Thanks, Dennis. Very illuminating. If Kamal Salibi is
right, Arabic could almost be called a daughter language of
Hebrew? Marc
Perhaps, but I think it's very
unlikely that Kamal Salibi is right. I don't know much about his ideas, although
I remember something from way back, about equating Wadi Damis (root /dms/) with
Sodom (root /sdm/), and Ghamra with Gomorrah. The problem is that once you start rearranging the order of Semitic root
consonants, you can make just about anything equate to anything. Also
Canaanite/Hebrew sound changes would have rendered Ghamra to
3amra.
Yes, Damis<Sodom
is not very likely, but I believe Salibi's other examples are less
far-fetched.
Hebrew seems very
definitely to belong to the geographically north-western group of Semitic
dialects with Phoenician and other "Canaanite" dialects such as
Eblaite, Ugaritic etc. Arabic does not. So, if the Israelites
originated in south-west Arabia, why didn't they speak a south Semitic (e.g.
Sabaean) or Arabic dialect?
If that is so,
Salibi must be wrong. I always wondered why I never saw a serious discussion of
his idea.
This is all a bit
off-subject for this group, but if you're interested in this kind of thing, you
should check out Ahmed Osman ("The House of the Messiah",
"Moses:Pharaoh of Egypt"). He basically claims (more plausibly IMO)
that Moses was Akhnaten, and the Israelites his Egyptian
followers.
On the other hand
there's David Rohl ("A Test of Time") who equates the biblical pharaoh
Shishak with Ramses II, and thereby "proves" the historical accuracy
of the OT. However, to do this he has to remove some 300 years from history,
thus bringing events such as the Invasions of the Sea Peoples down to about
900BCE or later.
I rather suspect
contemporary political motives behind such
writings. Cheers
Dennis
I'm not very interested in
biblical writings, only wanted to hear some opinions on Salibi's at first sight
intriguing idea. It seems that I can now dismiss the whole thing. Thank you for
your explanation.