Biblical Hebrew Forum

[GregStffrd AT aol.com]

In a message dated 4/30/99 2:59:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG writes:

<< Origen's teacher Clement of Alexandria already gave us the form 
 IAOUE for the pronunciation of YHWH - in which I and OU probably 
 represent the semivowels Y and W not found in Greek. So the 
 pronunciation "Yahweh" is not late and artificial but a scholarly 
 reconstruction from evidence such as Clement's, and Theodoret's IABE. 
 But I accept that we cannot be sure that Clement was not trying to 
 reproduce something like YAHUWE. >>


Dear Peter:

Is there some reason for taking OU as representing W? If you have a list of 
Hebrew names whose W is transliterated into the Greek OU, that would be very 
helpful. 

Also, I am not so sure IABE supports "Yahweh," at all. It may, but it seems 
that in transliterating Hebrew names into Greek the short vowels were often 
left out. For example, the name "Jacob" in Hebrew is YaAqov but the Greeks 
transliterated it  Iakwb. The capital "A" in YaAqov (khatef-patakh) 
represents a hurried, short "a" sound as in the English word "car." It is 
possible that the IABE of the Samaritans (according to Theodoret) represents 
the divine name pointed as YahAveh, pronounced Yah-A-VEH (capitals at the end 
of the word represent the emphasis falling on the last syllable).  
Theodoret's use of IABE to represent the Samaritan pronunciation of the 
divine name may have been due to the fact that the short vowel sound often 
went unnoticed in pronunciation. Even in Modern Hebrew one is likely to hear 
Yaqov instead of YaAqov, for "Jacob."

But if our only evidence for "Yahweh" is from two Greek forms of the name 
which do not tell us for certain how the divine name was pronounced in 
Hebrew, then how is it that that evidence has been allowed to override the 
evidence from the Hebrew Bible itself, regarding the theophoric elements in 
compound names, as previously articulated?

Regards,

Greg Stafford