Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

> would have changed from the
> penultima yeSHOOa' with the pretonic tsere and dropping of the final
> glottal

Actually the syllable <shua`> is one syllable. The 'a' vowel that is
part of the Masoretic tradition is non-syllabic but is a little piece
of sound that goes with the voiced pharyngeal fricative, i.e., with
the `ayin. In other words the 'a' is part of the closing consonant.
As far as we can tell for the first century, The name was
still yeshua`, with the accent on "shua`" .  Check out Kutscher,
Studies in Galilean Aramaic, 1976, 85, where he points out that the
spoken place names in the 7th century CE preserved the `ayin and Het.
Qal vaHomer for the first century. His conclusion for all the
evidence, 87, "From the previous list it may be unequivoally
concluded that in most places in Galilee (and it seems also in
the rest of Palestine) the inhabitants were able to pronounce the
gutturals. ..."

There were many historical currents that enter the picture that need
to be remembered when evaluating anecdotal evidence. There were
large increases in Babylonian immigration post BarKochba, and even
more importantly there were 'high-cultured' people who were speaking
Greek, without any pharyngeals. (You will remember some mix ups of
shin and samex in some bar Kochba letters.) But this all needs to be
mixed in with the commmon people who were preserving the language(s).
Anyway, I recommend a reread of Kutscher. He has the evidence
collected for easy perusal.




-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
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