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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] DWD or DWYD, YHDH or YHWDH
  • Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 10:27:29 -0500

Dear Patrina,

Regarding the use of maters as vowel indicators, I'm a little puzzled
that the spelling of Judah throughout the Tanach is always YHWDH with a
mater waw (as far as I know... maybe I'm mistaken?). Hezekiah's seals
spell Judah as YHDH (without a mater) around 7th century BCE. If there
were at least a few spellings of YHDH dotted throughout the Pentateuch,
Prophets and Writings as well as YHWDH, it would seem reasonable to
suggest that the defective spellings were older occurences, or that full
spellings represent later redaction as with the DWD and DWYD examples...
it just seems unlikely to me that later redaction would have been 100%
thorough?!


HH: Here is the first use of the word Judah:

Gen. 29:35 ΒΆ She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, "This time I will praise the LORD." So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

HH: So the name Judah is based on the idea of praise, which is the verb YDH. This may originally have been a "Pe waw" verb (GKC #69a), so the letter waw in Judah may be original. It is hard to understand the exact derivation involved in the noun.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard





Patrina Nuske Small
Adelaide, South Australia

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 08:38:41 +0200, "Yigal Levin"
<leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il> said:
Hi Tony,

The use of Y as an indicator for the vowel "i" (like most uses of matres
lectonis) is a fairly late developement in Hebrew. We find none in the
Gezer
Calendar, few in the Mesha inscription or the Tell Dan inscription (yes,
I
know that these are Moabite and Aramaic, but they reflect the same
trends),
more in the Siloam, Ekron and in 7-6 century ostraca, bullae etc.

The text of most of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History is
also
7-6th centuries, so it does use matres lectonis in regular words. But,
presumably, a name like David already had a standardized spelling from
the
previous period (it's also spelled "defectively" - without the Y - in the
Tell Dan inscription). However, in the Second Temple period the Y was
added
even in such names - hence the spelling DVYD in Chronicles, Zachariah
etc.
This is also the spelling in later Hebrew - the Mishnah, Talmud, and
synagogue inscriptions.

The fact that there is one case of DVYD in Kings is probably because a
late
copyist mistakenly used the spelling that was common in his day. The fact
that such "pre-exilic" prophetic books like Hosea and Amos also use DVYD
probably says something about the redaction history of those books (or of
"The Twelve" as a whole).

Yigal

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Costa" <tmcos AT rogers.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 4:55 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] DVD or DVYD?


> Dear Friends, I noticed that there appears to be a variant in the MT for
the name David. In some places David is spelled DVD (eg. 2 Sam.7:5;
Ps.89:21), while in others it is spelled DVYD (eg.1 Chron.15:1-3;
Hos.3:5),
with the yod between the vav (or waw) and daleth. Why the inclusion of
the
yod? Is this a later development as a variant in the name of David? BDB
(sv.DVD) states that these variants of David can occur together in the
same
text. For instance, while the books of Kings uses DVD, there is an
exception
in 1 Kings 3:14 where DVYD is used. Is this a late development or was it
simply the case that this name could be spelled both ways. Many thanks.
>
> Tony Costa
--
Patrina
patrina AT bestmail.us

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