Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>]

Hi Alan,

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing! 

While I'm not a paleographer, I can say this: writing the Tetragrammaton in
paleo-Hebrew characters appears on quite a few of the Dead Sea scrolls,
though the reasoning is debated (was paleo-Hebrew thought of as "especially
sacred" or as "profane script"? - there's a similar debate in tractate
Yadaim). And you're right, in the actual photo (at the bottom - not the
reproduction at the top) the Yod and the Vav look almost the same. On the
other hand, all four letters (including the two He's) are not "true"
paleo-Hebrew characters but "archaized" letters, like those appearing on
Jewish coins of the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Now note that the "stem" of
the Yod seems shorter than the Vav - probably influenced by the "block"
forms of both letters. So I would say that in this case, the writer did
intend to write YHWH and NOT YHYH. 

As for the form YY replacing YHWH, which has been common since the Middle
Ages and is still common in Jewish prayer books and study-Bibles: As far as
I can tell the origin of this was a reluctance to write God's "real" name
on a page which might eventually be torn, burnt or otherwise desecrated. I
have, by the way, also seen manuscripts in which YYY (three Yod's) are
used. Eventually, though, the form YY became thought of as a sacred name in
its own right, and it became common to use just the letter He (standing for
"Hashem" - "The Name" but also being a component of YHWH, Yah etc.) on any
document that is NOT a ritual book (for example, in letters, written
sermons, even books on religious subjects), once again out of fear that the
"name" YY might be desecrated. In very recent times, even the letter He has
often been replaced by the letter Dalet, graphically similar but NOT part
of the Sacred Name. In the same way, Orthodox Jews today often spell
"Elohim" as "Eloqim", with a Qoph instead of the He.


Yigal


At 12:21 PM 6/4/2003 -0400, Ingalls, Alan wrote:
>A New Testament colleague of mine was showing me a ms of Aquila in which the
>Tetragrammaton is inserted in paleo-Hebrew characters in an otherwise Greek
>text. The Tetragrammaton seems to be represented by yod-he-yod-he rather
>than yod-he-waw-he. My colleague, Dr. Rod Decker, has posted some notes on
>this temporarilly on his faculty web-page at
>http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/temp/temp.htm. He includes there images from
>Metzger's book Manuscripts of the Greek Bible. Am I mis-reading the paleo?
>Is this related to the practice of representing the Tetragrammaton in the
>Targums and Yerushalmi (Aramaic!) as yod-yod? Any idea of where this
>practice of representing the Tetragrammaton with yod-yod comes from? Any
>help you can offer regarding this puzzle would be greatly appreciated. 
>
>Alan Ingalls
>
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>Dr. Alan D. Ingalls
>Associate Professor of OT
>Baptist Bible Seminary
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Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.