On 15/01/2006 07:04, Rochelle Altman wrote:
At 01:16 AM 1/15/2006, Peter Kirk wrote:
. That's the point; if it is postulated that CVC did not occur until post-exilic times, then we have to add the vowel to "l-" ... It's why I included the "l-" Technically, on the same grounds I should have included a vowel for "b" in the 29th.
I think you have missed my point. If the alef in l-'adonay(a) is silent, we have la-do-na-ya, all CV syllables. You also have a non-permitted consonant cluster in "ha-artza" (even taking "tz" as one consonant), oddly considering that there isn't one in the Masoretic Hebrew; this needs to be something like ha-aratza.
IF the alef is silent, yes. Was it? The alef had better not be silent in the 23rd, for instance.
Here we have a clearly marked three syllable "a-do-nai." Shall we change the psalm formula to be "silent-do-nai" opening the song to prove that (1) yhvh is two-syllables and (2) Hebrew -- unlike Aramaic, had no tendency whatsoever to lose final weak vowels? The same psalm formula is used in the 33rd... three syllable opening. (It's also the formula for Shir Ha-Shirim.)
My point was a simple one. In the Masoretic pointing, alef in 'adonay becomes silent (as shown by having no point of any sort under it) following prefixes like l- and b-. The evidence for this is from places where 'adonay is written explicitly e.g. Genesis 18:32; Psalm 22:31; 73:28; 130:6; Isaiah 22:5; 28:2; Jeremiah 46:10,10; 50:25; Daniel 9:9; Malachi 1:14. In fact the same contraction is also used before 'adoni "my lord" e.g. Genesis 32:5; 44:9,16,16,33; 1 Samuel 24:7,11; 25:27,28,30,31,31; 2 Samuel 4:8; 18:28; 19:29; 1 Kings 1:2,2; 18:13; 20:9; 1 Chronicles 21:3; Psalm 110:1. But this alef is not always elided in the MT e.g. before 'adone (plural construct) Psalm 136:6.
Now of course we don't know whether this alef was elided in the same way after l- in the earlier time we are talking of, when Hebrew had only CV syllables. But we should at least allow for the possibility, which would imply that 'adonay is three syllables, or four allowing for a final vowel, and that la'donay was exactly the same.
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Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
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