Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>]

Jim, Matres lectionis can also be found in Phoenician and Moabite which 
predate the Tanakh.  Alef, heh, waw and yod were used but waw and yod are 
the most common.  Are you saying that the use of matres lectionis was a 
post-exilic practice?

Jack

Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX

--------------------------------------------------
From: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:09 AM
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [b-hebrew] Interior Yods and Vavs

> Post-exilic scribes added thousands of interior yods and vavs to common
> words in the pre-exilic portions of the Bible, as vowel indicators in 
> updated,
> plene spelling, and in thousands of other cases vowel indicators were not
> added to common words.  But only rarely was an interior yod or vav added 
> to a
> proper name in an early part of the Bible.  As to proper names in old 
> parts
> of the Bible, were interior yods and vavs added on a random basis?  Or, on
> the contrary, was an interior yod or vav added to a proper name in an 
> early
> section of the Bible only to avoid apparent blasphemy, or to make 
> explicable
> what otherwise was inexplicable, in both cases from the point of view of
> post-exilic scribes?
>
> The converse is also of interest.  The post-exilic scribes could not 
> delete
> an interior vav in pre-exilic texts, no matter how much they may have
> wanted to.  So the presence of an interior vav in an old proper name in 
> the
> received text may be very old, and very important.
>
> This thread intends to take a close look at interior vavs and interior 
> yods
> in proper names in old parts of the Bible.  My controversial point of view
> here is that they are not random.  Whenever one sees an interior yod or 
> vav
> in a proper name in an early part of the Bible, there likely is a rational
> explanation for its presence, rather than it being a mere random updating 
> to
> plene spelling of some proper names (in my controversial opinion).
>
> In my view, one key to understanding the oldest parts of the Bible may be
> to consider (i) what the proper names looked like before a rare interior 
> yod
> or vav was added, and (ii) why certain proper names had an interior vav 
> from
> day #1, having nothing whatsoever to do with updating the original
> defective spelling to full spelling.  That is the set of issues that this 
> thread
> intends to explore.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
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