[B-Greek] Luke 2:36 hANNA
Steve Raine
spraine at earthlink.net
Wed Dec 3 11:07:12 EST 2003
Hello--
Not a big thing, but my Septuagint has a soft breathing in I Samuel (I Kings 1:2).
Error?
Steve Raine
-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Trevor Peterson
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 2:40 AM
To: 'B-Greek'
Subject: RE: [B-Greek] Luke 2:36 hANNA
Jason wrote:
>
> I wonder if there was a reason why the /chet/ (the letter of
> the Hebrew alphabet that starts the name Hannah) was not
> carried over as a C in Greek. However, I guess it was not all
> that uncommon to ignore that letter altogether... for example
> in the word MESSIAS in Greek. It comes from Hebrew
> /mashiach/, with the /chet/ as the final letter.
Good observation. Keep in mind that Hebrew chet was probably originally
pronounced distinct from kaf, further back in the throat. So the sound
would have hovered somewhere between a Greek chi and a normal /h/ sound.
And, of course, ancient transliterations do not follow exact rules, so
where sounds are not quite equivalent, it's impossible to predict in
every case which way they will go. Another possibility to consider is
that at this time distinctions were retained in the pronunciation of
sounds that had already converged in the writing system. The often-cited
example of Gomorrah, which in Hebrew is written with an initial 'ayin,
would demonstrate this feature. Arabic retains 'ayin and gayin, the
latter of which is close to a Greek gamma. In Hebrew and Aramaic, the
two sounds have coalesced and are generally written with the same sign.
The Greek use of gamma to write this proper noun would suggest that
gayin was still pronounced, even though it looked the same as 'ayin.
(Something like keeping track of hard vs. soft g in English.) A similar
convergence would have occurred between Hebrew chet and another
consonant, also preserved in Arabic, that probably sounded like Greek
chi. Since the probable root of Hannah is attested in Arabic, Akkadian,
and Ugaritic with chet, if the distinction was preserved in speaking, we
would expect a simple /h/ or zero value here, rather than chi.
Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics
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