Biblical Archaeology Review

Before eating the Sabbath meal on Friday evening, the wine and then the bread are blessed. Saturday evening, the bread is blessed, the last Sabbath meal eaten, and at the Sabbath’s conclusion, the wine is blessed.

A.D. Crown, “Hebrew Manuscripts and Rare Books Held in the Fisher Library of the University of Sydney,” Studies in Australian Bibliography, 20, Sydney, 1973.

© John M. Allegro.

The small remnant of Samaritans which survives to this day—chiefly in Nablus on the West Bank and Holon south of Tel Aviv—continues to use this ancient alphabet.

“‘Show me the money for the tax’. And they brought him a coin. And Jesus said to them, ‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?’ They said, ‘Caesar’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’”.

In the earliest Hebrew inscriptions from the 10th century B.C. no vowels were indicated. Thus the words melek (king), molek (ruling), malak (he ruled), malkah (queen), malaku (they ruled), etc. would all be written simply as mlk. From the ninth to the sixth centuries B.C. (i.e. before the Babylonian Exile which followed the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.), the consonants y, w and h were used at the end of a word to indicate final vowels:

y=i (malki, my king)

Holem and shureq are the Hebrew names of vowels pronounced “oh” and “oo” respectively.

Almost all Hebrew words have a root consisting of three consonants.

Paul Lapp died in a drowning accident in 1970.

Freedman’s views are expounded in a lecture given at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary on May 23, 1978, which is scheduled to be published in the December 1978 issue of the Biblical Archeologist. As of February 3, 1979, this issue has not appeared.