Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel AT exc.com>]

>I am curious about why the hard pe in the Hebrew names Pinchas (English 
>Phinehas) and Peleg are spelled with a phi instead of a pi in the LXX.
>
>Why did the LXX spirantize the pe when they transliterated the names?  Does 
>this reflect a different Hebrew pronunciation of the names or is there some 
>other reason?

Yes, it probably reflects a different Hebrew pronunciation, and I
would ask the question the other way around.  Given the LXX spellings,
is there any evidence that the Masoretic convention that gives us P is
right?  I think it's more likely that the Greeks got it right and the
Masoretes (over a millennium later, after all) got it wrong, though in
the end probably neither group accurately reflects really ancient
Hebrew, and we also don't know exactly how the Greek was pronounced.

I devote considerable attention to the topic of LXX transliteration of
names and what it teaches us about Hebrew (and Greek) pronunciation in
my 2004 NYU Book (_In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew
Language_), which by now is available in most libraries.

Consider a more radical case.  Masoretic "RIKVA" is LXX "REBEKKA"; the
two don't even agree on how many syllables the word contains.

A careful look at the transliterated names in the LXX shows no
evidence for most of the Masoretic grammar (including Beged Kefet and
epenthetic /i/) but surprisingly (to my mind) the LXX evidence does
support the doubling of consonants in some verb forms as recorded by
the Masoretes.

We have another bit of information from the Secunda (that is, the
Secunda Columna from Origen's Hexapla --- "second column of Origen's
six-column work," to us English speakers): a fully transliterated
version of the Bible.  Alas, most of it no longer exists, and what
remains is plagued with what look like scribal inaccuracies, but we
see evidence of a pronunciation of Hebrew transitioning from the LXX
pronunciation to the Masoretic pronunciation.


-Joel Hoffman
 http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman