[B-Greek] Luke 2:36 hANNA
Trevor Peterson
06PETERSON at cua.edu
Wed Dec 3 11:25:26 EST 2003
>===== Original Message From "Steve Raine" <spraine at earthlink.net> =====
>Hello--
>
>Not a big thing, but my Septuagint has a soft breathing in I Samuel (I Kings
1:2).
>
>Error?
What kind of error do you mean? Printing error? Probably not, but you can
check by looking at the other occurrences of her name. Spelling error? How
could it be? The Hebrew sound here doesn't exist in Greek, so there's good
reason to omit it and begin the word with a vowel. Pronunciation error? The
primary issue is how the name was pronounced in a Greek context. Only
secondarily are we concerned with the Hebrew pronunciation. We expect the
Greek to somehow stem from the original Hebrew name, but the relationship is a
matter of convention. In English, Ian and John come from the same Greek name.
We don't worry too much about the Greek in trying to figure out how the
English names are pronounced. We can see generally the paths they took to get
to their present forms, but that's generally inconsequential. To my ear, the
degree of difference between hanna and Heb. channa when used in context is so
close to that between anna and channa, that it doesn't seem like there's any
good reason to think one more likely than the other. Keep in mind, too, that
the breathing marks are secondary additions, and there's no reason to think
that on foreign names they were checked for consistency between different
persons.
Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list