Biblical Hebrew Forum

[GregStffrd AT aol.com]

In a message dated 4/28/99 10:34:15 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu writes:

<< > Buchanan also points out that "the name 'Yahweh' does not even sound
 > Semitic,"
 
 <<How can this be?  It superficailly looks just like a 3rd. person
 sing. imperfect Hiph`il of a root H-W-H.  Now I don't want to get into
 deep waters and try to debate as to whether or not this is what the
 tetragrammaton "really" is, but at least "Yahweh" certainly does sound
 like it could be Semitic. >>


Dear Henry:

Of course it sounds Semitic in the sense that Yah- and -weh sound Semitic, 
but Buchanan's comment, as my quotation revealed, is in the context of the 
"sound" of the words in Hebrew poetry, in contrast with the trisyllable form 
with which Buchanan compares it. You may wish to read the section of the 
Pslams that Buchanan uses for such a comparison, and then tell us whether you 
think it sounds Semitic, at least in that particular section of Scripture.
 
 
 > Buchanan has elsewhere, and more recently, taken issue with the
 > pronunciation "Yahweh." In "How God's Name Was Pronounced," BAR 21.2
 > (March-April 1995), 31-32, he writes: "Anyone who cares to check the
 > concordances will find that there is no name in the entire
 > Scriptures that includes the Tetragrammaton and also omits the vowel
 > that is left out in the two-syllable pronunciation
 
 <<Presumably he is referring to the fact that YHWH often seems to take
 on the form as "Yahu" as an element in compound names.  But this
 doesn't necessarily prove that there was originally any vowel in the
 position H_W -- quite the contrary, original W in Hebrew regularly
 becomes U when placed the end of a word after a consonant; this can be
 seen in the historic "lamed-waw" segholate nouns such as s'axu
 "swimming" etc. (Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley 1910:229,269).  So
 word-final *-yahw would naturally become -yahu.  Also, there is the
 further truncation -yah (with he-mappiq) which is also found as an
 element of compound names (sometimes the same individual has variants
 of his name in both -yahu and -yah), which seems to go against the
 statement as you have it quoted above. >>


No, not at all. First, what you say is in reference to the word-final use of 
-yah or -yahu, which does not address the point of Buchanan's argument in 
reference to the word-initial use of yahw-. Second, if you could list the 
examples for each statement you have made, that would be fine. Third, again, 
what of the word-initial yahw-? The fact that this theophoric element is used 
in compound names in the word-initial position, and always, to my knowledge, 
includes the middle vowel, is significant, for it at least suggests that the 
middle vowel is always used when an initial yahw- is followed by additional 
element.  

In some of the Hebrew personal names that incorporate a theophoric suffix, we 
find three different treatments of such names. First, there is the case where 
a theophoric suffix (for example, -yah [Hebrew YH] or -yahu [Hebrew YHW], 
instead of the full spelling [Hebrew YHWH], of course,) was sometimes 
entirely dropped. Thus, Berekhyahu could and did become truncated to Berekh 
(= the Anglicized Baruch). We know this from a comparison of the extant 
Hebrew manuscripts, which preserve the shortened form as reflected in our 
English versions' spelling of the name "Baruch," with seventh-century BCE 
'seals and seal impressions of six Biblical [Judahite] personages recovered" 
(Tsvi Schneider, "Six Biblical Signatures," BAR 17.4 [July-August 1991], 27).

Then we have the second and third treatments of names that incorporate the 
theophoric element so that the theophoric element could appear either as 
-yahu or as -yah. We transliterate (not to be confused with Anglicizing a 
Hebrew spelling) both the second and third treatments of the theophoric 
suffix as -iah.  

The third-mentioned treatment (-yah) was a very common practice so that, for 
example, a man's given name could be Neriyahu, but he would commonly hear his 
name as Neriah. In fact, such is exactly the case with the historical 
Neriyahu, for apparently he was better known as Neriah. We know this fact 
from a comparison of the spelling "Neriyahu" (the patronymic of 
Baruch/Berekh), which occurs in a bulla dating from the time of Jeremiah's 
and his scribe Baruch's ministries,  with what we see in the extant Hebrew 
manuscripts, wherein we see the spelling "Neriah" (See Hershel Shanks, 
"Fingerprint of Jeremiah's Scribe," BAR 22.2 [March-April 1996], 37; 
Schneider, "Six Biblical Signatures," 27). 

The spelling "Neriah" shows us either that Jeremiah introduced the less 
formal expression "Berekh ben Neriah" into the Hebrew Scriptures, or that 
Hebrew scribes early on so introduced these particular hypocoristics, for 
they are not the formal names that we see in "Berekhyahu ben Neriyahu," an 
identification which appears on the aforementioned, formal bulla.

So this helps see how the ending of the Tetragrammaton might have appeared 
(-yah or -yahu). But if we had an initial yahw- followed by a -yah or -yahu 
suffix, where is the evidence that we would not have a middle vowel, as we do 
in ALL other compound names that incorporate an initial yahw- element?
 

<< I don't want to tread on sensitive ground here, but are any of the
 authors you cited JW's? >>

No. Why?


<< The JW's didn't originally get their
 trisyllabic form of the tetragrammaton from advanced Semitic
 researches, but rather from the fact that European Christian writers
 of the 16th-19th centuries commonly used the form "Jehovah" (it
 appears a few times in the KJV, and numerous times in the late 19th
 century "American Standard Version") -- unfortunately, however, this
 form arose from a blatant out-and-out mistake in reading the
 orthography of the Masoretic text (where the vowel points of "Adonai"
 were added to the consonants of the tetragrammaton as a reminder that
 YHWH should be said as "Adonai" when reading out loud). >>


First, Jehovah's Witnesses KNOW that "Jehovah" is the not true, ancient 
pronunciation, just as Yahweh is not. Second, they use Jehovah because it is 
the most popular form in English. In other languages they use other forms. 
Third, what evidence do you have that the "vowels points of 'Adonai' were 
added to the consonants of the Tetragrammaton"? 


<<But some JW's
 seem to be curiously reluctant to admit that "Jehovah" as used by
 Christian Hebraists was a simple error (whatever the ancient original
 form of the tetragrammaton may have been), which on occasion leads
 them to adopt somewhat strange arguments. >>


I have no idea where you are getting your information, for the JWs do not 
hold dogmatically to any such view, and without examples of the so-called 
"strange arguments," it is difficult to comment on what you have said, which 
appears to be inappropriate for this List, anyway. 

Regards, 

Greg Stafford