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  • From: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Jerusalem
  • Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 19:01:05 +0300

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Garth Grenache wrote:

> I don't think the active participle was qa:ti:l, but simply qa:tilu >
> qo:te:l.
> I've not seen anyone suggest qa:ti:l until now.
> What is the evidence/reasoning behind this form?

I have corrected myself - it is qa:til.

> But as we seem to agree that the y was added into Yerushalem late 1st mill
> BCE...

The spelling with yodh is found in the DSS. The rare Biblical
examples also suggest
that this spelling dates to the late centuries BCE.

> Around that time the final tsere in popular 'el names, such as Michael and
>Gabriel became written with 'YL.

The evidence you gave me off-list is from Syriac. The Old Syriac contains
this spelling but it is both later (early-mid 1st mill CE) and not in Hebrew.
Furthermore, the spelling of such names in Syriac sometimes tended
to skip the Aleph which may suggest that what we have is not a tsere
([e] sound) at all and may be consonantal ( mika)el > mikayel ). See -
http://books.google.com/books?id=_eNmC35CN90C&pg=PA150&dq=Michael

My impression is that in Hebrew, the yodh is not used for a tsere unless
it originates in a consonantal yodh such as *ay. Maybe I am just missing
some rare examples.

>>Regarding long i: in the name Shali:m, see here:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ANE-2/message/374
>
> Thanks!  The link shows an earlier spelling "In the Amarna texts it is
> regularly
> written ú-ru-sa-lim (with or without the determinatives KUR URU and KI."
>
> And a latter ~700BCE spelling ur-sa-li-im-mu.
>
> The latter is argued to have a long i: being represented as -limmu instead
> of -li:mu.
> That may be so.  Also, IF these are the most common signs for li and im, it
> may
> well represent le:m, as they are also used for le and em.
> They may be writing ur-sa-le-em-mu to represent Hebrew -shale:m.

I posted a question on this to the ANE-2 list, but in general, I agree. It is
more reasonable that the Amarna spelling represents already -sha:lem (from
*sha:lim) and that the Sennacherib spelling indicates the vowel lengthening
to -sha:le:m, probably by reduplication as described in the text by Garr (that
is, -sha:leem). I still think the spelling with yodh seems to
indicate that the
reduplicated vowel was no longer viewed as one single long vowel by that
time. This makes the Sennacherib text from ~700 BCE one of the earliest
evidence for vowel lengthening in Hebrew.

Yitzhak Sapir




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