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  • From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • To: yodan AT yodanco.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] FW: Ester / Esther
  • Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:47:56 +0100

Hi,

Quoting Yodan <yodan AT yodanco.com>:

Thank you. I am curious to know whey Ester, which clearly has a T (as there
is a dagesh in TAV) became Esther. I'm assuming that there is a T (in
addition to TH) in Greek. Is this correct?


Did you look at the greek text in the link I sent you? The answer is clearly 'No!'. There is only a theta in the place of the Hebrew Tav. I think there are a number of things we need to consider here:

a) The pointing is late. This is no indication of how it was originally pronounced.
b) We do not know with certainty how the Greek theta was pronounced by the translator who chose to use the theta (let alone the general pronunciation of that era) - it could have been a th sound or merely an aspirated t or who knows
c) We do not even know with certainty the pronunciation of English 'th' at the time it was chosen in English translations.
d) All we really know with any kind of certainty is that the pronunciation of English th has many variations even today in the many different accents and dialects of English


James Christian


*********************************
Rivka Sherman-Gold
YODAN Publishing

**********************************



-----Original Message-----
From: James Read [mailto:J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk]
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 1:11 AM
To: yodan AT yodanco.com
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] FW: Ester / Esther

In Greek E???? . See Esther 2:10 at
http://www.septuagint.org/LXX/Esther/2 for an example. For those whose
email clients cannot view Greek characters there is clearly a theta
(th) in the position in question.

For Latin see http://www.latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=0&b=19&c=2
chapter 2 and verse 8 for Hester.

In order to understand the transmission of names you have to
understand that names were first transliterated into Greek (a language
with different phonetic limitations to Hebrew) and then into Latin
(another language with different phonetic limitations) and that most
of our transliterations have come through this double filter and then
been influenced by our own languages phonetic limitations.

An interesting case study are the names Jacob and Joshua in English
translations. Somehow, they have managed to become Jacob and James for
Iakov and Joshua and Jesus for Yehoshua. While it is relatively a
simple exercise to see how Iakov underwent various transformations to
become Jacob and how Yehoshua became Joshua it is presently beyond me
just how exactly English versions got this strange fork when the
Latin versions are devoid of it.

e.g. http://www.latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=1&b=20 shows that James
is clearly Iakobus in Latin.

James Christian

James Christian

Quoting Yodan <yodan AT yodanco.com>:

Does anyone have an explanation to why the transliteration of Ester is
Esther, considering the fact that TAV has a Dagesh and, therefore, has
been
pronounced T and not TH all along. I wonder if anyone knows how this name
was transliterated into Greek or Latin - whether this name's third
consonant
is transliterated as T or TH.



Thanks,



*********************************

Rivka Sherman-Gold

YODAN Publishing

P.O. Box 60655

Palo Alto, CA 94306-0655

650-494-6994

<mailto:Rivka AT YodanPublishing.com> Rivka AT YodanPublishing.com

**********************************

<http://www.CalisraVentures>



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