Dennis posted,
"I believe James Joyce was an admirer of Victor Bérard, who wrote
. . . that the archaic Arkadian cults were Semitic in origin . . . (1896)
. . . his scholarship was irrefutable. He later . . . hypothesised that
behind . . . the Greek Odysseus lay a Phoenician Odysseus. This led
to his being labelled a "crank", and . . . his ideas being rejected . . . ."
(RSt) Yes, thank you . . . Bérard seems indeed to be exactly the sort
of martyred Brunonian scholar both idolized and mocked by Mr Joyce.
A more recent but still cranky tour-de-force on the NW Semitic/Greek
interface in terms of Homeric works is:
<Powell, Barry B. _Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet_.
Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1991>. The author precludes that
the development of Greek alphabetic writing from Phoenician was
brought about for the specific purpose of recording the works of
Homer. He further suggests that this was the work of an individual,
probably from Euboea. While I did not find that hypothesis compelling
(nor am sure if Powell did), you do get a look at abecedarian proto-
historics, and Greek beach graffiti which is a spicy as it is seminal.
Yours, with best wishes, the Riverend Sterling.