Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jim West <jwest AT Highland.Net>]

At 09:21 PM 6/20/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear Jim,
>
>I would have expected a scholar like you to be more careful than this 
>over defining your terms. When you say "I dont recall any examples of 
>it in aramaic", what language are you talking about?

Since the conversation was about the aramiac Jesus spoke I would have
thought sucha clarifiaction would be unnecessary.  But you are right- one
must always spell out everything.

>It is also a well-known feature of Semitic languages that addition of 
>suffixes at the end of words can affect the vowel sounds at the 
>beginning of the word, as for example )EREC becomes )AR:CFH in 
>Biblical Hebrew, the initial E sound becoming an A sound when an A 
>sound suffix is added. So it is by no means ridiculous (in fact 
>incorrect in Biblical Aramaic, but quite possibly correct in other 
>varieties of the language) to suggest a similar change with the 
>Aramaic ):ELFH..

Your example is moot for the case in point- and presently under discussion.
Examples for various changes in this and that case have nothing to do with
the case of eloi.  But again, you are right- we must be careful to spell
everything out as nothing can be taken for granted and we must presume that
our readers will know nothing unless we tell them.
(rather a dismal picture of our participants- but evidently a true one).

Best,

Jim

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
email- jwest AT highland.net
web page-  http://web.infoave.net/~jwest