Every historian of writing describes the various scripts *as* scripts, and recognizes them differently. We have bilinguals where people are distinguishing the scripts in text; we have discussion, for instance in the Babylonian Talmud, specifically discussing the different writing systems as different. These scripts share a basic structure, sure. But Phoenician a glyph variant of Square Hebrew? Certainly not.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Phoenician is a glyph variant of Square Hebrew, but rather that both might be considered variants of a single early Semitic script. I'm not expert enough to take a position on this, but I think we should try to be clear about what is actually being suggested.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What was venerated as style was nothing more than
an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.
- Orhan Pamuk, _My name is red_
