The lentition of the letters bgdkpt is usually placed much later. Many
think it came in after the Exile. So the answer is no, no C12th BCE
Hebrew speaker would have known of this. But after it did become part
of Hebrew, yes, ordinary speakers would notice. Anyone who used the
wrong variant would have sounded either 'wrong' or 'foreign', just like
in languages today that have the same phenomenon.
This brings us back to a point often made: the Hebrew we have in the
Masoretic texts represents the way Hebrew was chanted in the second half
of the 1st millennium CE. As part of the tradition of Hebrew, it is
part of the evidence of how Hebrew was spoken in the 1st or 2nd
millennium BCE, but it is not, nor was it meant to be, a trascription of
how Moses, David or Ezra pronounced Hebrew.
Kevin Riley
On 5/11/2010 1:27 AM, fred burlingame wrote:
that make life fun ...
and so, in numbers 31:23 we have three instances of the hebrew word באש
occurring, but we have pronunciation differing; "ya-vo ... va-esh;"
"ta-ah-vi-ru ... va-esh;" and "ya-vo ... ba-esh."
Is there some rule or reason to "dagesh" for "ba-esh" only once of three
instances?
Would the average 12th century b.c., shepherd or farmer practiced (or even
known about) such subtle differences in his every day communications?
Thanks for your help.
regards,
fred burlingame
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