> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf > Of Peter Kirk
> Of course I can easily use this example of the divine name in > Palaeo-Hebrew as an argument for unification of the scripts. Peter > Constable wrote a few hours ago: > > >If they were considered "font" variants, then you might > >expect to see different documents using one or the other, or see > >different elements within a single document using one or the other. > > > As I understand him, he would see use of Palaeo-Hebrew words in a square > Hebrew document as evidence that the two varieties of writing are "font" > variants and not distinct scripts. I was "greenlighting" and speaking in very general terms. The divine name is certainly a special case -- it's only this specific text element that uses PH, not e.g. any book title, or any scribal annotation -- and I'm not sure what the most likely analysis should be. PH may have been used with a perception that it was a more prestigious form of the same Hebrew characters. On the other hand, PH may have been used with the perception that, while changing the script from PH to sq Hebrew was tolerable for the bulk of the text, no change from the earliest-known textual representation of the divine name was acceptable. Or, the scribes may have had some other perception regarding this practice. I have no idea what was in the mind of the scribes. Peter Peter Constable Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies Microsoft Windows Division
