Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Yitzhak:

As far as the Siloam inscription is concerned, I 
don't know what you are talking about. Consistently 
the masculine possessive is indicated by the -W, 
just like most of Tanakh. There are plenty of 
materes lectionis in that document, most notably 
internal waws and yods, as well as final waws. The 
spelling is entirely consistent with pre-Exile 
documents as Isaiah (no, there is no post-Exile 
second or third Isaiah), Jeremiah and the other 
pre-Exile prophets.

I found a legible drawing of the inscription at 
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com , but that site 
is so flakey that I want to find a better site 
online where I can read the stone. Does anyone here 
know of such? It took me a few days to re-access 
the image and for some reason Safari won't let me 
save the image to disk. 

Karl W. Randolph.

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
> 
> On 2/6/06, Peter Kirk wrote:
> > On 05/02/2006 01:09, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> > > ...
> > > Nevertheless, a change from mostly a use of -h at the end of
> > > the word to reflect masculine possessive to a -w at the end
> > > does reflect a sound change, whether it happened earlier or
> > > concurrently. ...
> >
> > Possibly, but not necessarily. ה he is used as a mater lectionis
> > for word final "o" sound in some biblical Hebrew words, especially
> > the name שְׁלֹמֹה Shlomo which may be an early spelling
> > preserved. So this may well have been the original spelling
> > convention for word final "o", which was later usually replaced by ו
> >  vav. So there was not necessarily a change of pronunciation.
> 
> I think you misunderstand me.  I am referring to the possibility
> that a pre-exilic -h was a consonantal -h (just like feminine
> possessive is still consonantal -- mappiq) and may have even
> had a following vowel as well.  I am not referring at all to -h
> representing a long "a" vowel at the end of the word that
> changed to -w with the "Canaanite a -> o shift."
> 
...
> 
> Yitzhak Sapir

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