Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

George:

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:31 PM, George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>wrote:

> 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.
>

True, we have no way of knowing, but I am basing it on the pattern that when
spelling is fluid, letter values, especially consonants, tend to remain
constant. But when spelling is frozen, as in Latin after the fall of Rome,
then letter values change.

Greek had fluid spelling until the present era, Hebrew had frozen (other
than materes lexionis) spelling from about 500 BC, so it is more likely that
the Greek preserved the original letter phonemes than did the Hebrew.

>
> 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/.
>

That's debatable. The only evidence I have been shown for this is the
equivalent of saying that we can tell American English pronunciation based
on the Katzenjammer Kids cartoons.

>
> 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.
>

Today most languages have frozen their spellings, hence there will be
variations in pronunciation of letters. But did that exist in ancient times?
Even in the U.S. that did not exist until about 170 years ago.

>
> 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.
>

Agreed. If we take Tanakh at face value, then the Hebrews had it first. But
not everybody takes Tanakh at face value.

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

Karl W. Randolph.