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  • From: Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Ancient pronunciation of biblical names
  • Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 08:37:05 -0500

>===== Original Message From "Sesamo m." <sesamox AT hotmail.com> =====
>Hi all,
>
>I studied a little Hebrew at University and I remember the teacher telling
>us that the Hebrew name for Mary was pronounced "Maryam" in biblical times
>(both for Moses' sister and Jesus' mother) and "Miryam" in later Hebrew.
>Also Samuel was pronounced "Samuel" in those times and "Semuel" in later
>Hebrew.

Actually, the first consonant would be a shin, pronounced /sh/. Greek lacks
this sound, so it came across as s.

>I admit I'm not sure to remember this accurately. I'd like to ask you if
>this is so, and also which other examples of important characters from the
>Bible you could mention.

The issue here, particularly in the case of Samuel, is one of vowel
reduction.
It is generally thought that vowel reduction was a developed feature, so that
older forms of words with reduced vowels (in this case, a simple shva) would
originally have had full vowels. To a certain extent, we have to infer this
based on the theory of language change. I imagine evidence can also be drawn
from transcriptions of names in other languages, primarily Greek and Aramaic.
In particular, the form Maryam comes across into Aramaic and seems to
underlie
the Greek Maria (with i probably standing for a consonantal /y/). I know this
doesn't get into other names, as you asked, but I thought it might help to
understand where this type of argument comes from.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics





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