Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan-buth <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

pere ketav:

>According to the literature I have at hand, accent was usually on the last
>syllable in ancient, official and middle Aramaic (including Palestinian
and
>Galilean Aramaic), but it was usually on the penultimate syllable in late
>Aramaic (Samaritan, Syriac, Babylonian Aramaic) as it is in modern Aramaic
>(at least in the dialect of Ma'lula).

Acutally, it's more complicated in the older dialects: open vowels before
final vowel endings in verbs are accented:
keTAvu 'they wrote', keTAva 'they,fp,wrote'. 
On nouns you are correct: the shva in some nouns before the final 'definite
article' shows that the penultimate was not accented in biblical and
Onkelos Aramaic.

>So I suppose that the following Aramaic words which appear in the New
>Testament should be pronounced with the accent on the last syllable: abba
>(Mar 14:36; Gal 4:6; in spite of the pronounciation in modern Hebrew),

Good question, possibly abBA, and this was part of colloquial 2nd temple
Hebrew too. 
Some think that 2nd-temple colloquial Hebrew already had a penultimate
accenting dialect(s). 'abba' is special because the -a was a special
adverbial/vocative and probably not originally the aramaic article "the".
(cf. also, arabic 'baba' and the non-existence of an address 'ha-av' "the
father" in Hebrew.)

> rabbi (Joh1:38), 
>rabbuni (Joh 20:16)... 

(John correctly called this word Hebrew.)
Again, probably accented rabbouNI, but a substandard dialect may also have
existed.

>But that the following words should be
>pronounced with the accent on the penultimate syllable: sabakhtani (Mar
>15:34), Marana (1Cor 16:22).

(Yes) hen, hen.

yisge shlamax
Randall Buth
Jerusalem