Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Issac,

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:02:30 -0500, Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu> wrote:
> What caught my eye in KIKAR כִּכָּר of 2Sam 18:23 is that the first K is
> transliterated there by a kappa, as though the Greek writers new to read an
> initial K as we read today the Hebrew letter kaf seen with a dot in it. But
> right away I saw כָּלֵב Caleb of Nu. 13:6 transliterated as Χαλεβ

One cannot expect absolute consistency.  Consider the following possible
scenario:

At the period in question, the initial kaph in both ככר and כלב was a lightly
aspirated stop [kʰ], similar to the initial k-sound in English "cow".  The
sound of Greek κ/kappa was an unaspirated stop [k], and sound of Greek χ/khi
was a strongly aspirated stop [kh], possibly transitioning to a fricative [x].
(There is good reason to believe that the Greek χ was stongly aspirated even
in classical times, not only because of its subsequent evolution into the
fricative [x], but also because of the necessity of maintaining its phonemic
distinction to the unaspirated κ/kappa = [k].)

Now let us suppose (which I think quite likely) that the translators of
Numbers and Samuel were different people, and that the translations
occurred at different times.  The translator of Numbers encounters the name
כלב with an initial [kʰ] and considers the Greek χ/khi = [kh] to be the
nearest equivalent.  Later, the translator of Samuel encounters ככר, and
considers that the Greek κ/kappa = [k] is closer to the initial [kʰ] than
the Greek χ/khi (which may be closer to [x] at this point).

I think you can see that there can be a lot of uncertainties involved here.

> On Jan 30, 2012, at 7:29 PM, Will Parsons wrote:
> 
>> I can imagine someone translating the text into Greek - "Hmm, ככר, is that
>> [kikkʰar] or [kikʰar]?"

-- 
Will Parsons