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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] About Dagesh's
  • Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:36:55 -0400

Yitzhak,

1. Anything said about the vocalization of ancient languages should be taken with three grains of salt.
2. Foreign rendering of Hebrew names should be taken with two grains of salt as we don't know what they heard, where, and from whom.
3. Unusual grammatical forms on isolated inscriptions should be taken with a grain of salt as the scratcher may have been only semi educated.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Jun 19, 2008, at 8:35 PM, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 11:42 PM, Isaac Fried wrote:
Yaakov,

Notice the curious rendering in Exodus 2:21 of Σεπϕωραν
[Sepforan] by the LXX for ZIPORAH the wife of Moses. It has a P and
an F! See it for yourself at

This does not indicate an F. Only Latin could differentiate an aspirated
peh and an F. It indicates: [sˤippʰoran], or alternatively a long aspirated p.
The similar phonology is also recognized in the name of the town
Sepphoris [sˤippʰori]. Possibly we might suppose that the Greeks heard
the aspiration rather late in the vocalization of the p.
Alternatively, emphatic
consonants tend to have an effect on one another. Thus, *qtl "kill" became
q-tˤ-l. Similarly, in hitpael, we find that emphatic consonants
(except q) turn
the t emphatic as well. nisˤtˤaddaq < *nisˤtaddaq. Possibly, the Sade
caused the p in the first syllable to become emphatic. In other words, in
special cases where aspirated [pʰ] was postvocalic, and in the same syllable
as [sˤ], we had [pʰ] > [pˤ]. In turn, the Greeks transcribed it with
a pi instead
of phi, just like emphatic k (quf) and t (teth) were transliterated
with a kappa
and tau, and not chi and theta.

Yitzhak Sapir
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