Jim, Matres lectionis can also be found in Phoenician and Moabite which
predate the Tanakh. Alef, heh, waw and yod were used but waw and yod are
the most common. Are you saying that the use of matres lectionis was a
post-exilic practice?
Jack
Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX
--------------------------------------------------
From: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:09 AM
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: [b-hebrew] Interior Yods and Vavs
Post-exilic scribes added thousands of interior yods and vavs to common
words in the pre-exilic portions of the Bible, as vowel indicators in
updated,
plene spelling, and in thousands of other cases vowel indicators were not
added to common words. But only rarely was an interior yod or vav added
to a
proper name in an early part of the Bible. As to proper names in old
parts
of the Bible, were interior yods and vavs added on a random basis? Or, on
the contrary, was an interior yod or vav added to a proper name in an
early
section of the Bible only to avoid apparent blasphemy, or to make
explicable
what otherwise was inexplicable, in both cases from the point of view of
post-exilic scribes?
The converse is also of interest. The post-exilic scribes could not
delete
an interior vav in pre-exilic texts, no matter how much they may have
wanted to. So the presence of an interior vav in an old proper name in
the
received text may be very old, and very important.
This thread intends to take a close look at interior vavs and interior
yods
in proper names in old parts of the Bible. My controversial point of view
here is that they are not random. Whenever one sees an interior yod or
vav
in a proper name in an early part of the Bible, there likely is a rational
explanation for its presence, rather than it being a mere random updating
to
plene spelling of some proper names (in my controversial opinion).
In my view, one key to understanding the oldest parts of the Bible may be
to consider (i) what the proper names looked like before a rare interior
yod
or vav was added, and (ii) why certain proper names had an interior vav
from
day #1, having nothing whatsoever to do with updating the original
defective spelling to full spelling. That is the set of issues that this
thread
intends to explore.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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