Isaiah

You have letters - now what do you do with them?
anders
Lexiterian
Posts: 405
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:46 am
Location: Sweden

Isaiah

Postby anders » Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:08 pm

Having looked at Flam’s signature, I became interested. Isaiah is Jesaja in Swedish and German. In those three languages, the name of the book is the same as that of the prophet himself (as given in Isa. 1:1).

My bilingual Latin-Hebrew Bible (1740) has in its Latin version the book as LIBER JESAIAE and in 1:1 Visio Jeschajæ. Strange difference.

I also looked in a TaNaK from 1828, and in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1984). All three Hebrew books (i.e. including the above-mentioned 1740) were, undotted, named ישעיה and in all of them, 1:1 had ישׁעיהו. Why is there no waw in the book name (or, why is it added to the prophet name)?

My first efforts to post capsized, probably because of busy servers, but I got so far as to note that not all letters from my Windows standard Unicode fonts could be copied (I tried Times and Arial Cyrillic (!) schwa for a transcription, and twice “long s” for the 1:1 quote in Latin). Also, the superscript code [sup] didn’t work. Is there a way to use super- and subscripts? Which font works best for copying non-English letters into posts?
Irren ist männlich

Garzo
Lexiterian
Posts: 137
Joined: Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:22 pm
Location: A place to cross the river Thames with your Oxen
Contact:

Postby Garzo » Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:09 pm

The extra ו (waw) is part of the divine name or Tetragrammaton. At the end of a name it is often either ־יה (-yah), or ־יהו (-yahu). There are a few names where this is the case: Eliyahu haNavi is Elijah the Prophet.
"Poetry is that which gets lost in translation" — Robert Frost

anders
Lexiterian
Posts: 405
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:46 am
Location: Sweden

Postby anders » Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:29 pm

OK, so there are two forms of the one name. I guessed so much. But why the consistent use of one for the chapter and the other one for the person?
Irren ist männlich

Garzo
Lexiterian
Posts: 137
Joined: Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:22 pm
Location: A place to cross the river Thames with your Oxen
Contact:

Postby Garzo » Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:38 pm

That's to do with a little game called Ketiv-weQere: a rabbinic version of tetris. What is writ, haKetiv, is writ, and there isn't much a mortal should do about it. However, when called upon to recite what's writ, one makes a few alterations: haQere. The most famous example is with the Divine Name, the Tetragrammaton, which is NOT read as writ, but pronounced as 'Adonai' (my Lord) in scriptural reading and in prayer, and 'haShem' (the Name) elsewhere. Perhaps some of this happened with personal names. At some stage, the final ו (waw) was not pronounced: perhaps three letters were felt to be too sacred. As the headings of books are not scripture, the K-Q rules do not apply. Whenever the rules do not apply, the spelling follows the sensible Qere.
"Poetry is that which gets lost in translation" — Robert Frost

anders
Lexiterian
Posts: 405
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:46 am
Location: Sweden

Postby anders » Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:27 am

Many thanks. I never thought of the headings being outside the scripture. Perfectly logical.
Irren ist männlich

astrokatastro
Junior Lexiterian
Posts: 43
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2005 9:37 am

Postby astrokatastro » Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:53 pm

a hat
Last edited by astrokatastro on Fri May 13, 2005 1:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ΝΙΨΟΝΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑΜΗΜΟΝΑΝΟΨΙΝ

Brazilian dude
Grand Panjandrum
Posts: 1464
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Botucatu - SP Brazil

Postby Brazilian dude » Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:22 pm

I don't mean this in a bad way, but I don't know squat about Greek, be it modern or classical. I was wondering if anybody else here did.

Brazilian dude
Languages rule!

Apoclima
Senior Lexiterian
Posts: 555
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:00 pm

Postby Apoclima » Mon Apr 18, 2005 3:55 pm

Hey, astrokatastro! I know that you want your Greek to be more accessible to us with the Roman alphabet, but it is easier for me to look up if you keep in in the original Greek letters.

Just a thought! I don't think that most understand it in a Roman script anyway!

I think this is the quote from Isaiah about the birth of the Savior!

"Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." Isaiah 7:14

Apo
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck

Apoclima
Senior Lexiterian
Posts: 555
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:00 pm

Postby Apoclima » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:13 pm

δια τουτο δωσει κυριος αυτος υμιν σημειον ιδου η παρθενος
εν γαστρι εξει και τεξεται υιον και καλεσεις το ονομα
αυτου Εμμανουηλ

Απο
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck

anders
Lexiterian
Posts: 405
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:46 am
Location: Sweden

Postby anders » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:15 pm

Of course Isaiah (if he existed) couldn't have had a notion of Yeshua Josephson, and so all modern translations use "a young girl" instead of "a virgin".

And Y.J. wasn't named anything close to Emmanuel.

You could try searching http://www.iidb.org for "Isaiah virgin" or "almah".
Irren ist männlich

Brazilian dude
Grand Panjandrum
Posts: 1464
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Botucatu - SP Brazil

Postby Brazilian dude » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:19 pm

I know that you want your Greek to be more accessible to us with the Roman alphabet, but it is easier for me to look up if you keep in in the original Greek letters.
Roman or not Roman, it's still Greek to me. Apo, would you understand Chinese better if it were written in pin-ying (or whichever way you spell that)? :wink:

Brazilian dude
Languages rule!

Apoclima
Senior Lexiterian
Posts: 555
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:00 pm

Postby Apoclima » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:35 pm

Exactly my point, BD! The Roman script just makes it harder for me to look up, and does nothing to make it accessible to English speakers!

Apo
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck

Brazilian dude
Grand Panjandrum
Posts: 1464
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Botucatu - SP Brazil

Postby Brazilian dude » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:38 pm

Why only English speakers? What about everybody else who's clueless about Greek?

Brazilian dude

Just in a teasing mood.
Languages rule!

tcward
Wordmaster
Posts: 789
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:18 pm
Location: The Old North State

Postby tcward » Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:52 pm

Apo uses finely honed googling skills. He can search on a phrase he can't even read, but only if it is using the same alphabet that the rest of the world uses when they write it.

So transliterating the Greek alphabet into Roman letters makes it impossible for those of us with such research skills to perform our obsessive-compulsive behavior to find out what the heck the person is talking about!

Please use the Greek alphabet when quoting Greek, ok? :)

-Tim

Apoclima
Senior Lexiterian
Posts: 555
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:00 pm

Postby Apoclima » Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:59 pm

Tim:
So transliterating the Greek alphabet into Roman letters makes it impossible for those of us with such research skills to perform our obsessive-compulsive behavior to find out what the heck the person is talking about!
Yup.

BD:
Why only English speakers? What about everybody else who's clueless about Greek?
It would be better to say that Greek written in Roman characters does not make it more accessible to people who understand languages that use a Roman script or any other script, for that matter, including Greek itself, mind you!

Is that better, BD?

Apo
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck


Return to “Spelling”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests