Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Peter Kirk:

I know that when I utilize the Majority Text, I’m using later MMS than 
Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, et al. But I’m influenced to think that the Majority 
Text is a more accurate transmission of the original text because:

We have a clear statement that there was a pronunciation difference between 
Galilee and Judea, the Majority text preserves one, the others seem to have 
cleaned it up.

If the Hebrew alphabet was original to Israel, and that the Phonoecians 
learned the alphabet from Israel instead of the other way around, then most 
likely each letter had only one pronunciation instead of BGDKPST having two 
phones as during the Talmudic period, and the tet and samech having different 
phones (the theta and x sounds respectively). The differences in 
pronunciation appear to mirror the direction of the pronunciation changes as 
I understand it.

I personally believe that the Hebrew language, after the Galut Babel, pretty 
much died as an everyday spoken language and was under pressure to change 
from Aramaic and later Greek, and it did. But that this change was pretty 
much masked by freezing Hebrew spelling so the letter sounds changed along 
with the language.

Now I realize that I just outlined a research project—just how was the 
original pronunciation of Hebrew according to surviving transliterations of 
Hebrew names in other languages. There may not be enough data to make a 
proper research project. I have already rejected most post exile 
transliterations.

But you are quite right, we have too little information at hand to say either 
way.

Yours, Karl W. Randolph.


> Karl, the problem with your hypothesis is that the text you are reading is
> taken mostly from MSS of the 12th to 14th centuries CE. A large number of
> MSS of the same text survive from the 3rd to 5th centuries CE, and all or
> most of these attest to a different set of spellings e.g. KAFARNAOUM for
> Capernaum and MAQQIAOS for Matthew - F being phi, Q theta - though again
> NAZARET, with tau, for Nazareth. While it is not impossible that your late
> MSS preserve an original set of readings for which the early MS tradition is
> lost, it is surely more likely that the late MSS in fact reflect a late,
> Byzantine spelling standardisation - from a period when phi, theta and chi
> were certainly fricatives, as was beta (not sure about gamma and delta).
> This might go back to the time when Judea and Galilee were part of the
> Byzantine empire and so reflect regional pronunciations from that time. Or
> it might be later still.
> 
> Peter Kirk
> peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
> http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/

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