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b-hebrew - Re: YHWH vs. Yahweh

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  • From: George Athas <gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au>
  • To: "yahua'sef" <gs02wmr AT panther.Gsu.EDU>
  • Cc: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: YHWH vs. Yahweh
  • Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 17:41:28 +1000


Joseph,

I don't know how say this any other way, but YAH and HUWAH mean absolutely
nothing in Hebrew as two
distinct words. YAH does not mean "He is" or something of the like. It is not
a word in Hebrew. "He
is" or "He becomes" would be expressed with the word "YIHYEH" - root being
HYH (heh-yod-heh). HUWAH
doesn't mean anything either. It is a nonsensical word.
The divine name, YHWH, is one word, not two or three or four. It's impossible
to separate it into
more than one word. As Jonathan Safren mentioned, it looks like a Hiphil verb
form (imperfect, not
perfect as Jonathan probably mistakenly wrote) of the root HWH.
Also, a note on the letter waw - Hebrew never has two vowels next to each
other. Such a phenomenon
doesn't really exist in Classical Hebrew. So, waw + vowel is basically
impossible if waw is, as you
say, a double "u" or elongated vowel. If waw was an elongated vowel, we would
expect it not to have
been used in the earliest forms of Hebrew and Phoenician. Phoenician in
particular uses only
consonants and never knows of any letters that represent vowels. So, the fact
that it even uses waw
at all speaks for it being a consonant.

Very best regards,
GEORGE ATHAS
Dept of Semitic Studies,
University of Sydney
- Email: gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au
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