[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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