Talk:Gezer calendar

:I think the critique is mainly about the fact that the [[WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY]] and there isn't a body section that adequately summarizes the different views among scholars of the Gezer calendar about what it was for, what language and script is it in, and so on, proportionately to their prominence and with a balance of perspectives while identifying the majority and minority views and the evolution over time. Ideally the part of the lead could be elaborated and expanded in the body with more characterization of Koller, Pardee, and other views. I do not claim to know the relative prominence of these views. Prior to [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gezer_calendar&diff=prev&oldid=1328358426 Dec 2025] only Koller was mentioned, I consider him a foremost expert from what I know of him, but I'm willing to grant that adding Pardee, whether his is a minority view or an equally prominent view, adds more balance. From reading him cursorily he seems to be proposing what was at the time basically a novel revision. Reading Koller again:

:I think the critique is mainly about the fact that the [[WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY]] and there isn't a body section that adequately summarizes the different views among scholars of the Gezer calendar about what it was for, what language and script is it in, and so on, proportionately to their prominence and with a balance of perspectives while identifying the majority and minority views and the evolution over time. Ideally the part of the lead could be elaborated and expanded in the body with more characterization of Koller, Pardee, and other views. I do not claim to know the relative prominence of these views. Prior to [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gezer_calendar&diff=prev&oldid=1328358426 Dec 2025] only Koller was mentioned, I consider him a foremost expert from what I know of him, but I'm willing to grant that adding Pardee, whether his is a minority view or an equally prominent view, adds more balance. From reading him cursorily he seems to be proposing what was at the time basically a novel revision. Reading Koller again:

{{talkquote|As for the origin of the text, there are good reasons to associate the text with Phoenician rather than Hebrew.78 This is now argued most fully by Dennis Pardee, “A Brief Case for the Language of the ‘Gezer Calendar’ as Phoenician,” in Linguistic Studies in Phoenician Grammar, ed. Robert Holmstedt and Aaron Schade (Winona Lake, IN, 2013); my thanks to Prof. Pardee for sharing a draft of the paper with me. Epigraphers have often associated the text with the Phoenician script rather than with a putative Old Hebrew script; see Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography (Jerusalem, 1982), 76; André Lemaire, “Phénician et philistine: paléographie et dialectologie,” in Actas del IV congreso internacional de estudios fenicios y púnicos, ed. M. E. Aubet and M. Barthélemy (Cádiz, 2000), 1.247; and Benjamin Sass, The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium: The West Semitic Alphabet ca. 1150–850 BCE: The Antiquity of the Arabian, Greek and Phrygian Alphabets, Tel Aviv Occasional publications 4 (Tel-Aviv, 2005), 84. This is against, e.g., Frank Moore Cross, “Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts,” BASOR 238 (1980): 14, who suggests that the Gezer text shows rudimentary forms of what later became the hallmarks of the Hebrew script. It is not clear if there was a separate Old Hebrew script in the tenth century. Evidence from the Tel Zayit abcedary suggested to McCarter that indeed there was a distinctive Hebrew (“South Canaanite”) script in the tenth century, but this was contested by Rollston, who concluded that “the evidence suggests that during the 10th century the ancient Israelites continued to use the prestige Phoenician script”: compare Ron E. Tappy, P. Kyle McCarter, Marilyn J. Lundberg and Bruce Zuckerman, “An Abcedary of the Mid-Tenth Century from the Judaean Shephelah,” BASOR 344 (2006): 5–46 (esp. 25–41), with Christopher A. Rollston, “The Phoenician Script of the Tel Zayit Abcedary and Putative Evidence for Israelite Literacy,” in Literate Culture and Tenth-Century Canaan, 61–96 (quote from p. 89). (Note that Rollston’s position is self-contradictory: if there was no separate Hebrew script, the use of the Phoenician script has nothing to do with “prestige.”) Cf. Amihai Mazar, “Three 10th–9th Century B.C.E. Inscriptions from Tēl Reḥōv,” in Saxa Loquentur: Studien zur Archäologie Palästinas/Israels: Festschrift für Volkmar Fritz zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Cornelis G. den Hertog, Ulrich Hübner and Stefan Münger, AOAT 302 (Münster, 2003), 182, on the difficulties of distinguishing Hebrew from Phoenician in Iron IIA inscriptions.}}

{{talkquote|As for the origin of the text, there are good reasons to associate the text with Phoenician rather than Hebrew.78 This is now argued most fully by Dennis Pardee, “A Brief Case for the Language of the ‘Gezer Calendar’ as Phoenician,” in Linguistic Studies in Phoenician Grammar, ed. Robert Holmstedt and Aaron Schade (Winona Lake, IN, 2013); my thanks to Prof. Pardee for sharing a draft of the paper with me. Epigraphers have often associated the text with the Phoenician script rather than with a putative Old Hebrew script; see Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography (Jerusalem, 1982), 76; André Lemaire, “Phénician et philistine: paléographie et dialectologie,” in Actas del IV congreso internacional de estudios fenicios y púnicos, ed. M. E. Aubet and M. Barthélemy (Cádiz, 2000), 1.247; and Benjamin Sass, The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium: The West Semitic Alphabet ca. 1150–850 BCE: The Antiquity of the Arabian, Greek and Phrygian Alphabets, Tel Aviv Occasional publications 4 (Tel-Aviv, 2005), 84. This is against, e.g., Frank Moore Cross, “Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts,” BASOR 238 (1980): 14, who suggests that the Gezer text shows rudimentary forms of what later became the hallmarks of the Hebrew script. It is not clear if there was a separate Old Hebrew script in the tenth century. Evidence from the Tel Zayit abcedary suggested to McCarter that indeed there was a distinctive Hebrew (“South Canaanite”) script in the tenth century, but this was contested by Rollston, who concluded that “the evidence suggests that during the 10th century the ancient Israelites continued to use the prestige Phoenician script”: compare Ron E. Tappy, P. Kyle McCarter, Marilyn J. Lundberg and Bruce Zuckerman, “An Abcedary of the Mid-Tenth Century from the Judaean Shephelah,” BASOR 344 (2006): 5–46 (esp. 25–41), with Christopher A. Rollston, “The Phoenician Script of the Tel Zayit Abcedary and Putative Evidence for Israelite Literacy,” in Literate Culture and Tenth-Century Canaan, 61–96 (quote from p. 89). (Note that Rollston’s position is self-contradictory: if there was no separate Hebrew script, the use of the Phoenician script has nothing to do with “prestige.”) Cf. Amihai Mazar, “Three 10th–9th Century B.C.E. Inscriptions from Tēl Reḥōv,” in Saxa Loquentur: Studien zur Archäologie Palästinas/Israels: Festschrift für Volkmar Fritz zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Cornelis G. den Hertog, Ulrich Hübner and Stefan Münger, AOAT 302 (Münster, 2003), 182, on the difficulties of distinguishing Hebrew from Phoenician in Iron IIA inscriptions.}}

{{talkquote|Some linguists have suggested on the basis of other data (such as the use of the anticipatory pronoun in ירחו) that the text is Phoenician.89 Regarding the issues at hand, however (the contractions of the diphthongs and the lexical form פשת), the Northern dialect of Hebrew shared these isoglosses with Phoenician; therefore, distinguishing between those two options is not possible on the basis of either of these features, and indeed, Dennis Pardee indicated that it may be “early Samarian Hebrew.”90 Some have argued for the Israelite identity of the scribe on the basis of his name, which is often reconstructed as אבי[ו] on the bottom left corner of the text,91 but it is obviously hazardous to put too much weight on a conjectural restoration, and, indeed, no restoration may be necessary, as the name אבי by itself is actually found on an Iron Age papyrus.92 The phonetic realization of */ḥ/ as /ʿ/ is known from loanwords, possibly from Aramaic, in the Late Bronze Age, and then from Galilean Hebrew and Aramaic a millennium later, but not in Phoenician. In my view, then, aligning the Gezer text with Northern Hebrew best accounts for all the data. Indeed, it seems intuitive to expect a text found at Gezer to be in northern Hebrew than to be in Phoenician.93}}

...{{talkquote|Some linguists have suggested on the basis of other data (such as the use of the anticipatory pronoun in ירחו) that the text is Phoenician.89 Regarding the issues at hand, however (the contractions of the diphthongs and the lexical form פשת), the Northern dialect of Hebrew shared these isoglosses with Phoenician; therefore, distinguishing between those two options is not possible on the basis of either of these features, and indeed, Dennis Pardee indicated that it may be “early Samarian Hebrew.”90 Some have argued for the Israelite identity of the scribe on the basis of his name, which is often reconstructed as אבי[ו] on the bottom left corner of the text,91 but it is obviously hazardous to put too much weight on a conjectural restoration, and, indeed, no restoration may be necessary, as the name אבי by itself is actually found on an Iron Age papyrus.92 The phonetic realization of */ḥ/ as /ʿ/ is known from loanwords, possibly from Aramaic, in the Late Bronze Age, and then from Galilean Hebrew and Aramaic a millennium later, but not in Phoenician. In my view, then, aligning the Gezer text with Northern Hebrew best accounts for all the data. Indeed, it seems intuitive to expect a text found at Gezer to be in northern Hebrew than to be in Phoenician.93}}

I tend to think this is the majority viewpoint and a good summary of many of the other sources, and Pardee clearly a notable minority view or at most a balanced counterpoint at equal weight. Again my read of both leans toward Koller as the majority view and Pardee a nuanced alternate possibility with others in his camp as mentioned in the above text.

I tend to think this is the majority viewpoint and a good summary of many of the other sources, and Pardee clearly a notable minority view or at most a balanced counterpoint at equal weight. Again my read of both leans toward Koller as the majority view and Pardee a nuanced alternate possibility with others in his camp as mentioned in the above text.

'''[[User:AndreJustAndre|Andre]]'''[[User_talk:AndreJustAndre|🚐]] 21:26, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

'''[[User:AndreJustAndre|Andre]]'''[[User_talk:AndreJustAndre|🚐]] 21:26, 23 April 2026 (UTC)