Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 1:13 AM, James Christian wrote:
> Yitzhak,
> there's really no two ways about this. Greek Omega represents a long o
> vowel. The same thing we would expect when transcribing a holem with a final
> waw (with W phonology rather than V phonology). I really don't see how you
> can expect me to believe that the Greeks would choose the long o vowel to
> represent a w/v consonant with no preceeding vowel. If this were the case
> you would be able to refer me to transcriptions of names with a w/v
> consonant with no preceeding o vowel. I don't think you will be able to do
> that.
> James Christian

You are confusing orthography with pronunciation.  The -w- is purely an
orthographical representation of the vowel -o-.  What I'm saying is that yahw
with consonantal -w- (in preexilic times) became yaho, with the vowel o, and
no consonant w, in postexilic times.  (This is what the x > y notation means).
Also, it is not the "Greeks."  It is the scribe of Qumran who chose to write 
out
the tetragram in this particular case.

In the Masoretic text, the -w- of a holem has no consonantal force at all.
Writing "OW" for a plene holem and "O" for a defective one may make the
orthographical difference explicit in English, but there was no difference
between them pronunciation-wise: they were both just [o:] (and by Masoretic
times, holem was always long, due to unrelated developments).  So OW/O
is a misrepresentation in English of the actual pronunciation.  Also, a waw
functioning as a plene holem cannot take any vowel, because it is not a
consonant.

Yitzhak Sapir