[B-Greek] hosanna

Jim West jwest at highland.net
Sat Feb 18 13:04:22 EST 2006


At 12:33 PM 2/18/2006, you wrote:
I never saw my reply to Jim, come across the B-Greek list, but since he 
got it, I will assume that it made it to the list. There is no doubt 
that hWSANNA is Aramaic and not Hebrew. Look at the vowel between the S 
and the N. If it were Hebrew, it would be hWSINNA not hWSANNA. The a 
vowel is part of the paradigm of the Aramaic Haphel/Aphel (Aramaic's 
equivalent of the Hiphil or causative stem). Further, the Aramaic 
expression actually shows up in the Talmud and in a similar context as 
the NT occurances of the word. Apparently I misunderstood, but in Jim's 
original post of his interpretation, I thought he made reference to 
Hebrew anna "now." In any event, the precative particle "na" does not 
contain the idea of "now" but of imploring, our "please." Do imperatives 
inherently contain the nuance of immediacy? Perhaps. But there is no 
disputing the presence of the precative particle since the imperative 
without it would be transliterated with something like hWSA. The NNA is 
the precative particle.

Donald Vance


Hi again.  Thanks for your response.  It is in fact not so that the 
Greek transliteration of ωσαννα (hosanna) derives from Aramaic.  Rather, 
  the Aramaic word comes from an "aramaicising" of two Hebrew words. 
ysha (hiphil) and nah (please or pray or some such pleading term).  It 
seems more accurate, it seems to me, then, to say that the Hebrew phrase 
made its way into Greek and that Aramaic was seen to be the origin of 
the word only when "The Aramaic of Jesus" movement made its way into 
interpretational and exegetical circles.

As to the Talmud- it postdates the New Testament by centuries and it's 
use of terms is not actually germane (any more than the definition or 
origin of English words as used 200 or 300 years ago can be used to 
define them today).

Best,

Jim


-- 
Jim West

http://web.infoave.net/~jwest  -- Biblical Studies Resources



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