The pronunciation of biblical words in Hebrew, which is taught at the Israeli Institute of Biblical Studies, relies heavily on the sound systems found in Indo-European languages rather than Semitic languages.

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In journalism, we shed light on phenomena

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A scientific approach to the issue will encompass all the sounds of biblical Hebrew (and the letters that relate to them)and demonstrate how they differ from the sound systems of Semitic languages. However, since this is a journalistic and not a scientific article conducted at a certain university, I will confine my article to a few examples, which would shed light on the issue and encourage further studies in this field.

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A simple example demonstrating the problem

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Let us take the example of the preposition on, על among many other examples. Students at the Israeli Institute of Biblical Studies are taught to pronounce it "aal" just like the preposition אֶל meaning "to", and no distinction is made between the two different prepositions in terms of pronunciation.

Unlike the Jews who emigrated to Europe, speakers of Arabic or rather languages commonly associated with Arabic (such as Levantine) still pronounce the sound ע as it was pronounced thousands of years ago and the preposition על is still used as it was pronounced three millennia ago. In Arabic letters it is written "عل". As far as I know, there is no difference between Modern Standard Hebrew on the one hand and the Biblical Hebrew taught in Israel on the other hand in terms of pronunciation or sound system. It seems that the pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew at the Israel Institute for Biblical Studies has been reconstructed according to Modern Standard Hebrew, and this is not a scientific approach in my views.

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Phoenician and Ugaritic leave no excuses

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Many scholars and professors of Biblical Hebrew justify their reliance on Modern Israeli Hebrew by saying that we do not have audio or video recordings of Biblical Hebrew, or that Biblical Hebrew itself had dialects. However, it is true that we only have a written version of Biblical Hebrew, but we do have ancient and modern Semitic languages that can be of great help.

Ugraitic, an ancient Semitic language that is described as similar to the Hebrew Bible, has some letters that represent even vowels such as 𐎜, 𐎛, and 𐎊. Since a word like אָב, which means father in Biblical Hebrew, is pronounced "ab" in ancient West Semitic languages like Ugaritic or Phoenician, abba in a modern Semitic language as Syriac, and ab in a Semitic-based language like Arabic, there is no excuse for pronouncing it Av simply because the letter ב is pronounced v in modern Israeli Hebrew given there is no dot in it. There is no excuse for pronouncing a word meaning father in Biblical Hebrew, אָב, using a sound that does not exist in any Semitic language _ V.

 

More examples

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What has been mentioned about the consonant B also applies to the sound represented by the Hebrew letter צ whose equivalent in Phoenician is 𐤑 and 𐎕 in Ugaritic. Therefore, a word that is written in the Hebrew Bible using the Babylonian script as עֵץ should be pronounced the same as in Ugaritic 𐎓𐎕 rather than an s preceded by a t. The latter is obtrusive in Germanic languages and never occurs in Semitic languages as far as I know the sound systems of ancient and modern Semitic languages. In addition to the v and ts sounds, there is another sound that is borrowed from Indo-European languages to pronounce a Semitic language such as ancient Hebrew and that is p. A Biblical Hebrew word like פֶּה is pronounced in Israeli institutions peh rather than pheh. Pheh is the pronunciation in identical Semitic languages as Ugaritic and Phoenician in which the same word meaning mouth is spelled 𐎔 and 𐤐𐤉 respectively.

Certainly, biblical Hebrew must be reconstructed in the light of ancient Semitic languages such as Ugaritic and Phoenician, especially since these languages were spoken by the neighbors of ancient Israel and Judah.

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This article is accessible also on alhewar.org via the following link:

 Rami Ibrahim - A Call for Reconstructing the Pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew (ahewar.org)

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