Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Adam Kolman Marshak on the Hasmonean Use of Paelo-Hebrew

  

Hasmonean Use of Paelo-Hebrew

 

Besides invoking defense of the ancestral customs the Hasmoneans further connected themselves with tradition by subtly referencing the united monarchy of David and Solomon through their use of paleo-Hebrew script on their coins. All the Hasmoneans utilized this script on their coinage, even though it had not been commonly used since the end of the Davidic monarchy and the majority of Judeans could not read it. Instead, the Aramaic script, also known as square script of Syrian script, was the common script during the first century B.C.E. It was used for writing both Hebrew and Aramaic, which was the lingua franca of Judaea. It is certainly true that some scrolls written in paleo-Hebrew had survived the destruction of the first Temple, and some of the priests and scribes knew how to read it. Furthermore, in some of the first-century scrolls written in Aramaic script scribes wrote the Tetragrammaton (the four letters that spell the name of God) in paleo-Hebrew letters, which suggests that they had preserved the script and used it for special purposes. (Adam Kolman Marshak, The Many Faces of Herod the Great [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2015], 60-61)