carolbob said:
Is hieratic script the same as "reformed Egyptian" or even close? Is it possible that Hebrews would use this language, if so how probable?
Actually, Egyptologists sometimes refer to both hieratic and demotic scripts as "reformed Egyptian."
As far as Hebrews using either of these scripts, I think that would be very unlikely. They might have used Egyptian writing around 1000 B.C. and before, since Hebrew was fairly young as written languages go. The earliest example of Israelite writing we have is a 12th century tablet with some Canaanite letters on it.
William Dever reports, "In one of them was found an ostracon (that is, a piec of inscriped pottery) on which some eighty characters are written in ink, arranged in five lines. The only legible line, at the bottom, is an abecedary, or a list of the letters of the alphabet -- written, unusually, from left to right. Although the script is Canaanite, the writer may have been an Israelite schoolboy practicing his letters. (If this were a take-home exercise, I'd give him a C-.) If this is indeed the case, the 'Izbet Sartah ostracon is our earliest real Hebrew inscription -- and also important evidence for the earliest spread of literacy." (William Dever,
What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel, p. 83)
That wasn't even specifically Hebrew writing. We don't have any evidence of a specifically Hebrew written language until a little later. It might have made sense for the Hebrews to use hieratic and demotic scripts during this era, since Egypt was the most significant nearby power. Most of the Canaanite cities that Israel conquered under Joshua and his successors were Egyptian vassal-states that used Egyptian writing. On the other hand, the Hebrews could also have used some form of Akkadian. By 600 B.C. Akkadian was pretty standard. It was used throughout the ancient world, including Palestine, especially in politics. Remember that Assyria had conquered most of the known world in 722.
We have a few scattered examples of ostraca from Tel Arad (south of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron) from the 6th and 7th centuries B.C. that have hieratic script on them, and at least one contains both Hebrew and hieratic side-by-side. I am not intimately familiar with the ostraca, but most of them were letters. I do know, however, that there were Egyptian mercenaries serving in the Israelite fortress at Arad (it was the gateway to the kingdom of Edom), and that probably accounts for most of the hieratic. This is a fairly isolated find. Hieratic was undoubtedly used by some people in Palestine at the time, especially since Judah was appealing to Egypt to protect it from Assyria, Babylon, and its other neighbors. But preserve their scriptures in hieratic? It ain't gonna happen, folks.
The Tel Arad ostraca have prompted Kerry Shirts to declare, "Tel Arad demonstrates that Jews and Egyptians were hopelessly mixed in Lehi's day of 700-600 B.C." But Shirts' conclusion is completely unprecedented. Mormon apologists will grasp desperately at anything that might lend even the least support to the Book of Mormon. Even evidence that Australians found their way to the New World before Columbus leads Book of Mormon apologists to declare victory and close the books.
The fact is that almost all the Jews living in Palestine during the 6th and 7th centuries BC would have spoken and written Hebrew, if they knew how to write at all.
Sorry about the long answer to your very short question.
-CK
(well I guess that you could, but that would be crazy).
