Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

David,

I will comment only on one aspect of your response to Karl below...

On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:19:17 -0500, David Steinberg
<david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com> wrote:

> Karl
> Your statement below is both partially correct and misleading -
> 
> "We don't know what was the original pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew. 
> All we have are the consonants, and we don't even agree on the 
> pronunciation of those. There are some of us who believe that the modern 
> pronunciation (Israeli or Yemini) was how the ancients pronounced Hebrew 
> before the Babylonian Exile, others dispute that belief. Therefore, the 
> safest way to deal with that in these discussions is merely to write the 
> Hebrew consonants as they are found in Tanakh, and/or to write them out 
> in transliteration. That way there is no argument as to pronunciation 
> (useful to avoid that argument when other questions are the main 
> subjects of a posting). When I read Tanakh, I read it without points 
> (the text I have in my computer has no points) so when I read the text 
> and quote it in my messages here, it will be without pronunciation. "
...
> No one can read or pronounce or even understand the text ( see 
> http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_5.htm#orth )without assuming a 
> vocalization.

To pronounce any language one must use vowels, but it's not necessary to
assume a vocalization.  Egyptologists do this all the time (perforce, since
Egyptian does not indicate vowels and there is no equivalent for the
Massoretic vowel points).  So, an Egyptian word transcribed (slightly
simplifying) <sdmf> (approx. "he hears") is conventionally pronounced
/sedemef/, where the various e's have been inserted simply for the purposes of
making the word pronounceable, but with no illusions that this is how the word
was actually pronounced by Egyptians.

I personally would not take this approach to the Biblical text, but Karl has
indicated many times that he regards the Massoretic vowel pointing to be so
frequently wrong as to prefer to ignore it.  Even if you don't agree with this
assessment, I don't think it's completely unreasonable, and if one does so,
one can readily apply the approach taken by Egyptologists to Hebrew.

-- 
William Parsons