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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] The Biblical politics of masculine and feminine

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The Biblical politics of masculine and feminine
  • Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 16:07:11 +0000

On 18/11/2006 23:21, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
...
By the way, the guy's name was Sirach or Ben Sirach, so why do people
drop the final "ch"?

According to Moses Zevi Segal's The Complete Book of Ben Sira (1958), p. 1-3,
Rabbi Saadia Gaon calls him "$m(wn bn y$w( bn )l(zr bn syr)". The Genizah
fragment T-S 16.315 containing Ben Sira 50:39 also contains this spelling.
The Syriac spells the name ")syr)". The Greek chi is said by Segal to
vocalize
the vowel letter Alef at the end of the name and provides as equivalent the
names 'IWSHX in Luke 3:26 ("ywsy") and 'AKELDAMAX in Acts 1:19 ("xql dm)").
The word "syr" means "thorn" and the surname "the thorn" is found as a
Priestly surname in the Bible (Ezra 2:61, Nehemiah 3:4, 3:21, 1
Chronicles 24:10)
and as a name of a person in the tribe of Judah (1 Chronicles 4:8).

Thank you, Yitzhak. I hadn't read this when I replied to Uri. While this is hardly an explanation of the chi, it shows that it is not unprecedented. Perhaps in certain dialects a word final aleph was pronounced a bit like a chi, perhaps because the alef sound was being lost and to maintain a distinction from a simple -a ending.

I wonder if the Syriac 'SYR' here might be more original than the Hebrew SYR'. 'ASYR of course means "captive" and might imply that the author's grandfather had been a captive in Babylon. The link with "thorn" is interesting, but the priestly surname you mention is not SYR but QWC, so why the change?


--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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