Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarjorieAlley AT cs.com]

>>> 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.
 <<<

Joel,

Thank you for your response, and thank you for the reference to your book, 
_In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language_.  I use the UMCP 
library, and when I checked just now to see if they have it (they do), I also 
found your thesis listed. _In the Beginning_ is onshelf, so I hope to check 
it out 
later this week. 

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

I have Dr. Tal Ilan's _Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity_ checked out 
of the library right now, so I looked up her entry for Rebekah. I was 
interested to see that she also notes a tomb inscription with still another 
spelling 
(rho-epsilon-beta-kappa-alpha-sigma), but she adds that this may be a Hebrew 
equivalent of BerenikH, which occurs nearby in the same cave.


>>>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. <<<

Very interesting. I look forward to reading about this in more detail in your 
book. So, in general, you do take the LXX orthography to reflect an accurate 
pronunciation of the Hebrew of the 3rd century BCE? 

Thanks again,
Marjorie Alley

--------------
>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    >>>