Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

James:

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 11:02 AM, James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com
> wrote:

> But it does have a certain rhythm to it though doesn't it.
>
> James
>

That was the whole point of the experiment.

I make no pretensions that I have accurately reproduced Biblical
pronunciation. All I tried was to see what would happen if I pronounced each
written letter as a consonant, followed by a vowel—what would be the
results? I did not know ahead of time what would be the results, which is
why I did the experiment.

I first tried it on known poetry, and was surprised that that there is also
a definite rhythm that comes through on almost every line. After
experimenting a while, I find it almost easier to read poetry this way as
the rhythm seems to augment the reading process (I often read out loud).

When I looked at Genesis one, which, except for a few lines, has almost none
of the signs that it is poetry, I had long claimed that it is not poetry.
But when I tried reading it as each written letter is a consonant followed
by a vowel, and a rhythm appeared, I was taken aback, to put it lightly. Is
Genesis one poetry after all?

Had the results been different, I would have chalked the experiment up as
interesting, but evidence against the position that Biblical Hebrew
originally was a C/V (consonant followed by a vowel) language. But the
results turned out the way they did.

There is another option: that some consonants can close a syllable, while
others cannot, like in modern Chinese. But I don’t know how to test that one
out.

Karl W. Randolph.