The Biblical Shibboleth Story in the Light of Late Egyptian Perceptions of Semitic Sibilants: Reconciling Divergent Views

Abstract

There are currently three treatments of the phonetics of the shibboleth incident of Judges 12:61 deserving of serious consideration. Hendel (1996) and Faber (1992) present attractive arguments that do not depend on problematic assumptions of differences in the number of sibilant phonemes preserved in the two dialects in question,2 as so many other explanations of the story have done,3 including Rendsburg (1988a; 1988b; 1996: 511; 1997: 69f.), whose theory, though ultimately untenable,4 nevertheless poses a question deserving of an answer (2.5 below). Both Hendel and Faber rely on no more than a difference of pronunciation of the same inherited Proto-Semitic (PS) phoneme, namely traditional */s/, sin or S1, both make other substantive contributions connected with the problem, and although they come to diametrically opposed conclusions regarding the phonetic details, a comparison of the two reveals worthwhile possibilities of reconciliation and harmonization of the best each has to offer. We begin with this comparison.