ynquirer

Of course, it is a consonant. I didn’t say it is a bad example. I said it is not good in the sense of too complicated, as YOD in this case is together a consonant and a matre lectionis. Actually, it sounds like YE-SA-YAH, not like in English, as you appear to imply.

Within the greater books of the Tanakh, only 1 and 2 Chronicles make systematic use of the DWYD spelling. This seems to account for a change of pronunciation. In DWD the vowel following the VOV is a short, unspecified one; in DWYD it is a long E/I. Perhaps the writer wished to have it clear that the vowel was an E/I at the cost of rendering it a long one. This the writers of other books found unnecessary as a rule. In any case, YOD is not a vowel here.

Wherever (WBD appears - in Ruth and 1 and 2 Chronicles - Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia by means of diacritic marks indicates that the vowel after the BETH is a long E; the same for Shem in Genesis. These long vowels lacking a matre lectionis are defective scriptae. The conclusion is that both Obed and Shem were well-known names containing a long E. Therefore, the writer was spared the inclusion of a matre lectionis. In contradistinction to this, when in 2 Sam 6:10-12 (WBD appears at the beginning of a word ending with -)DWM, so making (WBD-)DWM, the translator of the Septuagint transliterates the word as Abeddara, with epsilon a short E.

Excuse me, but I must reject your example again. Geographical names are bad instances of transliteration. Ancient Greeks called their land Hellas, while the Romans called it Graecia. That doesn’t look like any transliteration.

One thing is that the YOD be omitted as a mater lectionis, so having the long vowel defective scriptae, as in Odeb and Shem. Quite another is that the YOD be sometimes expressed, sometimes omitted, which is an indication either of indecision as regard pronunciation or of different spellings for the same pronunciation. While the former may be accepted when comparing books of the Tanakh with one another, since they were written by different generations possibly with different pronunciations, it is unacceptable as of a name carved twice in the same tomb, as is the case of QYP) and QP). In the latter case, the more valid inference is that YOD is the consonant of a syllable omitted for the sake of abbreviation.

spin

This conjecture about what I "appear to imply" shows that you too busy to read what I said. The English pronunciation of Isaiah, if you haven't heard it, starts with a nice dipthong, /ai/, rather than a long vowel, /e:/, as in a Greek eta.

If the Greek had used a iota epsilon combination you might have had a better point with regard to your hypothesized pronunciation. However neither the LXX nor the Vulgate support it. Note for example how these texts represent the names Jeremiah and Jehoahaz. Yup, iota epsilon. Isaiah has consistently been rendered in Greek with an eta. Various other names which start with a YOD are transliterated into Greek simply with a iota.

You accept that the two forms of the name represent the same person. You say that the YOD may have been an attempt to represent the vowel after the WAW. Yet you go on to say that the "YOD is not a vowel here." I wish you would make up your mind.

Yup.

That's a rather silly counter-example. Try Rome, Rzm, Rom, Roma, etc. I don't know why you want to be coy about toponyms which are clearly related in form to their Greek transliterations.

A YOD takes up almost no space. If it had been a consonant then it would be a stable part of the name, but, as it could be omitted, we must assume that letter represented a mater lectionis, as the examples of the YOD both included and omitted indicate. Note for example Dishon (!) in Gen 36:21 D$N, though it was more frequently written with a YOD. Perhaps it was left out here "for the sake of abbreviation." (Jeremiah has Shiloh spelt $YLW, $LW and $LH all with an eta in Greek. And two different spellings in close proximity is not unusual as Jer 26:6 & 9 have two different Hebrew spellings of Shiloh.)

Yup, mater lectionis. You still have made no progress to show that we are not dealing with a scribe who understood the pronunciation as a mater lectionis. Your special pleading for a consonant and convenient recourse to abbreviation of that consonant are less than convincing.

I see nothng strange in thinking that both QYP) and QP) could be rendered by a translator as khfas.


spin

ynquirer

Hmmm… We shall presently see who has been inattentive to what the other said.

By way of insinuation you here have me be suspect of defective knowledge of English - insinuation that may be true but is irrelevant in a discussion about pronunciation in Hebrew. In any event, did I say or even imply that Isaiah in English pronunciation starts with anything different from a diphthong?

What I said is that the Hebraic name starts with a consonant, which clearly is not a diphthong - as I supposed you implied and you have expressly confirmed here.

It is you that turn a deaf ear to whatever the other has to say.

Enough is enough. We can push this as far and cunning as we both like, and I must confess I don’t like it very much. Nor do you, I am sure.

andrewcriddle

My answer was a bit rambling sorry

My point is that the author of John's Gospel c 100 CE understood Cephas to be a Greek transliteration of a semitic word meaning Rocky and that this is at least weak evidence that in fact it did mean Rocky and not Caiaphas which is represented differently in the same gospel.

Andrew Criddle

spin

This is something that I objected to:
Note this "not like English" here? In English it starts with a dipthong /ai/ as I said, which has nothing to do with anything that has been said in this thread. How that idea got into your head is a mystery unrelated to the discourse. Yet you repeat the irrelevance. Hell, that's without thought.

You repeat the claim that the start of the name Isaiah in Hebrew must have been pronounced "YE" despite nearly all the Greek transliterations (31 out of 32) to the contrary. If you simply must get stuck on another minor issue (remember the silly discussion about the etymology of "procurator" getting right off the track of its significance?), you leave the issue which brought you into the conversation in the first place, ie my analysis that Caiaphas could also be transliterated into Greek as Khfas.

I have shown sufficient examples in which the Hebrew YOD does get transliterated as a Greek eta (and I can supply many more examples).

I have shown that the Aramaic variant forms of the name Caiaphas QYP) and QP) act like Hebrew words in which a YOD functions as a vowel (mater lectionis), though that vowel YOD can be omitted (and more examples are available).

These two issues strongly suggest that the YOD in QYP) is a vowel which has the potential of being transliterated into Greek as an eta. The fact that the alternate form QP) exists is further evidence that we are dealing with a vowel, as per the examples given previously.

If you can put forward a summary of your position to end the discussion it would aid for clarity for the long-suffering reader.


spin

spin

OK, that sounds more reasonable I guess, but ultimately my interest is in the use of the name Cephas in the Pauline corpus, ie possibly before the Petrine connection was made. (You may remember that I have long argued that Gal 2:7-8 is an awfully contorted interpolation.) This Pauline use apparently long precedes the gospels and needs to be understood in its own right before retrojections are used to interpret the Pauline indications.


spin

JoeWallack

JW:
I've already explained that the Replacements represent post Narrative Believers.

Who ever picked up on "Mark" being the Original, not knowing Peter and copied by "Matthew"/"Luke" for most of Christian history?


JW:
Oh but they did Ben. That's why "Mark", someone who never knew Jesus, had to write the story. No one in the Narrative Witnessed the Resurrection so no one in the Narrative understood Jesus. The author did though (according to the author).

JW:

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Mark_6:3

"Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended in him."


This looks Contrived to me Ben:

James = The Disciple

Joses = The Disciple (Aramathea). Funny how Mary the mother of Joses was the one who watched from afar. Do you see any family connection Ben? Does "Mark" have a theme of family replacment Ben?

Judas = The Disciple.

Simon = The Disciple.

And for P-Jay's Ben a Fit, these aren't just Disciples, are they? They're the most important ones.

Still don't see any use of Names as Replacement guides in "Mark" Ben?



Joseph of Arrancia

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Ben C Smith

Where does Mark say he never knew Jesus? I mean, even if that is true, where does the author make a play of it?

Where does the author specifically connect the notion of witnessing the resurrection with that of understanding Jesus?

James the brother of Jesus is the same as James the brother of John, son of Zebedee? How does Mark express this equation, in your opinion?

Not that I can tell from your argument so far.

???

Still no, I confess.

Even if you are merely urging that all the equations above are purely symbolic, I do not see it in any way. Simon the brother of Jesus is replaced with Simon Peter (who is introduced in the narrative before Simon the brother!), who is then rejected and must be replaced with Simon from Cyrene, who, in your view, also failed Jesus and so presumably had to be replaced again... by whom, Simon Magus?

I am not certain as yet how I would even begin to convince myself that Mark intends this kind of thing.

If these are supposed to be the most important disciples, where is John? Where is Andrew? Mark tells us who the most important disciples are, and John and Andrew are among them.

Ben.

ynquirer

Hebraic script before the Masoretic reform of the seventh to tenth centuries CE only displays consonants, not vowels. There is no exception either in Hebrew or in another ancient Semitic language. YOD is not an exception: it never is a vowel. However, not always are consonants pronounced; sometimes they are mute. Whenever a consonant is mute, it lacks a vowel - though the reverse is not necessarily true. A special mute consonant is a matre lectionis, that is, a consonant that is mute because its function is to highlight the length of the vowel that follows the preceding consonant. (This rule is waived whenever the matre lectionis is at the beginning of the word, as in such a case it is a matre lectionis and a spoken consonant altogether.) Only YOD and VOV perform as matres lectionis. YOD as a matre lectionis highlights that the vowel that follows the preceding consonant is either /e:/ (a long E) or /i:/ (a long I); likewise, VOV highlights either a long /o:/ or /u:/.

If a syllable lacks a matre lectionis, the logical inference is that the vowel is either an A - whether long, /a:/, or short, /a/ - or a short /e/, /i/, /o/, or /u/. The sole exception is afforded by those words in reference to which there has been a large consensus across generations as to their pronunciation. For instance, the name Obed has been cited in this thread. It does not contain a matre lectionis, still we know that the E is a long one because the Masoretic text of the BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) always mentions - in Ruth and 1 and 2 Chronicles - the word with a clear sign that the second vowel is an /e:/. This is to be interpreted as an indication that for more than a thousand years there was not the slightest doubt that it was an /e:/. Matres lectionis were introduced whenever there was hesitation as regard pronunciation.

Now, there are names in the Tanakh that are written sometimes with and sometimes without YOD, such as David, Shiloh, and Dishon, which have also been mentioned in this thread. This happens because such names, in Hebrew, have had different pronunciations. Different books of the Tanakh were written by different generations of writers, and differences in pronunciation are all too natural across generations.

Let’s see David. This name has two different spellings in the Tanakh: DWD and DWYD. In all likelihood, the earlier spelling is DWD. Out of 800+ occurrences of the name David in the Tanakh my count, not necessarily exact, yields: 439 in 1 and 2 Samuel, all spelled DWD; 65 in 1 and 2 Kings: in 63 verses it is spelled DWD and only in three - 1 Ki 3:14, 11:4, 11:36 - the spelling is DWYD. In 1 and 2 Chronicles the name is spelled DWYD 226 times, and DWD cero times.

Ruth scores two DWD, Psalms eleven DWD as against one DWYD, Proverbs one DWD, Qohelet one DWD, Isaiah nine DWD, Jeremiah fourteen DWD, Ezekiel three DWD and one DWYD, Hosea one DWD, Amos two DWYD, Ezra three DWYD, Nehemiah seven DWYD, Zechariah five DWYD.

One conclusion seems to be indisputable: YOD in DWYD is a matre lectionis: it indicates that the I in David is a long vowel.

Now, the question is, Was the I in DWD also a long /i:/ or was it a short /i/? Perhaps a long /i:/ in DWD was unanimously accepted, so that it was defective scriptae - as the long /e:/ in Obed. Later, hesitation might have arisen, and accordingly writers began to highlight the long /i:/ by means of the matre lectionis. Still later on, a long /i:/ in David was so established a fact that it became optional for the writers either to use the matre lectionis or to omit it. To my fairest understanding this is spin’s position as regard the significance of the matre lectionis.

This is unlikely, though. We really don’t know how DWD was pronounced in the beginning, say, at the time 1 and 2 Samuel were written; the long /i:/ was perhaps defective scriptae, perhaps it was a short /i/. Quite possibly that was still the situation at the time 1 and 2 Kings were written. We know for sure that at the time 1 and 2 Chronicles were written, a long /i:/ was plene scriptae, and possibly a few amendments - to repair lost text - were introduced in the Books of Kings. Also Psalms was probably written under the sway of DWD, and later amended. Yet this situation did not last for long.

There possibly followed a time of linguistic competition. Differences from prophet to prophet seem to speak of such competition. We know for sure that in the third century BCE, however, the short /i/ had won the upper hand. The translators of the Septuagint used to transliterate the long vowels, whether plene or defective scriptae as eta, a Greek long /e:/. They instead transliterated the I in David as iota, a Greek short /i/. Such consensus lasted until the seventh to tenth centuries and beyond, for the BHS displays diacritical marks of a short /i/ for the name David.

I believe that similar accounts - though more complex, as hesitation is greater - can be given for such names as Shiloh and Dishon.

The conclusion is that matres lectionis, especially before the Masoretic reform, were far from superfluous or optional. They dramatically highlighted the linguistic preference of the writer whenever pronunciation was at the stake.

Now, what happened to the name Caiaphas in the first century? Different spelling as in QYP) and QP) is better explained by abbreviation than by different pronunciation. In the first place, abbreviation of names, titles and other info was a Roman fashion as revealed by thousands of inscriptions in stones; after all, Caiaphas, according to Josephus, was a Sadducee and a friend of the Romans, and possibly receptive of Roman fashions not in breach of the Law. Secondly, differences in name pronunciation are plausible across generations, that is, when centuries elapse, but much less within a shorter time span, as a couple of tombs placed together seem to indicate. This suggests that YOD in QYP) does not highlight either a long /e:/ or /i:/ and QP) either a short /e/ or /i/, but rather that QP) is an abbreviation of QYP).

There are two tombs close to each other. One displays the inscription OP), the other together OP) and OYP). The former probably is older than the latter; the latter is also a richer tomb. The difference was not the mere carving of a little stroke (YOD), but that a syllable (YA) was missing. It was QA-YA-FA as compared with QA-FA. Therefore, the abbreviation was significant. The older tomb only displays the abbreviated name. The later tomb displays the full name and as an explanation of the relationship to the older tomb also the abbreviated name.

Thus, there was no room for any doubt that the bodies in the two tombs were members of the same family.

spin

It's funny that ynquirer spends so much time on DWD/DWYD, far less on the examples that are better analogies with QYP)/QP), ie ones that feature a long vowel YOD as the mater lectionis, Shiloh and Dishon as often transliterated as a Greek eta, seeing as the latter is transliterated in two different ways in the one verse as previously cited and Shiloh written three different ways within Jeremiah.

ynquirer ignores data and gives no reason to believe his claim as to the YOD being a consonant for the scribe who used both QYP) and QP). Whilw vowels in Hebrew were less significant in Hebrew writing than consonants, ynquirer thinks it is more likely for some reason that the scribe omit a consonant than a vowel. Go figure.