Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca>]

> Does sufficient evidence exist to say that:
> in Genesis 1:1, in the original autograph,
> it was unlikely that Elohiym had a Yod being used as a 
> vowel-letter for the vowel "i"?

I was initially going to say, "No, evidence that Genesis was written before
the use of vowel-letters does not exist." But Gogel's grammar of Epigraphic
Hebrew (up to and including the 6th century BCE) shows no examples of the
masculine plural ending -YM. The ending -YM is used only for the dual form.
The view that Genesis 1 was written around the sixth century makes most
sense to me, so the question is too close to call.

Ken Penner, M.C.S. (Regent College), M.A. (McMaster)
Ph.D. (cand.), Religious Studies, 
Biblical Field (Early Judaism major)
McMaster University
Hamilton, Canada
pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca
Vocabulary Memorisation Software: 
http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/westerholm/flash or http://sensoft.nav.to