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b-hebrew - Re: Eve/Chavvah.

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  • From: Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>
  • To: "Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>, Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Eve/Chavvah.
  • Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002 11:56:08 -0400


At 05:21 PM 7/8/2002 +0200, Ian Hutchesson wrote:
>>Basically, since Greek has no letter equivilant to the Heth in Hawwah ("X"
>>is a "Kh"), it used an Eta (H). This was then picked up by the Latin as
>>Eva, Eve etc.
>
>Strangely enough, it's not that straightforward.
>Hebron in Greek was xebrwn.
>Habur was xabwr(as).
>Hadad (Gen 25:15) was xodad (& variations).
>
>Placenames fared better than people's names.
>However, you will find chi for khet in some
>people's names in the LXX. Hilkiah is usually
>xelkias (as in 2 Kgs 22), but in Ezra and
>Nehemiah it is elkias.
>
>
>

As I said, as late as the Hellenistic Period (when the LXX was written),
speakers of Hebrew pronounced two different "Heth"s, a "pharyngeal" heth
(from the throat, like that pronounced by "oriental" Jews today) and a
"velar" (from the palate), similar to the "soft" "khaph" or to the Greek
chi, and like the sound preserved in Akkadian. Arabic has both letters to
this day, one written with a diacritical dot and the other without.
The translators of the LXX apparently spelled the first as a "silent leter,
adding only the vowel, the second with a chi.


Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.




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