James Kass wrote:
Peter Kirk wrote,
Well, maybe the rules changed with time. And there does seem to have
been a reluctance to write the name of God in the new-fangled Aramaic
square glyphs. But I'm sure that basically the copyists considered that
they were copying exactly the same string of characters, just using
different glyphs for them. They certainly would not have considered this
a change to the text, just a change in how it was represented on their
equivalent of paper.
http://www.hopeofisrael.net/preservation.htm
...has some good detail on the rules, but not their origin. And,
it doesn't really mention palaeo-.
Just for some more confusion to add, I note that with the distaste later
Pharisaic Judaism had for the Old Hebrew script, there comes a fairly
well-accepted, if unsupportable, thesis that the Law was actually
*originally* given in Square Hebrew ("Assyrian Script"), which was then
changed/forgotten when Israel sinned, and later still restored. See
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/t08/t0805.htm for some Talmudic
discussion of the matter.
~mark
