Re: Same name (was Re: Brithenig-heads)

At 14:50 23.4.2000 +0100, Raymond Brown wrote:

>There can be no doubt that Elisheva/Elisheba and Elisabet(h) are all
>versions of the same name, meaning something like: "God is my oath".
>
>Luke, writing in Greek, would use the Septuagint version of the name.  That
>the best manuscripts spell Luke's version with final tau rather than theta
>is IMHO not significant.  At that time the only difference between the two
>was that tau was unaspirated, i.e. tau = [t] and theta = [t_h].  As Greek
>words did not end in either sound, one imagines that Greek practice
>would've varied in the pronunciation of final tau/theta in non-Greek names.
>(It may be, indeed, that some manuscripts of the Septuagint vary in
>spelling).
It may be that the theta spelling was intended to mark a feminine -t ending
that had become silent in Hebrew, but was still spoken in some kinds of
Aramaic, or maybe the name was Elisabe gen. Elisabetos in Alxandrian
Greek!  Cf. the Arabic te_marbuta, i.e. the silent feminine ending is
spelled as the letter _he_ with the two superscript dots of the letter
_te_, indicating that the /t/ resurfaces in inflected forms.




/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson
mailto:bpj@netg.se
mailto:melroch@my-deja.com
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