Sam (Claim: the name šəmū’ēl is comprised of šem [‘name’] and ‘ēl [(of El], i.e. god. The same šem can be śem in inscriptional Hebrew, because the letters š and ś are written with the same character in the Hebrew of the inscriptions. In old Hebrew ś was pronounced variably, including s. So the name can be sam) Comment: It is implied that the first consonant of the name in the inscription was pronounced s. Evidence from Old South Arabian (OSA) and Hebrew indicates that there was an “extra” sibilant in Proto-Semitic, in addition to s, z, and š. In Hebrew it is transliterated as ś. At some point, the pronunciation of ś was totally forgotten, and the convention developed to pronounce it the same as s as a matter of convenience. Since Hebrew already had a letter for s (samech), it is improbable that there would be two letters for the same sound. The assertion that ś was at an early date pronounced s is unevidenced.

In any case, the word, šm (not śm), occurs on a rather small signet seal. The surface is divided into upper and lower registers by a horizontal line. Above the line is the name of the signet owner, ‘ḥywh (Aḥīyāhū). Below the line we find šm. It is common to place a patronymic below the line, such as “son of . . . “ Because space is lacking, the word ben (son of) was not written. So šm is Shem (son of Noah in Genesis). The name therefore is Aḥīyāhū (ben) Shem.

The assertion that ש is שׂ, and pronounced s is purely to argue that they have found Sam in inscriptional Hebrew, independent of the proper name “Samuel” (which is written with š). The objective is to counter the common observation that the BOM authors erroneously used the English nickname Sam, the English form for Samuel, which should not be in the BOM.