Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> I'm actually shocked that people do believe that the Tiberian forms
> (which, we have seen, do not match the LXX forms or the other
> Masoretic forms) reflect pronunciation from 1,000 years earlier.

That shock is easy to avoid. Just consider the environment. Ribkah and 
Milcah are two words with very different environment in Greek: clear vocal 
sound after non-aspirated beta makes Rib(e)ka. Epenthetic sound became long 
in open syllable, Rebeca. That word, in turn, is accented according to the 
regular rule of Greek grammar, as RebEca. That caused post-tonic gemination, 
RebEcca.


> Of course that's the most obvious conclusion.  The name originally had
> three syllables, and by the time the Tiberian Masoretes recorded the
> pronunciation, it had two.

R'v'cah, theoretically three syllables. One schwa became silent, though.

> Of the other possibilites, the most likely
> is that the LXX does such a poor job recording transliterations that
> we should not draw any conclusions from it.  (In general,
> transliterations are terrible guides to language, as I discuss at
> length in my book, and as is well-known by linguists.  If people want,
> I'll try to post the evidence on-line.)

In general? Any problem with German or Russian names transliterated into 
English?

Vadim Cherny