Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Hell all,

Jim is misreading HALOT here.  HALOT is giving *pronunciations*, not spellings
from the Samaritan Pentateuch.   The Samaritan pronunciation has a weakening
of all gutturals, but they still spell it in the text.  Just because
there was a
weakening of gutturals throughout Israel in the early centuries CE, does not
mean that the word is different.  See Baumgartner's introduction to the third
edition, sections 2, and 2e.  Thus, "The textual base for OT vocabulary has
been extended by including variant readings from the Oriental and Samaritan
tradition. ... scholars today have recorded the ceremonial recitation of texts
commonly practised still today among the Samaritan community of Nablus."

See here:
Saenz-Badillos' A History of the Hebrew Language:
http://books.google.com/books?id=EZCgpaTgLm0C&pg=PA153
Moshe Florentin's Late Samaritan Hebrew:
http://books.google.com/books?id=1dNk_b1uDzUC&pg=PA178

See also Zeev Ben Hayyim's and Avraham Tal's "A Grammar of Samaritan
Hebrew: Based on the Recitation of the Law in Comparison with the Tiberian
and Other Jewish Traditions."

Yitzhak Sapir