Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

>Rolf wrote:
>
>"I do not suggest a particular Hebrew pronunciation behind IAOUE, but
>in the light of the different ways patah and shewa were rendered in
>Greek, the antecedent of IAOUE could even be YEHOWA. I mention this,
>not to argue for a particular pronunciation, but to show the great
>difficulties for a reconstruction of the pronunciation of the divine
>name also in Greek."
>
>This argument would only be valid if you assume YEHOWA with a final
>patah. But patah is never word final, and so YEHOWA would have to end
>with a qamets. Rolf did not give data for qamets, but I would be
>surprised to see qamets rendered by E.
>
>If the original pronunciation was YEHOWA, would one not expect to see
>sometimes a consonantal text with a mater YHWWH?
>
>Peter Kirk
>



Dear Peter,

Einar Bronno wrote in 1943 a thesis about Origen's vocalizations (Studien
uber hebraische Morphologie und Vocalismus", Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des
Morgenlandes xxviii. In Origen's second column he found 362 examples where
qamets is written as alpha, 74 examples where it is not written (zero), and
7 examples where it is written as epsilon. Thus there are data supporting
my suggestion.


Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo