Hebrew Language Queries on: Classical Hebrew Vov, & First letter for Israel & Jerusalem in English

[Robert]

In Scripture many verses (sentences) seem to start with the letter vov, rather more than would perhaps seem necessary, so that in the English translation one is reading "And ..." rather often. In fact when I read Scripture I now often ignore the "And" which for me then makes the passage run more smoothly and actually makes it clearer. Have you tried this?

I have noticed that the word "And" is not the only word used in translation for the letter Vov at commencement of a sentence; for example a substitution for "And" quite often used is "Now ...; others are "So", "But". 
Stone Tanach, Exodus: "And" 1:1, "So" 1:11, "But" 1:12, "Then" 4:11, "So" 4:18 and 4:20.

In Leviticus 20:7-27 the Stone Tanach English translation ignores the Vav at commencement of each verse as it does in many places such as Numbers 17:12 to 27 and other too numerous to mention such as 1 Chronicles 12:24 to 37!

Is it possible the Vov at commencement of a verse / sentence is mostly not meant to be translated, but rather represents some form of punctuation, or some form of sentence break?

[robrecht]

Jason can answer this question much better than I, and I hope he will. But in the meantime, let me just say that waw can be merely the marker of a new clause, somestimes indicating a complex relationship to other clauses in the same sentence that is best determined by word order within the clause and the larger context. Furthermore a waw joined with an imperfect form of the verb is variously characterized by grammerians, and thus not particularly simple to understand. Sometimes it is merely indicating the continuation of a narrative and need not be translated at all.

[Robert]

[...] waw [...]

I much appreciate your reply.
By the way, would you happen to know why, since we pronounce ו (vov), as a "v", in English, do we then (as you have correctly done) spell it in English: "wow"?
[The letter vov is only displaying correctly when shown in the drafting field.]

On a similar but of course not related directly to this particular discussion, I also do not understand why its: "Israel" in English, and not the "Yisrael" that it seems to me it ought to be.

Compare with the (to me) equally mystifying "Yerushalyim", that in English becomes: "Jerusalem".

That even though both those words in Hebrew: "Yisrael" and "Yerushalyim", are spelt with the very same Hebrew first letter, a Yud, yet the one word gets in English its first letter rendered as an "I", while the other gets a "J" !

[robrecht]

The history of English forms of words from the Hebrew Bible is oftentimes complicated and not a simple transliteration directly from Hebrew into English. One has to look first at the Septuagint and old Greek translations, which influenced the old Latin versions and Jerome's revision and translation from the Hebrew (mostly) into the Latin Vulgate. Sometimes one must also factor in the how the Greek authors of the Christian scriptures used the Jewish scriptures in their Greek texts which became part of the Christian Bible. From the Latin one sometimes has to look at old French and other emerging Romance languages as well as Saxon and other Germanic dialects that contributed to Medieval and later English, etc. Without looking into this in more detail, the following is my best guess:

In very broad strokes, the old Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures transliterated ירושלם as Ιερουσαλήμ. The Greek iota corresponds to the Hebrew yod, and while there is no Greek letter for our 'Y' sound, the combination ιε (iota + epsilon) comes pretty close. Later Latin translators, however, read the initial Iota as having a rough breathing mark and thus Hierusalem. 'H' began to die out in later Latin and the newer Romance languages so I suspect many Latin manuscripts had Ierusalem, like the Greek. J was sometimes introduced into English as nothing more than a fancy upper case I. Perhaps some also liked the J because of a tendency to retain something like the aspiration of the old H. In copies of old Germanic works (eg, the anti-Jewish 14th-century Middle English Siege of Jerusalem), this was rendered as Jerusalem, which is also found in Luther's translation into the German of his time. Meanwhile Tyndale's English translation still favored the older Latin Hierusalem, but I suspect later English translations were more influenced by Luther's rendering.

On the other hand, the old Greek and the Septuagint rendered ישראל as Ισραήλ, but the Latins did not add a rough breathing mark here, at least not at the beginning of the word, so we find Israhel in the Vulgate (and still in Old English) but subsequently Israel is found consistently. Again we see iota for yod and the disappearing H.

[Robert]

The history of English forms of words from the Hebrew Bible is oftentimes complicated and not a simple transliteration directly from Hebrew into English. One has to look first at the Septuagint and old Greek translations, which influenced the old Latin versions and Jerome's revision and translation from the Hebrew (mostly) into the Latin Vulgate. Sometimes one must also factor in the how the Greek authors of the Christian scriptures used the Jewish scriptures in their Greek texts which became part of the Christian Bible. From the Latin one sometimes has to look at old French and other emerging Romance languages as well as Saxon and other Germanic dialects that contributed to Medieval and later English, etc. Without looking into this in more detail, the following is my best guess:

In very broad strokes, the old Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures transliterated ירושלם as Ιερουσαλήμ. The Greek iota. corresponds to the Hebrew yod, and while there is no Greek letter for our 'Y' sound, the combination ιε (iota + epsilon) comes pretty close. Later Latin translators, however, read the initial Iota as having a rough breathing mark and thus Hierusalem. 'H' began to die out in later Latin and the newer Romance language so I suspect many Latin manuscripts had Ierusalem, like the Greek. J was sometimes introduced into English as nothing more than a fancy upper case I. Perhaps some also liked the J because of a tendency to retain something like the aspiration of the old H. In copies of old Germanic works (eg, the anti-Jewish 14th-century Middle English Siege of Jerusalem), this was rendered as Jerusalem, which is also found in Luther's translation into the German of his time. Meanwhile Tyndale's English translation still favored the older Latin Hierusalem, but I suspect later English translations were more influenced by Luther's rendering.

On the other hand, the old Greek and the Septuagint rendered ישראל as Ισραήλ, but the Latins did not add a rough breathing mark here, at least not at the beginning of the word, so we find Israhel in the Vulgate (and still in Old English) but subsequently Israel is found consistently. Again we see iota for yod and the disappearing H.

It just goes to show how correct modern professional translators are in their general working protocol, that one should always translate to the target language, directly from the original text's source language (rather than from an existing translation that has been done into another (third) language).

I've updated the discussion name to also include this query, that you have so ably answered!

[Lorotzelotzarich]

In order to learn how to read Biblical Hebrew one must forget the grammatical rules related to Modern Hebrew

https://jonathan-frate.com/2020/12/17/th...-alphabet/

https://jonathan-frate.com/2020/12/17/th...ew-vowels/