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b-hebrew - Re: Eve/Chavvah.

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  • From: "Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>
  • To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Eve/Chavvah.
  • Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 17:03:18 +0200


>Whilst I understand the relation in the Hebrew name
>for 'Eve' (Gen 3:20) to 'life', I'm unsure where we
>get the English 'Eve' from.
>
>I'm guessing that it is a transliteration of the LXX
>for 'Chavvah/Khavvah' = 'Eve'. Can anyone confirm this
>and give more detail, or correct me if I'm barking up
>the wrong tree? I haven't got an LXX to look it up in,
>so I've no idea if I'm on the right track.

Your guess is correct, though in Gen 3:20 the Greek has
Zoe to preserve the story about the name meaning "life".
Gen 4:1 has Eua(n) (L. Hava(m)).

Names that have come to us through Greek seem to have
lost the khet, Onias, Enoch, Ananias, Anna. These have
stuck.

Though not regular, there has been an intermittently
systematic phonetic "misperception" from Hebrew into
Greek (here as found in English):

khet --> (lost) xnwk --> Enoch

kaf --> chi kbr --> Chebar
kmw$ --> Chemosh
(Akk. kaldu --> Chaldean)

qof --> kappa qrh --> Korah
qd$ --> Kadesh

This last is understandable, as Greek had no equivalent.
(That's what happens in English.) The other two changes
intrigue me. I would have thought that the Greek
equivalent sound of khet was chi and of kaf was kappa.
Perhaps the pronunciation of the Hebrew was different
from what we understand it.

It is in the change from one language (or phonetic
system) to another that we learn things about
pronunciation. We learn from the transliteration of
Caesar in Hieroglyphic (and others) that the initial C
was pronounced /k/ and not /s/ as we get from the
French, or /t$/ as the Italians insist.


Ian






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