Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin P. Edgecomb" <kevin AT bombaxo.com>]

Yitzkak wrote:
The only useful text for Origen's Hexapla is the Psalms Mercati palimpsest,
as published by Mercati and with Alexey Yuditsky's notes.  This is a
complete consistent version.

As for the words, many of them display Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew
tendencies, especially in Epiphanius' list, which appears to me to be better
preserved.

I do not see how any of this has to do with segholization.

I write:
I don't think there is a precise example of segholization here in these
lists.  I agree that the list from Epiphanius certainly appears to be better
preserved.

My point on long/short vowels is not related to vowel length so much as
quality.  /a/ is longer, i.e. more open, than /i/ or /e/, which are shorter,
or more closed.  There is a trend recognizable through the differently
vocalized Hebrew transliterations in Greek and Latin which certainly points
toward a vocalic shift from long/open to short/closed vowels, part of which
is segholization.  It's a casual observation, but I'm sure that someone else
has done a complete study on the matter by now.

It may be somewhat heretical, but I don't believe that the Masoretic
vocalization is really much older than the sixth century, including verb
paradigms, and so on.  I doubt that a first century hearer of Hebrew would
recognize, say, eighth century Hebrew, either BC or AD, due to this
continual shifting of vowels.

But these are my own idiosyncratic ideas, really just hypotheses trying to
make sense of the data.  We'll see if it comes to anything.

Regards,
Kevin P. Edgecomb
Berkeley, California