Considering these former examples, it seems that the first vowel had a tendency to be weakened. Another example that seems to agree with this is Capernaum. The name Capernaum seems to be a transliteration of "Kefar Nahum". This might indicate that the word "Kefar" was pronounced "Kafar" in the 1st cent. at least in Galilee.
This makes me wonder if the names beginning with "Yeho-" could have been "Yaho-" originally. But in this case, the LXX puts "Yo-" which doesn't seem to support my suspicion. Any ideas?
The name of Moses' succesor was pronounced "Yesu" by the 2nd cent. b.C., or maybe "Yesua", if the Greeks considered the final sound just as a gutural consonant (the final -s is just a peculiarity of Greek, it was added to any name ended in a vowel), and that seems to be the pronunciation in the 1st cent. A.D. And it was "Yehoshua" by the 7th century (it seems strange to me the change from "Ye" to "Yeho"; could it be a kind of archaization on the part of the Masoretes?).
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