...
Still, I disagree. I think a much more plausible hypothesis is that
The Greek LXX more accurately reflects the pronunciation in the time
of the time of the Greeks than the Tiberian pointing. In fact, I'm a
little surprised than anyone takes a rendition from -250 and from +850
and considers the later one more accurate.
... IsYes, if the concurrent one is known to be unreliable and the later one is known to be much more consistent and based on a more reliable tradition. For a specific example, in New Testament textology most people use a 20th century critical text rather than any single individual manuscript from a much earlier period, because each individual early MS is unreliable but a modern critical edition based on many MSS is reliable.
there any other linguistic endeavor in which we would arbitrarily
assign more accurace to a later transcription than to a concurrent
one?
Greek forms. There could be a number of reasons for this, not least that the LXX translators were working from an unvowelled text and in a
So were the Masoretes, a millennium later.
If we put forward the hypothesis that for the LXX translators every Hebrew consonant was pronounced according to the standard reconstruction of Masoretic pronunciation, and the LXX translators rendered every
There's enormous evidence against this hypothesis:
1. Example such as:
`Atarot (TH) -- Xataruth (LXX)
'Ebes (TH) -- Rebes (LXX)
are many.
2. Double letters in the LXX do not match up with anything in TH. (A
particularly striking example comes from I Chronicles 24:13:
XuPah [TH; P=peh with dagesh] -- Oxxoffa [LXX]).
3. We have already noted that syllable structure in the LXX does not
match TH.
4. We have also already noted that vocalization does not match TH.
5. Methodological considerations --- including the time sequence andWell, I tend to agree, but it was you who introduced the subject, suggesting that LXX transliterations could tell us something about Hebrew. I think they can tell us something but not much.
the general unreliability of transliterations --- militate against
using the LXX to understand TH or perhaps Hebrew at all.
Agreed. But that is not "a better explanation" but a clearer statement of my own explanation.short vowels in word initial syllables have often changed from "a" sounds to hiriq since the LXX translators' times, cf. LXX Samson and Hebrew Shimshon - so this might explain the hiriq in Rivka (and in Milcah and Bil`am), and some other vocalisation anomalies.
I think a better explanation here is that TH regularly recorded chiriq
between the first two of three consonants, not just RIVKA and MILCAH
(names), but also Piel (DIBBER), infinitives (LISHMOR) etc. This TH
rule didn't exist in the days of the LXX.
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