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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] the little things

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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: "Randall Buth" <randallbuth AT gmail.com>, "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] the little things
  • Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2010 09:48:05 +0100



Kevin:
The lentition of the letters bgdkpt is usually placed much later. Many
think it came in after the Exile. So the answer is no, no C12th BCE
Hebrew speaker would have known of this. But after it did become part
of Hebrew, yes, ordinary speakers would notice. Anyone who used the
wrong variant would have sounded either 'wrong' or 'foreign', just like
in languages today that have the same phenomenon.

This brings us back to a point often made: the Hebrew we have in the
Masoretic texts represents the way Hebrew was chanted in the second half
of the 1st millennium CE. As part of the tradition of Hebrew, it is
part of the evidence of how Hebrew was spoken in the 1st or 2nd
millennium BCE, but it is not, nor was it meant to be, a trascription of
how Moses, David or Ezra pronounced Hebrew.

Kevin Riley

***

How do you reconcile "tradition of Hebrew" and "it is not a transcription of how Moses, David or Ezra pronounced Hebrew"?

How do you identify the potential changes and conservations?

To be frank "it is not" looks like a decree.

Arnaud Fournet






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