Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 18/11/2004 04:25, Kevin Riley wrote:

> If anyone is wondering about the arguments in favour of the Byzantine text,
> this is an article from one of its better defenders:
>
> http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol06/Robinson2001.html
>
> Some articles I found by Daniel Wallace against his view:
>
>  
Kevin, thank you for these articles. I haven't read them yet, but they 
may keep me going later :-)

To bring this back to the original point, which really does concern the 
pronunciation of biblical Hebrew:

We need to dissociate this discussion from the contentious but very 
general issue of Byzantine vs. Alexandrian text and look at the evidence 
for individual readings, and the earliest Greek MSS (and perhaps early 
translations) which have these readings. Here is a start, taken from the 
Nestle-Aland 27th edition apparatus:

Matthew 4:13:
Evidence for KAPERNAOUM: C L W ͨ (Θ) 𝒻1,13 𝕸
Evidence for KAFARNAOUM: ℵ B D W* Z 0233. 33 pc lat(t) co

The oldest evidence for KAPERNAOUM is C, 5th century. ℵ (alef = 
Sinaiticus) and B (Vaticanus) are a century earlier. But I accept that 
this is by no means decisive one way or the other. What might be 
decisive would be evidence from early papyri. There is no such evidence 
for this verse, so maybe I should look elsewhere.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/