Originally posted by Ross G Caldwell:
Of course you can write anything you want, suggest anything you want. It can take the form of pure fiction, or it can be a theory based on fact, or it can be a theory based on fact expressed in a fictional way. But when you said that your idea was "fiction", it was the second part of a statement that said "all history is fiction", thereby implying that all history is equally made up, and nobody knows any more than anybody else. That is not true - there are some people who know a lot more than others, and their "fictions" are worth reading before creating one's own, if one care's to have an accurate fiction.
*** I didn't mention anything about quality. History or Herstory
is always fiction. Of course there are goo dhistorical fictions and bad historical fictions. ****
For my part, I prefer to say history is the art of spinning facts into a narrative. My "narrative" is what I think you mean by "fiction," but I could be wrong. Narrative is simply telling a story, but there are stories that touch the facts as little as possible, letting them speak for themselves, and there are other stories which ignore facts that spoil the narrative, or twist them in some way to fit the narrative. I contend that your need to have the series of letters from Yod to Shin describe a full body is the latter. It twists the facts. Hence for me it is an unsatisfying narrative.
*** Yes, would be better I could telephone with the inventer of the alphabet and ask him. But unluckily, his mobile is out of work. I must work with that, what is there. That's a normal situation in research. *****
True; but the names appear so late, 2000 years after the presumed invention of the alphabet, that it is very insecure. The consensus appears to be that the names were added later, on the principle of acrophony. You can suggest otherwise of course, as an interesting mental puzzle.
**** I've reflected these unsecurities during the discussion. It's of course a lot of work to go through all "aleph=ox first used in ...", "beth=house first used in" etc. ... and where does it lead? That at least in distance of more than 500 years probably none of the words is attested in its use, cause there are so few documents ... very funny. Very helpful. I just can determine this result already now, probably accurate.
In the discussion I gave reasons, why there are logical arguments, why this name list is really old - even if there are some disturbances, which in the current state are not calculatable.****
I found your statements not to contain much caution. They were presented as just about the closest thing to truth.
****
I mixed that a little bit, for literary reasons. Kwaw provoked that in the early discussion presenting his material to shin in a similar way. ... but why not ... I can do so, too. The whole discussion started with shin=tooth. And why and when it is fire and why and when tooth. Kwaw presented it in a way, that one must perceive, that it always had been "fire" or "flame above a coal". A "w" doesn't look like "flame above a coal".
***
Nothing. There is nothing wrong with an attempt. But surely you agree that any honest attempt to grapple with the problems of the early alphabet should attempt to deal with all the facts, not twist them when they don't fit a preconceived notion.
****
A little fun must have its place
You have all the rights to build a hypothesis, or even simply make up a story. But it does not take a lifetime to master the history of the early alphabet - it could be a matter of a few days. Each detail isn't necessary, but some details may actually destroy your theory. You can choose to ignore them if you like. Such as the fact that the Lamed doesn't mean "leg", Mem doesn't mean "Vagina", Nun doesn't mean "Penis", Samek doesn't mean "Skeleton", Tsadde doesn't mean "Nose", and Qof doesn't mean ear. Qof apparently means either a monkey or an axe-head. But even if we give your theory this letter, that still leaves 5 letters that you've twisted, using different methods. Lamed you just claim has to be a leg, since it looks like one; for Mem and Nun you bring in some mythology and word-play; for Samek you go back to the Lamed strategy, and for Tsadde you just say "It has to fit here, so this is what it has to mean."
*** I never stated, that lamed means leg or did I any of the other letter translate wrongly? True ist, that I developed a conclusive base founded at the observation, that there are surprizing much body parts in a special region of the names row. Each step in my thinking was controllable by readers of the talking. ****
The trouble is you didn't ask questions (of me anyway), you stated your ideas as facts.
****In the contrary, I did what I did. I said, tzaddi should be nose, if I think so and so ... I advanced step by step giving anybody opportunity to develop his own vision of that, what I do. ****
I told you some above. Your names are not attested. You made up meanings - twisted the facts - for 5 out of 12 letters, and relied on questionable data for 1 or 2 of the others.
****7 out of 12: iod, kaph, ain, pe, qof, resh, shin refer by "name" to parts of the body. Please say now: Which not? ***
You rely on the idea that it must be twelve, in this order. Maybe the earliest alphabet wasn't arranged this way.
*** They appear in a row of 12, starting with iod, ending with shin. 5 of the 7, all belonging to the region "head", give nearly a complete head-picture. I stated that as remarkable, what it is, and developed the idea, watchable to anybody in its natural weakness, of an abc-man from iod to shin about the distance of 12 letters.
****
In the Egyptian letters that were the model for the alphabet, the letter that became He already was a full man. There is no more need to create one out of parts.
**** I didn't include any Egyptian import, I didn't wish to confuse the picture, which results just of the names. Why should it be wrong? I don't exclude them forever, especially when I notice, that my communicative partners have understood, which observation I have done. During the discussion that was not clear ... I always got suggestions, which had nothing to do with the story, that I was telling. In Hebrew He stays rather undefined. I didn't reflect this sign. And - if it means man or not, it wouldn't touch my theory, as I say, that there probably was a cllision of a number-system with the ABC-Man-structure. ***
It seems rather that the alphabet was created for commercial transactions, not to kids in a school setting. Where did this idea of yours come from?
**** Of course "first" the grown-ups were tought, but also children, why not? What I said, was, that the didactic probably aimed at simpleminded people. ***
And I think that the idea that they needed a trick like this to remember is wrong too. Their memories were *better* than ours.
*** Not all the people were memory-trained. And they had difficulties with abstract thinking. ***
Obviously the writing form is very simple, with Abc-man or without. And the trick to reduce "abstract signs" by using the same signs also for numbers. That keeps things simple. Of course this could also have developed "cause of international" relations -It was in this way easy to teach to foreigners.
