Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

isaac, will,

maybe these two names, hanna and peninah, are not casual. if HANAH 
has to do with being the favorite (MAC)FH XEN) then maybe PENINAH
had a related connotation, and was not necessarily derived (as 
in modern hebrew) with a pearl. for example, parallel to the root 
PNN in arabic. in this case, it is still possible that the greek
translation was loyal to the origin in both cases. 

this would be consistent with the existence of dagesh forte, but not
dagesh kal, in BH.

nir cohen


De: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
Cópia: Hebrew Forum <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Para: Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
Data: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:47:11 -0400
Assunto: Re: [b-hebrew] dagesh, gemination, Hannah [was: dagesh in hebrew]
Considering the mess they usually do of Hebrew names it is possible  
that the LXX saw XANAH as HANAH, and that the double N in their  
Αννα of 1Sam.1:2 is a result of a struggle to adapt the Greek  
spelling to the sound of the Hebrew.
I notice there that for

ויהי איש אחד מן הרמתים צופים מהר אפרים  
ושמו אלקנה בן ירחם בן אליהוא בן תחו בן  
צוף אפרתי ולו שתי נשים שם אחת חנה ושם  
השנית פננה ויהי לפננה ילדים ולחנה אין  
ילדים

they have

1.  ῎Ανϑρωπος ἦν ἐξ Αρμαϑαιμ Σιϕα ἐξ  
ὄρους Εϕραιμ, καὶ ὄνομα αὐτῷ Ελκανα  
υἱὸς Ιερεμεηλ υἱοῦ Ηλιου υἱοῦ  
Θοκε ἐν Νασιβ Εϕραιμ.
2.    καὶ τούτῳ δύο γυναῖκες· ὄνομα  
τῇ μιᾷ Αννα, καὶ ὄνομα τῇ δευτέρᾳ  
Φεννανα· καὶ ἦν τῇ Φεννανα παιδία,  
καὶ τῇ Αννα οὐκ ἦν παιδίον

with PNINAH (dagesh in the second N as expected after a xirik)  
curiously rendered Φεννανα

Spoken Hebrew did not "lose" anything. Spoken Hebrew has no "long"  
and "short" vowels, no schwa "NA" and no schwa "NAX", and no  
"gemination" (in spite of all the baloney "traditional grammar"  
taught in Hebrew schools) precisely because it is all unnecessary.  
Hebrew functions perfectly well without these theoretical fantasies.  
And if all this is redundant now, it stands to reason that it never  
existed in the past.

The dagesh, in my opinion, is but an ancient diacritical reading cue  
independent of the NIKUD. You may remove all dgeshim from any Hebrew  
text and you will not miss them.  In fact, that is what they did in  
the Oxford English-Hebrew dictionary.

Isaac Fried, Boston University