Biblical Hebrew Forum

[tedbro AT aol.com]

Barry:
 
I gather that you are saying: If the pronunciation of the qere is adonai,  
Why not write the patach hateph to reflect what is actually read  rather 
than changing the vowel to conform to the yod that is not  pronounced?
 
Good question. The only answer may be that that's the way they  chose to do 
it out of scribal habit.
 
There is one case in the Leningrad Codex where the seghol hateph  is 
written under the Y of YHWH (where the qere is elohim). Why in this one place 
 and 
not in the other 300 qere elohim occurrences? Why not write the compound  
shva where the qere is adonai? Other less well known manuscripts also  
occasionally show the same phenomenon. A similar inconsistency exists with  
regard 
to the holem. It is usually missing orthographically but does pop up once  
in a while. I don't think these minor variants have any special 
significance. 
 
Regards,
Ted

Ted  wrote (in part):
> Non gutterals never take compound shvas. Not patach hateph, not  seghol
> hateph, not qamatz hateph.
>
> Likewise, yod never  carries a compound shva. Yod  always takes a simple
>  shva.
>
> The fact that Adonai has a compound shva and the MT texts  of YHWH have a
> simple shva is not evidence of a different vowel. It is  the same vowel,
> applied  to a different letter.
 
Barry responded:


Ok, maybe I'm failing to make a connection here.  We pronounce  the qere. 
Are you saying because the initial vowel for Adonai, the patach  hateph, is 
written under the yod for YHWH, it changes to a simple  sheva?  It sounds 
like you are saying that even though the qere is  Adonai, the visual 
orthography trumps the actual pronunciation, as though  the initial vowel 
of 
Adonai were a yod rather than an aleph?

N.E.  Barry Hofstetter