Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Hi Tony,

The use of Y as an indicator for the vowel "i" (like most uses of matres
lectonis) is a fairly late developement in Hebrew. We find none in the Gezer
Calendar, few in the Mesha inscription or the Tell Dan inscription (yes, I
know that these are Moabite and Aramaic, but they reflect the same trends),
more in the Siloam, Ekron and in 7-6 century ostraca, bullae etc.

The text of most of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History is also
7-6th centuries, so it does use matres lectonis in regular words. But,
presumably, a name like David already had a standardized spelling from the
previous period (it's also spelled "defectively" - without the Y - in the
Tell Dan inscription). However, in the Second Temple period the Y was added
even in such names - hence the spelling DVYD in Chronicles, Zachariah etc.
This is also the spelling in later Hebrew - the Mishnah, Talmud, and
synagogue inscriptions.

The fact that there is one case of DVYD in Kings is probably because a late
copyist mistakenly used the spelling that was common in his day. The fact
that such "pre-exilic" prophetic books like Hosea and Amos also use DVYD
probably says something about the redaction history of those books (or of
"The Twelve" as a whole).

Yigal

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Costa" <tmcos AT rogers.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 4:55 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] DVD or DVYD?


> Dear Friends, I noticed that there appears to be a variant in the MT for
the name David. In some places David is spelled DVD (eg. 2 Sam.7:5;
Ps.89:21), while in others it is spelled DVYD (eg.1 Chron.15:1-3; Hos.3:5),
with the yod between the vav (or waw) and daleth. Why the inclusion of the
yod? Is this a later development as a variant in the name of David? BDB
(sv.DVD) states that these variants of David can occur together in the same
text. For instance, while the books of Kings uses DVD, there is an exception
in 1 Kings 3:14 where DVYD is used. Is this a late development or was it
simply the case that this name could be spelled both ways. Many thanks.
>
> Tony Costa
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