholarly practice is to transcribe such texts with either the square "Hebrew" script (e.g., Discoveries in the Judean Desert; Syrian Semitic Inscriptions) or transliteration (e.g., Gogel's Grammar of Epigraphic Hebrew). As for Israeli scholars, Kutscher's _The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll_ even transcribes Syriac and Ugaritic and some Arabic (as well as Phoenician, Samaritan, Lachish, Elephantine, Palmyrene, Mandean, Gaonic) into "Hebrew" script, although El-Amarna words is transcribed into Latin characters, and Arabic words may be also be in Arabic script or transliteration.
Two things however, may be worthwhile considering for Unicode:
(1) Although it is possible to transcribe inscriptional numerals as Arabic
(i.e. Western) numerals, some (e.g., Gogel) still reproduce their
inscriptional shapes in transcription.
(2) Clarification on how to note uncertain readings in transcription (a circle or dot above the uncertain letter). I've been using HEBREW MARK MASORA CIRCLE 05AF and HEBREW MARK UPPER DOT 05C4 for this purpose, but I'm not sure if this is recommended practice.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
