Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== 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