Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> the structure of the Greek alphabet suggests that
> Phoenician pe, taw and kaf were not aspirated, as they became the Greek
> unaspirated pi, tau and kappa, and new letters were added (and tet
> redefined) for the aspirated versions.

Although this is a valid reasoning, I would put more weight in LXX and
perhaps Vulgate transliteration. At the time of formation of Greek alphabet,
these consonants could be unaspirated, but they seemingly acquire
considerable aspiration by the time of LXX, whenever this translation was
actually composed. (Not to distract the discussion, I consider it odd that
Josephus so much twisted various biblical accounts in the Antiquities, if
LXX was available for his opponents to check.)

> At a later stage, the more
> aspirated plosives became fricativised. It is not clear to me whether
> this process took place before or  after the Masoretes - but it does
> seem to have preceded the split between Ashkenazim and Sephardim.

The begedkefet spread likely started before the split, but taw and, perhaps,
dalet demonstrate that the process continued after the split.
I don't think that the spread appeared before the Masoretes. The reasons are
two.
First, the spread was "caused" by dagesh kal. Without that stop, there would
have been unidirectional fricativisation. The pairs appeared because of the
stop introduced by the Masoretes; the stop diversified the pronunciation,
creating the pairs.
Second, if the Masoretes heard the pairs so differently as they are now, or
even just distinctively, they would, in my opinion, introduce specific signs
to mark the difference in aspiration, not just the dot only indirectly
related to aspiration (as mappiq demonstrates).

> Where I continue to differ from you is in the assumption that these
> processes could have taken place only in singing.
>

Do we have dagesh kal, especially the word-initial one, in cognate
languages? In any other language? No.
Is it plausible that the Jews at the time of the Masoretes spoke so
differently from all other people, that they had unique phonetics? No.
Is there an attested phonetical environment where the stops--dagesh
kal--regularly appear? Yes, in singing.

> the Hebrew name was pronounced with a geminated
> aspirated plosive, which was well represented by double theta in Koine;

I agree

> but when theta became fricativised in Greek, this spelling was known to
> be misleading and so it was adjusted to preserve the plosive sounds, and
> avoid the complete fricativisation which in fact took place in English.

Perhaps. Note that two unaspirated plosives don't like coexisting in a
cluster (m'boker, but b'voker), so geminated taw tended to theta-tau, less
comfortably tau-theta, but in the end would practically merge into a single
plosive, like it seems to me in Italian citta.

> >... Phei appears in Vulgate as ph, so it also was aspirated, and pei
appeared
> >because of dagesh kal. Similarly with chaf.
> >Bet, however, often appears in Vulgate as "b." Synodal Bible, however,
> >universally employs "v," with major exceptions of Abram and Helbon. ...

> In fact the Russian Synodal Bible has Avram, not Abram,
>
I meant the comparison between Abram (with v in Slavonic) and Helbon (with
b).
The existence of both "b" and "v" in Cyrillic alphabet suggests that Khazars
knew both sounds. I find the Greek influence on early Slavs very limited,
while the Khazar remnants are many.
If beta was so much fricativised by 11th century, how come Erasmus did not
correct the Vulgate's "b"'s for "v"'s?
But fricativisation of beta might be a factor beyond "v" in Slavonic Bible.

> The form Abram(-ov, -ovich)
> is familiar in Russia because it is used by Jews (and perhaps Poles?),
> and this is in fact perhaps evidence for late fricativisation among
> Hebrew-speaking Russian  Jews.
>
This is the evidence for workings of dagesh kal.
Hebrew has it as av'ram. Syllable-final consonant is more aspirated.
But without the stop, the vulgar pronunciation became a-vram (accented
syllable acquired all adjacent consonants), and syllable-initial became less
aspirated: a-bram. This is what the Masoretes tried to prevent.

> I agree that mappiq is not a sign of gemination. But what it has in
> common with dagesh is that both are fundamentally a sign of a  harder or
> more distinct pronunciation. There is no stop before a pronounced final
> h sound, as I am sure opera singers can confirm to you.
>
There is a stop before hey, and I was careful to confirm it on several
occasions. If we want to pronounce hey distinctly, as consonant, then we
have something like, d'varee.h (d'varaeae.h). There is a vocal gap before
hey. But if we forget about guttural pronunciation, and try gh for hey, then
there is no need for stop. The same is for chaf which is sufficiently strong
that it doesn't need stop in final position, dvarech.

> > The Masoretes would not dream of changing the
> >sacred letters, like doubling them--affecting the roots, the meaning
> >(gemination in two-letter roots), and possibly the gematrical values.
>
> I agree with your evidence but it does not support your thesis.
>

Taking the letters for sacred, the Masoretes would not geminate them with
dagesh.
The dagesh, therefore, means either stop or some added force. The sacredness
of letters would prevent the Masoretes from adding force, either.
The Masoretes also wanted a very clear guide (even adding redundant signs).
"Adding force to consonant" is not clear, but stop is unambiguous.
Streghtening of hey and waw does not make these semi-vowels into consonants,
but stop is effective to this end.

I would also suggest two other possibilities.
A dot similar to dagesh was earlier used to demarkate the words. The same
sign might be naturally used for stop, intermission.
The dot in shin/ sin might also be related to intermission. Preceding stop
in sin makes it into s:, distinguishing from th. The dot in shin might be
related to restricted air flow compared to sin.

> Well, maybe Helbon in Ezekiel 27:18 is an example, although not of what
> you quoted it as: Hebrew bet with dagesh, LXX beta, Russian B rather
> than V. But this single letter could be a typo in the Russian Bible, or
> a change for euphony or to avoid a bad word. So we need more than one
> isolated example.

The bad word you refer to was quite normal centuries ago. "b" in Helbon is
possibly because of the very soft Russian "l", which here naturally closes
the syllable (Hel-bon), leaving syllable-initial "b" less aspirated. The
drawing from Hebrew could be another reason. But this discussion is
peripheral to the topic at hand.

Vadim Cherny