[B-Greek] Luke 2:36 hANNA

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Wed Dec 3 11:56:52 EST 2003


You are presumably looking at the Greek text printed in "Brenton's" 
diglot. Had you consulted Swete you would have found a rough breathing; 
had you consulted Rahlfs you would have found no diacritics at all. 
Even within the Goettingen Septuagint the marking of diacritics on 
proper nouns has a history. E.g. Rahlfs typically omits them on 
transcribed forms, Wevers  and later Hanhart include them.
The NETS translation as a matter of policy marks aspiration. Thus 
Hebrew Hannah becomes Hanna in NETS.
Al
On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 11:07 AM, Steve Raine wrote:

> 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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—
Albert Pietersma
Professor of Septuagint and Hellenistic Greek
Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto
Home: 21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm




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