Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi all,

there seems to have been much discussion of 'vowel quality' and 'consonant
quality' in this discussion when commenting on the Greek transliterations of
Hebrew words. I would like the list members to consider the following
hypothesis. The ancients did not think at all in terms of 'vowel quality' or
'consonant quality' just merely in terms of 'sounds like quality'. i.e.
which sequence of Greek characters when read sounds most like the Hebrew
sequence of characters.

Of course, the then Hebrew alphabet was heavily dominated by sounds that we
today consider to be consonantal. While the Greek alphabet had letters
representing sounds we today consider to be vowels. Other factors to
consider are that Greek has no character corresponding a consonant Y, H or
W. The only time a H could ever be pronounced in Attic Greek was an
aspiration at the beginning of the word. However, these aspirations are no
longer pronounced in Modern Greek and it is entirely unclear when they
ceased to be pronounced. If we are to follow the tradition of the Orthodox
monks on Athos then in the times of Koine Greek (i.e. NT times) then the
aspiration had already ceased to be pronounced, Beta was pronounced as V and
diphthong au was now already pronounced 'av'.

All of these factors make transliterating YHWH into Greek next to impossible
especially seeing that its three consonants Y, H and W have no equivalent in
Greek. And so whoever made the transliterations evidently tried their best
with what they had at their disposal. The Greek vowel Iota pronounced as a
long i IPA /i:/ or English 'ee' as in sheep was often used when
transliterating names beginning with Hebrew Y. Where the Greeks suggesting
that names like Yehoshua and Yehohanan began with a 'ee' long vowel in
Hebrew? Hardly! At the end of the long vowel sound of 'ee' we hear the faint
beginnings of the weak consonant Y. This is especially evident when it is
followed by another vowel. Greek having only pure vowels had no way of even
attempting to represent a schewa. Most native Greek speakers probably
couldn't even distinguish the schewa sound because it was so faint. If they
could hear it and were pressed to provide a transliteration they would
probably opt for a epsilon 'e' or alpha 'a' depending on what sequence they
could hear it in. This is why we often see transliterations of IO (iota
omicron). The schewa was so small that best way to transliterate Yeho was
evidently IO. Then we get to the impossible to represent H consonant. Greek
quite simply does not have a prayer of doing this midword. The best it can
do is use the vowel that follows, if there is one, or use that vowel that
preceeds followed the following consonent when H closes the syllable and a
new syllable with a new consonant follows (this is what Yitzhak seems to be
supporting for YAHWEH theory). That brings us onto the W consonant/vowel
(however you seem to view it). The Hebrews didn't seem to have this
distinction. Mid word Waw pretty much invariably is preceeded by a long u
/u:/ or o /o:/ sound. Greek transliterations typically transliterate this
intimately related vowel-consonant pair with OU or (as in the MSS fragment
we inspected) W. The exception seems to be when W is at the beginning of a
word as in Wayiqtols and Weqatals and as Rolf has shown OU is used in
transliteration. Apparantly for similar reasons as the use of Iota to
represent utterance initial Yodh. As there is no W consonant sound in Greek
they had to use the diphthong OU which is pronounced like English u as in
rule. As we get to the end of the OU sound we start to hear the beginnings
of the W weak consonant sound. This is especially evident when Greek OU is
pronounced and followed by another vowel e.g OUI would sound like 'oowee'.

I hope the list members are starting to see the logical patterns in their
use of vowels to represent consonant sounds. Yitzhak's assumption that OU
and W are used with consonantal force are misguided and completely naive to
the facts. While word initial Yodh and Waw demand the use of vowels with
consonatal force in Greek transliterations mid word this is quite simply not
the case.

James Christian