[b-hebrew] b-hebrew] Hebrew pronunciation before the Masoretes

David P Donnelly davedonnelly1 at juno.com
Wed Jan 19 09:23:10 EST 2011


On
Wed Jan 19 04:21:51 EST 2011 
Sesamo m. sesamox at hotmail.com wrote:

I've got a question about the pronunciation of YHWH. I know there is a
lot of controversy and I don't want to 
add to it; I know there are no certainties here, and I just like to
explore the possibilities. In my first post I 
mentioned the possibility that first vowels tended to weaken. William
Parsons points to the possibility that 
those vowels were like that all the time. Now I wonder, in the
hypothetical case that my suggestion were true, 
could it be possible that the theophoric prefix "Yeho-" were originally
"Yaho-" (so the name was "Yahowi", 
Yahowa" or whatever) and that the form "Yah" were just an apocope? 

>>>
Parsons wrote that the LXX rendering "Io-" seem to favour "Yeho-" rather
than "Yaho-", 
but could it be that the hypothetical weakening occurred before?
>>>

Dave writes:
If I am not mistaken there are at least 15 occurrences of  theophoric
names in Hebrew manuscripts
that have both Yeho prefixes and Yo prefixes.

YEHOachaz---------YOachaz
YEHOnathan--------YOnathan
etc etc

Just in passing, the well known Hebrew Scholar Gesenius, 
who has provided us with the proposed Hebrew punctuation Y-a-h-w-e-h, 
and a-p-p-a-r-e-n-t-l-y DOES NOT believe that YEHOwah is the actual name
of God,
has written.

>>>
Also those who consider that Yehowah was the actual pronunciation
are not without ground on which to defend their opinion;
in this way can the abbreviated syllables Yeh and Yo, 
with which many proper names begin, 
be more satisfactorily explained.
>>>  

FWIW
Dave Donnelly

P.S. I am not aware of any Hebrew scholar who posts on b-hebrew who can
derive a "Yeho" prefix from
Y-a-h-w-e-h.
Can any Hebrew scholar who posts on b-hebrew derive a "Yeho" prefix from
YEHOwah?
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