Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Shai Heijmans" <shaih AT post.tau.ac.il>]

Peter,

> Thank you, Shai. But are these from pointed texts, or
> transcriptions in 
> languages which have vowels, or are the vowels reconstructed 
> by the editors?


The text of the talmud is on the whole unvocalised; the forms I
mentioned appear as ryglwy, qwmwy, etc.
The vowels were added by me (although on basis of the sporadically
vocalised forms in the Geniza manuscripts); of course, I should have
mentioned that. Sorry.


> It is interesting that in at least three of these four examples the 
> suffixed noun is plural: days, feet, eyes. So it seems that this -oy 
> ending is the combination of a noun plural and a first person 
> singular 
> possessive suffix, cf. -ay in Hebrew. But of course the 
> Aramaic word for 
> God is not plural, so this -oy suffix would not apply. The 
> Hebrew word 
> is usually plural, so the suffix would be -ay - or simply -iy if the 
> underlying word is the singular Eloah.
> 
> I continue to hold that Greek -WI is highly unlikely to represent a 
> final diphthong -oy, but much more probably two separate 
> syllables -o-i 
> or perhaps o-ay.
> 

A triphthong oay! I didn't think of that. This is very interesting.

But if you take ELWI as hebrew, how do you expalin "shebaqtani"?

Shai