Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Hi Karl!

It's an interesting question to see how the alphabet was adopted and adapted 
by different people groups. The methodology you are employing is to attach 
Greek values to the graphemes and read these back into the pronunciation of 
Hebrew and/or Phoenician. Now, you may well be right in some of your 
estimation, but we have no sure way of knowing.

What I can say is that your reasoning with the pronunciation of teth is 
almost certainly wrong. While the Greek grapheme theta was pronounced as a 
/th/ sound by the turn of the era (and indeed is pronounced that way in 
modern Greek), in Classical Greek it most probably was not pronounced that 
way. Both the letters theta and phi were probably not aspirated to produce 
the softer sound, but were probably plosive sounds. This would make Classical 
Greek theta sound very much like the technically correct pronunciation of 
Hebrew teth. Hebrew has no equivalent for a plosive /p/.

Greek also had a couple of letters it adopted from the Semitic alphabet, but 
which dropped out of use: koppa (cf. Qoph) and digamma (a /w/ phoneme; cf. 
Waw).

Another thing to be aware of in assigning phonetic values is the regional 
differences. Even today one can discern markedly different pronunciation 
schemes amongst Arabic speakers. As best as we can determine, a similar 
phenomenon prevailed throughout ancient history. The classic "shibboleth" 
story in Judges is the most obvious case in point. Considering how Ugaritic 
was probably pronounced, we must be prepared for various phonetic shifts.

Finally, we have no way of verifying who first came up with the alphabet. 
Your post implied it was the Hebrews (however we can define that term). 
General consensus goes for the Phoenicians. However, when it comes down to 
it, we just don't know who it was.


Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au