Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

David:

Thanks for the reply.

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 2:16 PM, David Steinberg <
david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com> wrote:

>  Karl,
>
> For both your points (below) see Linguistic Changes Affecting the
> Pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew 2000 B.C.E. - 850 C.E. According to
> Various Scholars http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_bib_heb_history.htm
>

I have looked at the data, and found that the evidence for pronunciation
before the Babylonian Exile is too fragmentary to be anything other than
speculation. When I discuss Biblical pronunciation, that is the period that
I consider. After the Babylonian Exile, there is some evidence that Hebrew
was no longer spoken as a native tongue, and within a couple of generations
its pronunciation was corrupted by Aramaic speaking Jews. Therefore, that
period and later no longer represent Biblical pronunciations.

> ** **
>
> Re sin/shin see Blau *Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew; An
> Introduction <http://www.eisenbrauns.com/item/BLAPHONOL>* sect 3.2. Roots
> such as shin-het-qof vs. sin-het-qof make it very likely that the
> phonological shin vs sin was still made in pre-exilic Hebrew
>

That book is not available for my perusal.

I see no evidence for that. Instead I find evidence that there was no
difference between the sin and shin until after the Babylonian Exile. True,
there are some homographs, i.e. different words that share the same
consonantal spelling, but almost every letter is used in homographs, so the
existence of homographs doesn’t constitute evidence for a difference
between sin and shin.

> ** **
>
> Re “bgdkpt” see http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_tequ.htm#bgdpt
>

I see you agree with me here. But my understanding is that not everyone
agrees with us.

>
> David Steinberg
>
>
Karl W. Randolph.

>
>  Did the “bgdkpt” letters have one or multiple pronunciations during
> Biblical times? Were the sin and shin originally one letter with one
> pronunciation during Biblical times, or two letters combined into one
> grapheme? We see that the Samekh and Sin had distinctive pronunciations in
> Judges, but were interchanged in Ezra indicating that they possibly had one
> pronunciation then. No, there is still some disagreement on the
> pronunciation of at least some of the consonants. That does not mean that
> we are clueless, rather that questions that cannot be answered remain.
>
>
>  Karl W. Randolph.
>
>