Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

I noticed when reading the Majority Text of the New Testament that place 
names in Judea were almost constantly written with the kaf written with a 
chi, peh a phi, and the taw with a theta, while those names from Galilee were 
sometimes written as in Judea, sometimes with kaf as a kappa, peh as a pi and 
taw with a tau. For example, Nazareth’s taw is written with a tau and not a 
theta, Capernaum the kaf with a kappa, the peh with a pi, the two taws in 
Matthew, the first with a tau, the second with a theta. (This raises a 
question for me: if the Majority Text is accurate enough as to preserve 
something as inconsequential as indications of a difference of pronunciation 
between Judea and Galilee, while the Nestlé / Aland text does not, could it 
be more accurate where it differs in other areas as well? But that’s off 
topic for this board.)    

Is it not true that when spellings are fluid, that letters tend to remain 
stable in pronunciation, as when the German city of Stratteburg changed to 
Straßburg, but when spellings are static, the letters change pronunciations? 
So Hebrew, when it was no longer spoken by the majority of Jews, its spelling 
froze while the pronunciations changed, a change masked by the static 
spelling? 

Karl W. Randolph.                                                             
                                                                              
                                                  


> Thanks for the information about Greek.
> But I guess that people of that period transliterating
> Hebrew into Greek, if peh, taw and kaf were at that time pronounced as
> fricatives, would have chosen phi, theta and chi as the best fit. And it is
> certainly not out of the question that the changes in Greek could have
> prompted changes in how Hebrew was pronounced, but all the more so if Hebrew
> was in fact dying as a spoken language.
> 
> Peter Kirk
> peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
> http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
>
-- 
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