Subject: Re: Fw: [b-hebrew] Biblical Pronunciation of Waw and Ayin
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:11:34 +0100
On 12/08/2004 10:01, Yigal Levin wrote:
...
However, since Greek did not have a "V" sound (it does now - Beta in modern
Greek is pronounced Veta), it transliterated most consonantal Vav's with an
Upsilon. ...
Are you sure? I would expect omicron-upsilon rather than just upsilon,
because this combination was generally used for the W sound, e.g. in the
Greek word OUAI "woe". There are not many proper names with consonantal
Vav to test this hypothesis with.
And then there is the controversial YHWH > IAOUE, according to Clement
of Alexandria, in which "OU" are clearly intended to go together to
represent the W sound.
I can only conclude that the Greek translators had no idea what to do
with consonantal Vav, or perhaps that most of these names beginning with
Vav result from textual errors - perhaps a couple of them with Zayin
misread as Vav.
--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/