Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>]

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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