Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

Bryant,

On Fri, 4 Mar 2011 23:27:38 -0800, "Bryant J. Williams III" 
<bjwvmw AT com-pair.net> wrote:
> Dear List,
> 
> My apologies in advance for the cross-posting, but a colleague of mine is
> presently in Israel on tour. He asked me to check with you all to find the
> following information. He is beginning to think that what we have is very
> poor transliteration (intervening delta between sigma and rho). Does anyone
> know the derivation of the "Esdraelon"? It seems that "Valley of Esdraelon"
> is synonymous with the "Valley of Jezreel."

Apart from the final ων/on, I don't think this would be a particularly bad
transliteration.  Note that the sequence /zr/ in Hebrew is represented by
Greek σδρ/sdr also in Εσδρας/Esdras for Hebrew `Ezra.  Although it might be
thought that the most natural Greek spelling for /zr/ would be σρ/sr, the
pronunciation of this sequence in Greek probably freely varied between [sr]
and [zr], so the introduction of the delta serves to enforce the voiced Hebrew
[z] sound.  (And who knows, but the Greeks may have heard a slight
transitional [d] sound in the Hebrew sequence /zr/.)

> I think also that it is also synonymous with the "Valley of Megiddo, but I
> could be wrong. It is found 4x in Judith (1:8; 3:9; 4:6; 7:3) and is spelled
> ESDRHLWN (with the "WN" place signifier equivalent to the Hebrew "ON"
> suffix).

-- 
William Parsons