Showing posts with label Hebrew phonology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hebrew phonology. Show all posts

Monday, February 5, 2024

Kantor on the Pronunciation of the Name Jesus

Ben Kantor has a useful article/video on the pronunciation of the name Jesus/Yeshua in Greek and Hebrew/Aramaic sources in the time of Jesus. This is a helpful resource for those confused by the pseudo-scientific discussions of Jesus's name that are abundant on the internet.

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Moster on Hebrew Pronunciation Traditions

David Moster has posted an interesting video comparing and contrasting different Hebrew pronunciation traditions.

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Free Hebrew Linguistic Resources

In the recent Genizah newsletter, Nick Posegay highlights two important open-access works just published by Geoffrey Khan, which are worth downloading and checking out:

The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1

The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 2

Description:

The form of Biblical Hebrew that is presented in printed editions, with vocalization and accent signs, has its origin in medieval manuscripts of the Bible. The vocalization and accent signs are notation systems that were created in Tiberias in the early Islamic period by scholars known as the Tiberian Masoretes, but the oral tradition they represent has roots in antiquity. The grammatical textbooks and reference grammars of Biblical Hebrew in use today are heirs to centuries of tradition of grammatical works on Biblical Hebrew in Europe. The paradox is that this European tradition of Biblical Hebrew grammar did not have direct access to the way the Tiberian Masoretes were pronouncing Biblical Hebrew. 

In the last few decades, research of manuscript sources from the medieval Middle East has made it possible to reconstruct with considerable accuracy the pronunciation of the Tiberian Masoretes, which has come to be known as the ‘Tiberian pronunciation tradition’. This book presents the current state of knowledge of the Tiberian pronunciation tradition of Biblical Hebrew and a full edition of one of the key medieval sources, Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ ‘The Guide for the Reader’, by ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn. It is hoped that the book will help to break the mould of current grammatical descriptions of Biblical Hebrew and form a bridge between modern traditions of grammar and the school of the Masoretes of Tiberias. 

Links and QR codes in the book allow readers to listen to an oral performance of samples of the reconstructed Tiberian pronunciation by Alex Foreman. This is the first time Biblical Hebrew has been recited with the Tiberian pronunciation for a millennium.

See also the forthcoming:

Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew

Description:

This volume presents a collection of articles centring on the language of the Mishnah and the Talmud – the most important Jewish texts (after the Bible), which were compiled in Palestine and Babylonia in the latter centuries of Late Antiquity. Despite the fact that Rabbinic Hebrew has been the subject of growing academic interest across the past century, very little scholarship has been written on it in English. 

Studies in Rabbinic Hebrew addresses this lacuna, with eight lucid but technically rigorous articles written in English by a range of experienced scholars, focusing on various aspects of Rabbinic Hebrew: its phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics and lexicon. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars of Rabbinic studies alike, and constitutes the first in a new series, Studies in Semitic Languages and Cultures, in collaboration with the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Cairo Genizah Hexapla Codex

The featured Genizah Fragment of the Month for March is the important Greek Hexapla palimpsest T-S 12.182. Benjamin Kantor suggests that the codex originally had six columns including one in Hebrew characters (now lost) and discusses several interesting features of the codex.

Sunday, September 30, 2018

Hebrew Transcription in Origen's Secunda

I just received news on Agade that Benjamin P. Kantor has put up his 2017 dissertation on Academia.edu, entitled The Second Column (Secunda) of Origen's Hexapla in Light of Greek Pronunciation. Scanning through it briefly it looks like a very interesting contribution to the discussion of Hebrew pronunciation and vocalization in the Roman period.