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  • From: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • To: Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] dagesh in two root nouns with patah
  • Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:28:48 -0800

Will:

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:47:10 -0800, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Will:
> >
> > As far as I know, Hebrew wasn’t spoken anywhere at that time except as a
> > second language. In the same manner as Latin continued to be a spoken
> > language long after no one learned it at his mother’s knee, continued to
> be
> > developed and continued to change its pronunciation.
>
> But I think the situation of Hebrew in Egypt is rather different from that
> which developed in Latin-speaking areas of Europe,


Which, incidentally, included Germany, England, Scandinavia, etc.


> where people continued to
> speak a spoken form of Latin that increasing diverged from the written
> form.
> Even when people began to realize they weren't speaking Latin any more, the
> pronunciation developed along side of the new Neo-Latin languages. The
> pronunciation of Hebrew in Egypt would no doubt be influenced by the
> developments in the host languages (Greek, and to a lesser extent, Coptic),
> but it's hard to imagine that such changes would spread to other Jewish
> communities.
>

And why not?

>
> The pronunciation of stops in Greek and Hebrew/Aramaic underwent changes
> that
> are somewhat similar, but by no means identical. If we posit a weakening
> of
> the pronunciation of certain consonants in the Egyptian pronunciation of
> Hebrew under Greek (or Coptic) influence, it's hard to imagine those
> changes
> propagating up to result in the situation reflected in the Massoretic text.
>

And why would the MT show changes from only one source? Why not several? And
with the LXX predating the NT, therefore being influential among Jewish
readers as to how they would pronounce Hebrew names and words, especially
among the largely Greek speaking diaspora, why wouldn’t it have influence
also back in Judea?


> (I can imagine that the Massoretic pattern of forte vs lene consonants a
> result of Aramaic influence on Hebrew, but not of Greek).
>
> > > I presume by your reference to the NT and
> > > Galilee, you are referring to the alternation in the NT texts between
> > > Καφαρναουμ/Kapharnaoum and Καπερναουμ/Kapernaoum?
> >
> > As far as I know, no version I have seen says Καφαρναουμ, all
> > say Καπερναουμ. But there are other names such as Ματθαιον vs. Μαθθαιον,
> > Ναζαρετ vs. Ναζαρεθ and some others.
>
> There is good attestation in ancient manuscripts for Καφαρναουμ. Certainly
> the hesitancy between Ναζαρετ and Ναζαρεθ is similar, but Ματθαιον
> vs. Μαθθαιον has nothing to do with Hebrew, but rather with the changes
> that
> were taking place in Greek:


Are you sure? The pattern fits the other differences between Galilean and
Judean pronunciations attested elsewhere.


> when the original consonantal cluster [tth]
> (represented reasonably enough by <τθ>) became [θθ] in Hellenistic times,
> it
> became natural to replace the traditional spelling with <θθ>.
>
> >
> > This is what I was saying is not found in pre-Babylonian Exile script,
> and
> > not added to the Aramaic square script until the MT. Therefore there was
> no
> > indication that such a gemination existed before the Masoretes.
>
> I'm still unsure of what you're saying here - if you're saying that
> "gemination" was not indicated by spelling until the Massoretes introduced
> the daghesh, then I would agree, but if you're saying that the phonetic
> distinction between a non-daghesh consonant and one with daghesh (forte)
> didn't exist before the Massoretes, then I would have to disagree. I can't
> help but think that daghesh indicated a phonetic distinction, whether
> applied
> to BGDKPT consonants or not.
>

Where is your evidence? I think that any evidence that you can point to will
not be the same, though possibly similar, to that of the MT.

>
> --
> William Parsons
>

On a similar subject, while reading Luke, I noticed that Jerusalem was
spelled as if the final yod indicated a lengthened tsere pronunciation, not
the same as MT. This is late second temple evidence for that pronunciation.

The bottom line, I think the evidence indicates that the MT does not
represent Biblical Hebrew pronunciation from before the Babylonian Exile.

Karl W. Randolph.




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