[B-Greek] hWSANNA

Donald Vance donaldrvance at mac.com
Sun Feb 19 00:12:13 EST 2006


Dear Jim, Harold, and Oun,
	I'll address all three of you in this one email. Greek has no way of 
representing Semitic shin; sigma is the usual letter used to represent 
it. As for the two examples of Hebrew Hiphil imperatives of yasha with 
an /a/ vowel in the second syllable (Ps 86:2; Jer 31:7) out of 31 
occurrences, neither has a suffix, such as the precative particle that 
we have on hWSANNA. The presence of any suffix prevents the coloring of 
the i class vowel to /a/ as we have in these two anomalous forms. One 
never finds Hebrew Hosha<-na, only Hoshi<ah-na. As for the meaning of 
the precative particle, the "now" is not a temporal designation, but a 
logical one, one that is more akin to English "then." See my grammar, 
section 16.4. Therefore the Greek has to be a representation of an 
Aramaic expression. As for Jim's reconstruction, what is the evidence 
of a Hebrew Vorlage for the Greek transliteration? Does anyone 
seriously doubt that Aramaic was spoken in Jerusalem at the time of 
Jesus? In my opinion, Hebrew was too, but the /a/ vowel simply 
eliminates Hebrew as the origin of the Greek transliteration. That the 
Aramaic phrase comes from the Hebrew term as it is found in Psalm 
118:25 and elsewhere is obvious. But the fact remains the Greek is a 
transliteration of Aramaic and not Hebrew. As for the dating of the 
Talmud, of course it dates centuries after the NT, but that is 
irrelevant to the discussion as I was discussing the language. The 
Aramaic FORM does NOT date centuries after the time of Jesus. Further, 
the Talmud certainly does contain traditions and data that date back to 
the New Testament period. Finally, Joseph Fitzmyer's article cited by 
Oun Kwon ("Aramaic evidence affecting the interpretation of HWSANNA in 
the New Testament"  (p. 119-129) of _The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian 
Origins_ Eerdmans 2000) argues for the Aramaic origins of the Greek 
term hWSANNA as found in the Gospels. Further he writes "Indeed, one 
wonders whether the short Hebrew form in  Ps 86:2 and Jer 31:7 (if 
imperatival) is not really Aramaized" (p. 126). He has a very 
interesting comment on p. 121:

Even in one has to recognize that Ps 118:25-26 lies behind the 
acclamation in the Gospels, it is noteworthy that the Semitic form [he 
gives here in unvocalized Hebrew script "Hosha na"] is transcribed here 
in its earliest attestation in Greek as hWSANNA; none of the 
evangelists has used the Greek translation of it from the LXX. It 
stands, for that reason, a good chance of representing a genuine 
primitive Christian recollection of what was shouted to Jesus on the 
occasion of his entry into Jerusalem or at least of what was often 
shouted to pilgrims like him coming to the city of Jerusalem.

Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
Oral Roberts University
dvance at oru.edu
donaldrvance at mac.com
On Feb 18, 2006, at 9:19 PM, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:

> Dear Donald,
>
>> 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.
>
> HH: Of course, it's an imperative with a precative particle. The thing 
> that strikes me about "Hosanna" is the "s" sound, but that would be a 
> problem for Aramaic , too. It is not the "shin" sound that one expects 
> in Hebrew or Aramaic ("sh"). Perhaps Greek did not have that letter, 
> so it did the best it could. But in that case it could be representing 
> Hebrew because the Hiphil imperative of "save" can sound like "hosha." 
> See Jer 31:7. That verb form with the precative particle would be 
> "hosha na." That is not the form of the imperative used in the famous 
> Ps 118:25 verse, but it is a legitimate form. As for "now," that is a 
> gloss given for the precative particle as far back as the BDB lexicon.
>
> Yours,
> Harold Holmyard
>




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