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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] HWH hiphil/hophal conjugation

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] HWH hiphil/hophal conjugation
  • Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 20:11:07 +0100

On 02/08/2005 18:52, Read, James C wrote:

Davidson's grammar shows a series of paradigms on the back pages.

It shows examples of hiphil/hophal lamed-he verbs 3ms imperfect:

YaGLeH, YaaGLeH


I'm not sure what "aa" represents here, whether this is your convention or Davidson's, but this should certainly be a qamats hatuf, pronounced "o".

It shows examples of hiphil/hopjal pe-guttural verbs 3ms imperfect:

Ya(aMiYD, Yaa(aaMaD


Is the second "aa" here intended to be hataf qamats? Anyway, hophal examples are irrelevant here, because no one has suggested that the name is a hophal - and anyway the meaning "he is caused to be" is theologically inappropriate. And the "a" after the ayin in Ya(aMiYD is a hataf patah, which is significantly shorter than the preceding patah and so should be distinguished in your transliteration.

It shows examples of hiphil/hophal ayin-waw verbs 3ms imperfect:

YaaQiYM, YuWQaM

The root HaWaH is irregular in all three of these respects. If we are to reconstruct the 3ms imperfect of HWH in a scholarly way we need to apply all three rules.

Applying the lamed-he aspect to YHWH we get:

YaHWeH

which is popular in scholoarly circles but shown to be inaccurate. ...


Well, Gesenius was the greatest Hebrew scholar of the 19th century, the same century as Davidson's grammar, so are you saying that you know better than him? The true position seems to be that there was a tendency to replace sheva under "gutturals" inlcuding he with a hataf vowel (matching the preceding vowel), but these hataf vowels became more common in later Masoretic texts e.g. probably Ben Hayyim but are fewer in earlier manuscripts e.g. Aleppo, Leningrad. So it is a reasonable supposition that these were not part of the original pronunciation, but indicate a rather late pronunciation change.

... Applying also the pe-guttural we get:

YaHaWeH

which is trisyllabic but does not agree with the YaHu/YaHo theophoric
components.
Applying also the ayin-waw it is possible that the extra pe-guttural vowel causes a change in normal vowelling that would produce something like:

YaHoWeH/YaHuWeH


No, it is not. The vowel under the he would be a very short hataf vowel and would always match the preceding vowel, so another "a". It does not change to match the following consonant.

which is in agreement with both the theophoric components and the
transliteration

IAOUAI


No, it is not in agreement with the latter. Note that in Greek OU is a unit, not a sequence or even a diphthong. It does not represent and "o" vowel followed by a "w" consonant, but either a "u" vowel or a "w" consonant.

Any thoughts Peter?

I think we're both wasting our time with the I,You,He theory.


Agreed.


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





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