[Avodah] Why Not: Yehoshua BEN Nun?

[cantorwolberg at cox.net]

Michael Rand, a Hebrew linguist who works at the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem, was asked about the usage of BIN NUN and this is what he offered: 

"...On principle, the Tiberian vocalization reflects the pronunciation that was current among the Tiberian Masoretes, which is of course MUCH later than the texts that they were pronouncing. On the other hand, since the texts were/are sacred, are composed in a language which had been "dead" (i.e., nobody's native tongue) for hundreds of years by the time that the Masoretes got around to doing their work, and their reading took place within a controlled, liturgical setting, it is likely that their pronunciation did not change quite as radically over time as would have happened in the case of a non-sacral, living language. Though of course we cannot rule out the possibility that some of the phenomena that are fixed/recorded by the Masoretic vocalization system reflect developments in the languages that were in greater everyday use among the people who developed and implemented it--i.e., Aramaic and Arabic. Finally, and this is in favor of a generous estimation of the "veracity" of the Masoretic system, we may say that it is AMAZINGLY detailed, taking great pains to record all sorts of apparently minor (e.g., sub-phonemic) phenomena. So that we should assume that if the Masoretes took such pains to preserve the distinction in pronunciation between "ben" and "bin," even though from the point of view of the morpheme meaning "son" it is quite irrelevant, it must reflect some sort of historical reality which probably has roots in a much earlier stage of the language. The point is that although the real historical basis for the distinction was quite likely already unclear by the time of the emergence of the Masoretic system, its after-effects were dutifully recorded by the Masoretes.  
 
That being said, it should be kept in mind that the Masoretic system of vocalization is just one of three basic systems, the other two being the Babylonian and the Palestinian. And its possible that in the other two, the distinction in question is not observed, or perhaps some other distinction obtains there. In any case, these factors must be taken into account in a full work-up of the problem."

Also, see the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_vocalization
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