Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Dear Anita,

There is absolutly no evidence that the ancient Hebrews attached any 
significance to the letter Het. Het is pronounced deep in the throat - think 
of Hanukkah or Hutzpah.
I have a feeling that the letter you really mean is He, which is the letter 
"added" to the names Abra(ha)m and Sara(h). The letter He has quite a few 
functions in Hebrew, including indicating the participle ("yeled" - child; 
"ha-yeled" - the child), direction (Lachishah - to Lachish), a question and 
the feminine form of a noun. It is also used as a matres lectionis, to 
indicate the vowels a and sometime o, usually at the end of a word. Most of 
these functions are reflected in other Semitic languages and are not 
specific to Hebrew.

There are also two He's in the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of 
Israel's God, YHWH. As such, it appears in many Yahwistic theophoric names, 
in the forms YaH, YeHoW or YaHu. For example, Yehoram (Joram), Yirmiyahu 
(Jeremiah) etc.

Since late antiquity, Jews have avioded spelling out the Tetragrammaton in 
"secular" texts, in order to avoid profaning it. Some time in the Middle 
Ages, the letter He was addopted as one of several replacement forms - as an 
acronym for "Hashem", "The Name" - which is also how Orthodox Jews vocalize 
the Tetragrammaton when not praying or reading the Torah in a liturgical 
setting. With time, people began to view He as a part of God's name, and 
began avoiding writing just He as well, replacing it with the graphically 
similar Qoph of Dalet. This is a fairly modern development.

In short, before spending too much time and effort on this, check your 
sources and learn Hebrew.

Yigal Levin


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Anitajg5 AT aol.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 3:47 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] Addition of /h/ sound


> Hello,
> I'm doing research on the sound of the letter H in several  languages, and
> I'd like to know if you can shed light on the mystical  power that ancient
> Hebrews ascribed  to the letter Het, especially when said aloud.
> Since the /h/ is produced purely with the aspirated breath, and breath 
> was
> often equated with "spirit," I'm wondering if this would have had 
> something
> to do with Abram's name being changed to Abraham, and Sarai's  name
> being changed to  Sarah.
> Thank you.
> Anita
>
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