Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 3:06 PM, K Randolph wrote:
> Yitzhak:
>
> We have gone over this before, so I don't see any real benefit in
> going over it again.
>
> I have already described what appear to be pronunciation shifts in the
> post Babylonian Captivity era, but that the data is too sparse to
> prove it. But you  can't disprove it either.
>
> As for modern people who champion the Byzantine tradition of New
> Testament texts as being closer to the original manuscripts, those
> have included scholars who prepared and edited modern republications
> of the same, one of whom was Harstad (my main computer is down right
> now, so I don't have access to others listed).

Just because we have gone over this before, and we don't have to go
over it again, doesn't mean I can't get straight answers.

What I don't understand, and I'm just asking, is what your position is?
Is it that the Byzantine texts preserve "capernaum" from pre-exilic
times before the shift you say happened?  Are we talking Greek or
Latin?  And, if I may still ask, what is the author of that article (which
I only read as F.C.B., I think I worked it out back then), suggests
as the underlying cause of the shift?  I'm only asking you to reiterate
his position, even though I understand you dismiss it.  Let me just
point out that my sources show that Latin from the Roman Empire
onwards transcribed the aspirated peh as ph, not p.  Latin may be
the way to go, because it has both p and f, and so can differentiate
aspirated pe from spirantized pe.  Greek cannot so it has to
transcribe them both with phi.  Except in the word apedno, where
apparently tradition, maintained an emphatic non-aspirated pe, that
was transcribed as pi in Origen's Greek and p (no h) in Jerome's
Latin.  That's what the above quoted article by Steiner is all about.

Thank you.
Yitzhak Sapir