Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 23/02/2007 13:37, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> ...
> Had this form survived into Biblical Hebrew, the vocalization would
> probably have been laqiax, since the i: was split (in my opinion, for
> musical liturgical purposes) and the het influenced the second part of
> the split.  This is the furtive patax phenomenon that Uri was talking
> about, and it probably took place after the first century CE if we
> compare the name Jesus where it is not observed.
>
>   
There is no sign of furtive patah in this Greek form of Joshua/Jeshua, 
but there is in the Greek form Messias (Messiah) from Hebrew Mashiach, 
also found in the New Testament. (Compare Arabic Masih, which has never 
had the furtive patah.) The difference may be that the latter could have 
been quite a recent loan into Greek, whereas the form Iesous/Jesus goes 
back at least to LXX. From this limited sample of evidence which in fact 
must be much wider, it seems likely that furtive patah became widespread 
some time between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE.

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