snip>>

More precisely, modern Israeli Hebrew has replaced the "th" sound
with "t". Yemenite pronunciation keeps it, I am told. The use of
"th" in English renderings of biblical names probably reflects the
actual pronunciation at some period of time.

I don't think so. The parallel letter in Arabic is also a simple "T". For
the "Th" to have got into European languages >from Hebrew, that would have
had to be the pronunciation in the Levant when Europeans started to
transliterate Biblical names/words >from Hebrew, e.g. when they became
Christians (which is not deep in antiquity. I suspect that the origin of the
"Th" lies in a failed effort to differentiate TAV >from TET (which should
indeed be differentiated, but not this way); Greek may well have tried to
assign its Theta to the TAV. Or the effort may have taken place later, in
Germany, which is presumably also the source of all the "J's" in
transliterated Hebrew, which by rights should be pronounced as "Y" rather
than as "Dzh -- unless you are also arguing that there was really a
Patriarch Dzha'aqov.

Stan Goodman, Qiryat Tiv'on, Israel

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