[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




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