Tsi and the Semitic Model Proposal

One of the long standing proposals about the origin of the Glagolitic letterforms is that some of them come from a Semitic script rather than from Greek, and the signs for the Slavic sibilants and affricates are where that case has always been made. Greek had nothing to offer for these sounds, so a designer needed a source, and Hebrew and Samaritan have letters for sounds of the right kind in shapes that some scholars have found suggestive.

The proposal is not a fringe one and it is not established either. It rests on visual resemblance, which is the weakest kind of evidence in palaeography, and on the historical plausibility of a Byzantine scholar knowing a Semitic alphabet, which the sources make entirely credible for Constantine without demonstrating anything about the letters. Against it stand the readings that derive the same shapes from Greek cursive or that treat them as composed for the purpose.

The atlas records the link between this letter and Hebrew tzaddi as debated, with the camps named and no verdict, which is what the state of the evidence supports. A resemblance recorded as a resemblance is useful. The same resemblance recorded as a descent would be a claim the sources do not carry, and it would look identical on the page.