Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Peter:

That is, if it continued to be pronounced. But could the 
present use of He as a mater lectionis been the result of 
pronunciation changes that occured over centuries when the 
Hebrew language was mainly a read language, and the rules 
for reading were derived from Greek and contemporary 
Aramaic pronunciations?

I think it is pretty certain that pronunciation shifts 
occured in Hebrew between the time of Nebuchadnezzar and the 
Masoretes, and no where do I claim that the Masoretes made up 
the pronunciations that they preserved. Some pronunciation 
shifting may have started as early as the Persion period, the 
New Testament, at least in the Byzantine tradition, preserves 
faint indications of pronunciation shifting, so it is pretty 
certain that the Masoretic points do not reflect pre-Exilic 
Hebrew pronunciation.

>From the clues that I see, I theorize that pre-Exilic Hebrew 
was pronounced in the pattern of consonant-vowel, in the same 
pattern as modern Japanese (That's the only place where I think 
the two languages resembled each other). But that later 
unstressed vowels were dropped, as well as some of the 
consonants shifted in their pronunciations. One group of 
unstressed vowels would have been the final vowels of most 
words. Another set were unstressed internal vowels that were 
replaced with shewas.

The evidence is slight, and if it convinces even one person, 
I would be surprised. I am not totally convinced myself of 
my own theory, but I can't rule it out either.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
> 
> On 01/08/2005 17:12, Karl Randolph wrote:
> 
> > Peter:
> >
> > Given the nature of Greek transliteration (or rather 
> > non-transliteration) of heh, the final could have been a -he as 
> > well as a -e(h).
> >
> >
> >
> The Greek doesn't rule out a -he ending, but the Hebrew does, for 
> this would have been written (at least in post-exilic times) with 
> two he's at the end of the word - the first a root consonant, the 
> second a mater lectionis.
> 
> -- Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/

-- 
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