Re: [TIED] Hebrew and Arabic

----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, 18 May, 2000 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: [TIED] Hebrew and Arabic


>
> John in a letter expounding on things biblical:
> >On this basis, the influence of Aegean Sea Peoples into early
> >biblical tradition occurred. Thus rather than a Semitic influence >into
> >the Greek Corpus (as Dennis Poulter and Glen Gordon has been >claiming),
I
> >believe rather it was an Aegean influence into the >Semitic that Dennis
has
> >been documenting.
>
> Quoi? I may have missed something vital here but... as far as I am aware,
> after putting aside the contraversy of the validity of the bible's
> historical account, the operative word here would be... historical. I
don't
> think the bible was recounting about the time of 6000 BCE which is the
time
> that I suggest was the arrival of the agricultural Semitish language to
the
> Balkans. Alot of languages can go extinct in 3000 years.
>
> Let me clarify some more. I don't believe that the Semitish language was
at
> all present in the Balkans by 3000 BCE. Between 6000 to 5000 BCE the
> language found itself in the Balkans after a quick spread from the south.

etc. etc.

Let me also clarify. What Glen and I have been talking about
re-Semitish/Semitic are two entirely different things.
I have been posting on possible specifically West Semitic (Phoenician,
Eblaite, Ugaritic etc.) and Egyptian influences on the Greek corpus during
the period ca. 1600-1100 BCE _only_.
This was the point of my question to Glen regarding the likelihood of
Semitish agriculturalists transmitting the /danu/ word _and_ it's
mythological concepts to PIE, its persistence through 5000 years, to
re-appear only at the geographical extremes of the IE world (having rejected
an inherited form as the source of Greek Eridanos and Danaos).
I think it is unlikely, and prefer the idea of, either direct contact
between Phoenician traders and Celts in situ, or indirectly from the
pre-Celtic population of western Europe who in turn had received it from
Levantine traders.
As for the Iranian use of /don/, I don't know enough about their history to
speculate on how they may have received the word from Semitic.

As for Glen's Semitish, I've been following your discussion closely, and for
me the court is still out. Your knowledge of the cultural/archaeological
progression is very impressive, but you haven't countered Glen's linguistic
arguments. But, for my particular area of interest, it is largely
irrelevant, albeit very interesting.

Cheers
Dennis