Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Smith" <kens AT 180solutions.com>]

Yikes, Liz.  You’re assuming I know enough to have an opinion on the Elephantine Papyri – I don’t even know Aramaic.  And I’m not really sure how to explain the various differences in the divine name.  But it does seem likely that YHW would have been pronounced differently from YHWH, don’t you think?  Given that it can occur both as YH (usually in names, or in HLLW YH); as YHW (in names, or in extra-Biblical texts); as YHWH (normally in the Bible); and in Exodus 3:14 – probably as a word play -- as )HYH, it doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to conclude that it may have been pronounced different ways at different times.  Why this is so, or what significance this might have had, I’m not at all sure.

 

Ken

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Lisbeth S. Fried [mailto:lizfried AT umich.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 8:32 PM
To: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: RE: God's name: was Curious abut "G-d"

 

Interesting, Ken.
Do you think they pronounced the name differently at Elephantine, and if so,

are these just dialect differences?

Also, in your list of examples, you left out my personal favorite: David's continually swearing

"as YHWH lives," I'm going to get that bastard, or some such.

Liz

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Smith [mailto:kens AT 180solutions.com]
Sent: Wed, January 23, 2002 11:14 PM
To: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: RE: God's name: was Curious abut "G-d"

I'm hesitant to know how far to carry this conversation, because it doesn't precisely seem apropos to understanding Biblical Hebrew, and could very easily (if it hasn't already) degenerate into inter-religious name calling.  But I'll try to stay as objective as I can on the matter.

 

I'm not sure which evidence you're asking for, but I'll toss out evidence for various things I referred to in my last post:

 

(1) That common, ordinary, every-day people regularly spoke and pronounced YHWH seems clear just from the Biblical writers’ recording of numerous conversations.  Some very random examples which could be multiplied repeatedly include Deut. 1:6, which records Moses saying to the entire assembled nation of Israel, “YHWH our God spoke to us at Horeb.”  1 Sam. 1:11 records Hannah’s vow, “YHWH Sabaoth, if only you will look on the misery of your servant.”  In 2 Kings 18:22, the Assyrian Rabshakeh says that YHWH sent him to destroy Jerusalem.  I’m not sure how else to understand these passages than to believe that common Israelites – and non-Israelites – all knew how YHWH was pronounced, and indeed pronounced it regularly and without a thought.  I certainly don’t intend to tread on Jewish sensibilities here; my understanding was that even Jews agreed that the prohibitions against speaking the Name were the result of later developments, of attempts to “put a hedge around the law” to prevent the possibility of accidentally using the Name L$W).  If it’s normal to argue that even, say, Adonijah and Elijah and Hezekiah never pronounced the Name, that’s news to me, and difficult if not impossible to support historically.

 

(2) Given #1, there’s a variety of evidence which might indicate how those same lay people might have pronounced YHWH.  Part of the problem in evaluating it is that some of it points in different directions.  Everyone seems agreed that the Masoretic vowel points are a qere perpetuum taken from )DWNY, so those are out as a pointer.  But there are a number of theophoric names which contain a shortened version of YHWH, i.e., “Adoni-Yah”, and have the first vowel as a qamets.  The same is true of “Hallelu-Yah” in the Psalms.  The sere for the second syllable is more debatable, as it doesn’t seem to have been included in any names.  (It’s also possible that the Name was known in multiple forms: it certainly seems to have been shortened in some instances, e.g., in the admittedly syncretistic Kuntillet Ajrud fragments, where it is sometimes found as YHWH, and sometimes as YHW.)  There are some who put forth arguments that it must be sere based on various linguistic considerations, but I’m not really qualified to evaluate those, and they strike me as hypothetical at best.  More to the point are various forms of YHWH found in Greek transliteration from before the fourth century CE, where it occurs variously as IAO (perhaps equivalent to the Kuntillet Ajrud YHW), IABE, IAOUE, IAOUAI, and IAE.  These latter seem to point fairly clearly towards an original pronunciation as YFH:W”H (Yahweh).

Is there other evidence that you’re looking for, Shoshanna?

 

Ken Smith