Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Chris:

On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 5:53 AM, Chris Watts <dekruidnootjes AT eircom.net> wrote:

Hi Karl, well jut one thing that gets me thinking, I do remember in Judges somewhere, that there is evidence of two dialects, one of the tribes could not pronounce the shin as 'sh' but only as 's'.  So how would you account for that?

You reference Judges 12:6 where the difference is between the Sin and Sameck.

Both from the use of Sameck in Ezra and Nehemiah to transliterate Artaxerxes and that it came into both Latin and Greek with the “X” phoneme, makes me suspect that the Sameck was originally a Xameck with the “X” sound.

Already in Ezra’s time the sound was changing from a Xameck to a Sameck and the source of the change was Aramaic. Evidence is that in Nehemiah and the Hebrew sections of Ezra all have the Xamack for the second “x” in Artaxerxes, While all but twice the second “x” is transliterated with a Sin in the Aramaic sections of Ezra.

 

Chris Watts
Ireland
Chris Watts
Ireland

Karl W. Randolph.