Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 3:21 PM, James Christian wrote:
> Hi Yitzhak,
> I think you may have missed Dave's point. He is asserting that in the
> Leningrad Codex many of the instances where we would expect, following your
> explanation, vowels of Adonai we do not in fact find them. Only later in the
> Ben Chayyim text do we find them.
> James Christian

Hi James,

I think I understood exactly Dave's point.  A vocal schewa that does
not precede a
guttural or yodh can be represented by either a hataf patah or a
schewa.  The fact
that the tetragrammaton comes with a schewa and not a hataf patah while Adonai
has a hataf patah and not a schewa is simply a result of the
historical development
of the conventions but from the point of view of the vowels it is the
same vowel.
Also, the fact that sometimes we don't see the holam is a result of
the concurrent
widespread convention of writing yodh-yodh-yodh to represent the name and 
having
only two vowels to place underneath.  Both these points were dealt
with in replies
to Dave this week.  I am not sure what you feel is left out.

Yitzhak Sapir