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  • From: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
  • To: "Doug Belot" <dbelot AT bigpond.net.au>, "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Well Wishing
  • Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 20:31:03 -0500



From: "Doug Belot" <dbelot AT bigpond.net.au>
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 3:37 AM
To: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Well Wishing

Hi Jack , I guess I am wondering why Jesus and the apostles did not make it clearer , or perhaps they thought they had , and we were expected to do only as they did and replace this name with the expression , "Lord" .

If you mean the substitution, when reading Tanakh, of the tetragrammaton with "adonai" (Lord), Jesus and his disciples had nothing to do with it. The convention was centuries old.


Can you give me any idea why they did not use it , even tho they quoted from from it , Joel 2:32 and Heb 1:8-10 .

Joel, one of the Twelve Minor Prophets, is hard to date and I am sure there will be a number of opinions on this list. It may be as early as the 9th century BCE or during the time of Jeremiah. The convention for not voicing the name of God may not have existed at that time. Also, "calling on the name" of someone, even a king, meant, in some contexts, calling on the authority. Hebrews is a Christian work by an unknown author sometime in the latter half of the first century. Written by a Pauline, it is a Christological work and cannot be used as a proof text for a Jewish convention

Did you say that Jesus was not God ?? , or have I missunderstood.

I don't like to disavow or counter issues that may be articles of faith for some but we are discussing (to stay on topic...or close to it) a principle of the Hebrew Scriptures and basic Jewish thought. I said that if anyone in the early 1st century told the historical Jewish Jesus that he WAS God, I am certain Jesus would have been horrified.

I am afraid we have wandered away from the purpose of the list which is based on the grammar, syntax and orthography of Biblical Hebrew, so before we are chastised I will continue this with you off-list unless there is something in the Hebrew text that is driving your inquiries.

Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX



doug
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
To: "Doug Belot" <dbelot AT bigpond.net.au>
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 5:16 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Well Wishing




--------------------------------------------------
From: "Doug Belot" <dbelot AT bigpond.net.au>
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 12:02 AM
To: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Well Wishing

Thanks Jack, very well written letter and is a big help , so when we see
the term YHWH , it is a term that was fabricated so time after Jesus , not
before .

No, YHWH was used hundreds of years before the time of Jesus. Perhaps you
are thinking about the word "Jehovah."


With Joel 2:32 and it use as a quote for calling the name of the Lord ,
and as you say Gen 4:26 was the earliest suggestion of such name being
called on , then we have Ps 54:1 "Save me O God by your name " , would
these not all be the same name , and how does this work as Act 4:12 says
there is only one name to call on to be saved.

The admonition against voicing the ShemHaMeforash (Name of God) was a second
temple period
custom and not during pre-exilic times. Since all extant texts of the
Tanakh are from 2nd temple (Dead Sea Scrolls) time and most midieval, the
tetragrammaton is normally written in paleoHebrew or some other scribal
convention and voiced when reading aloud as "adonai" (Lord). The continued
use of this convention by non-Jews is a matter of respect.
Let's work back chronologically":

Many non-Jews say "YAHveh" but it must be kept in mind that there was no VAV
in Biblical Hebrew so it was not HVH (until the middle ages), it was HWH
("to be") and as for yhwh, the YOD is added in front to show the perfect
state. It could have been the qal originally and sometime shifted to the
hiph'il in folk etymology. But these are reasonable differences based on
the word constructions.

The convention for using theophorics as parts of names changed in the Second
Temple Period.
In pre-exilic times, it was common practice to include
YHWH as part of names such as "YHWH is my Salvation" which was the name
YESHAYAHU (Isaiah). The pre-exilic Hebrew name that we know as "Joshua" was
Yehoshua which means "YHWH is my help." The inclusion of the name of God in
a personal name was common practice in the ancient middle east and is called
the "Theophoric" noticeable in names like Michael (EL) Balshazar (Baal) and
Yahosef (Joseph). In the second temple period it became blasphemy
for a mortal to pronounce the name of God (Shem haMeforash), even
accidentally, hence the theophoric was either removed or shortened.
Mattityahu (Matthew) became Mattaya and Yehoshua became Y'shua (Yeshua).
Yahosef became Yosef,

The earliest use of
the terminal theophoric that comes to my mind as I type is the Pithos A from
Kudillet Ajrud of "Egeliah" which means "Bull calf of YAH/YHWH." (I can
send you a graphic privately). There appears to have been some form of
orthographic rule for the use of theophorics in NW Semitic names where the
leading theophoric is "Yeho" as in Yehoichim, Yehosaphat, Yehoshua, etc and
the terminal theophoric as YAH or YAHU as in Yeshayahu (Isaiah), Yirimyahu
(Jeremiah), etc. In the very earliest use of theophorics they may have been
attached to royal names. Perhaps a leading or terminal theophoric was
exclusive to class...that's just a conjecture. This is an area (the use of
theophorics in Semitic naming practices) that I have been meaning to
research and document but I am sure its been done before and perhaps there
is a literature base on it..

I get the impression there is some underlying point you are trying to make
regarding the tetragrammaton or the Shem HaMeforash and I am missing it.
Maybe if you tell me exactly what you are trying to demonstrate.

Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX


doug belot


----- Original Message ----- From: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
To: "Doug Belot" <dbelot AT bigpond.net.au>
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 2:49 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Well Wishing


No, Doug. No one in the 1st century would have known about a Roman
letter
transliteration of the tetragrammaton. There would be no Latin
translation
of the Tanakh until Jerome in the 4/5th centuries. The word used for
Jesus
by his followers would have been the Aramaic MARAN which was an address
for
any "master" from a husband to a teacher. The tetragrammaton would never
had been used in that manner...never. It represented the name of God.
Furthermore, even though later Christians would contrive the trinitarian
formula, I am convinced that had anyone approached that Galilean and told
him that he WAS God, Jesus would have punched them in the nose.

The history of the tetragrammaton, yod-heh-waw-heh goes back to the very
composition of the Torah and much earlier.

The tetragrammaton itself may have developed from El and Yahweh merged as
an
hypocoristicon, the combination of the thunder god Yah and the bull god
EL.
The Qal of hwh taken from a TITLE phrase as an hypocoristicon of EL, ala
Albright and Cross? A title like "El causes ****to come into being". HYH
is
Hebrew but the root being discussed HWH is NOT...it is Aramaic. A Hiph'il
form of HYH is, as far as I know, non-attested. There is an Hafel of HWH
in
Daniel 5:12 yod-heh-het-waw-heh.

This may be more than you have asked but the inscription on one of the
Ugaritic tablets (The Epic of Ba'al) is (El talking to his adopted son
YAW,
the god of the primordial chaos) "Your name is beloved of EL, YAM"..he
changes the name from YAW to YAM. YAHU, YAM and YAW are all mentioned in
Eblaite 2250 BCE. I am of the opinion that the trajectory was from the
Negev desert to Canaan where YAH was used. This includes the region of
the
Midianites which is preserved in the Moses story.


There are some who think Yahweh (YHWH) could have been a local god of the
Midianites or Northern Arabia. There are many Old Negev inscriptions
found
at Har Karkom and Nahal Avidat dating from the late bronze age. Some
refer
to EL and others to YAH, YAHU and YAHH and IMO one inscription comes from
a
time (around 1600 BCE) when EL and YAH were being merged. It is written
in
Old
Negev and in Hebrew it is l)( lh )l yh (dt "For him in the time of evil,
El
Yah.

Were the Shasu among the Habiru? Military inscriptions under Seti I
describe the Habiru and Shasu as the same? YHWH was not "YHWH of the
Jews"
in the Bronze Age. He was known among the Shasu and Canaanites
(Edomites,
Midianites) along with his consort/wife Asherah. The earliest mention of
the name Yahweh (t3 s3sw yhw) is Edomite in the last half of the 15th
century BCE and as mentioned is also found from the reign of Amenhotep
III
at the Temple of Amun in the Sudan. The evidence seems to indicate that
remains of the Hyksos and Shasu tribes intering the Highlands of Canaan
from
Trans-Jordan brought Yahweh with them to be assimilated among nomadic
Israelites. The historical kernel could have been a "Moses-like" figure
among them serving as the kernel of the Exodus story which I believe was
embellished under Josiah to unite tribes to observe Passover at the
Temple
in Jerusalem.

Back to 1386 BC., as mentioned above, In the temple of Amon in Soleb
(Nubia)
there is a topographical list from the time of Amenhotep III (1408-1372
B.C.). In column IV.A2 is written t3 ssw yhw3 which means"Yahweh of the
land
of the Shasu" A god's name was often given to a geographical area where
that
god was worshipped.

This may be the long way around putting the use of the tetragrammaton in
context to answer your question. I may get my hand slapped but Joel 2:32
is
וְהָיָה כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־יִקְרָא בְּשֵׁם יְהוָה and the word "Lord" is not
used.
It is just used in translation for יְהוָה
During His lifetime, Jesus was never addressed as "Lord" as a word to
represent God. He was addressed as MARI, "my lord" or RABBA as a title
for
a respected teacher. I am also not too keen on the use of the English
peerage titles "lord" or "king" or "prince" for a word that in a 1st
century
Jewish culture, meant "master."

Regards,

Jack

Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX


---------------------------------------
From: "Doug Belot" <dbelot AT bigpond.net.au>
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2010 12:50 AM
To: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Well Wishing

Thanks for that Jack , so the Hebrew people that followed Jesus would
have
known about the Roman letters YHWH , but still chose to put LORd , say
in
Rom 10:13 , which was a quote from Joel 2:32 , I am trying to nail down
why the NT writers all seemed to agree on the LORD bit as Jesus , and
why
YHWH resurfaced later as a name aside from Jesus .

Do you hae any ideas on this ?

doug belot


----- Original Message ----- From: "Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>
To: "Doug Belot" <dbelot AT bigpond.net.au>; "ISAAC FRIED"
<if AT math.bu.edu>;
<dwashbur AT nyx.net>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2010 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Well Wishing


After the exile the Aramaic Square Script was adopted for Hebrew.
Arabic
is
a younger script that developed around the 2nd century BCE from a
cursive
Nabataan Aramaic script. I guess it might be more accurate to say that
Hebrew script and Arabic script are an "Aramaic type script." YHWH
does
not
represent English words but is the English (Roman) transliteration of
the
Hebrew letters yod-heh-waw-heh known as the tetragrammaton and is not
pronounced (even if the pronunciation was known) but substituted
mentally
or
vocally if read aloud with "adonai" (Lord). They appeared before the
LXX
in
Hebrew but often written in the pre-exilic paleo-Hebrew script to make
it
stand out from the Aramaic Square Script.

Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Doug Belot" <dbelot AT bigpond.net.au>
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 4:31 PM
To: "ISAAC FRIED" <if AT math.bu.edu>; <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Well Wishing

Hi to all , The Bible was first written in hebrew , which is similar
to
an
Arabic type script , could someone tell me when the English words ,
YHWH
, first appeared in a Bible translation, did they appear before the
Septuagint , did they appear the Massoretic experience , indeed does
nayone know ?

doug belot


----- Original Message ----- From: "ISAAC FRIED" <if AT math.bu.edu>
To: <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2010 5:26 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Well Wishing


It is not as simple as that.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Sep 17, 2010, at 3:09 PM, dwashbur AT nyx.net wrote:



On 17 Sep 2010 at 14:32, Vetrano, Antonino wrote:

Why wouldn't anyone just say thank you for the well wishing during
this solemn season?

I was wondering the same thing. Someone tosses out a nice wish and
blessing, and others
get into a fuss over pronunciation. And really, not even
pronunciation, but transliteration.
Only on b-hebrew.............

Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
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