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  • From: "Vadim Cherny" <vadim_lv AT center-tv.net>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] My five cents about the name
  • Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:52:05 +0200

I guess there is no room for discoveries in the field of tetragrammaton, but
here is a suggestion:

Why don't we take the name as a noun of process, such as ctiva? Then, final
hey is the suffix. The first three letters correspond to possessive suffixes
for 1, 2, 3 masc.sing. (vowels i, a, u).
The tetragrammaton's meaning could be imagined as "process or result of I,
thou, you," or simply "community."

This identification of God with community makes sense of the "holy people"
promise.
Also, obviously (and as Milgrom convincingly argues) Leviticus is
reinterpretation of pagan rites for ethical purposes, essentially, for
achieving a perfect society. This is not far from the community' deification.
Also, we may consider that quite the same process took place in China, where
Confucius reinterpreted the ancestral worship in terms of ritual, elevating
humanity to divinity.

Vadim Cherny
>From hholmyard AT ont.com Fri Dec 10 10:49:49 2004
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Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:47:39 -0600
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Isaiah 53:8
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Dear Dave,

>On Friday 10 December 2004 07:39, Samuel Arnet wrote:
>> Karl Randolph wrote:
>> > The construct LMW occures over 50 times in Tanakh. Though the
>> > majority of its uses are for plural subjects, it refers to what is
>> > unquestionably a singular subject often enough that the numerical
>> > value of the -MW cannot be determined from the form. The only people
>> > I have run into before who insisted that LMW had to be plural did so
>> > for ideological, not linguistic, reasons.
>>
>> L/F^MOW is a plural form. For a discussion, and some literature, see
>>
>> http://whi.wts.edu/WHI/MORPH/BugTracker/7
>
>There was an extended discussion about this around 3 years ago on the
>newsgroup soc.religion.christian.bible-study where several of us pointed out
>numerous passages that can't possibly be plural. The word can go either way,
>and only context determines its number. I can try to dig through the
>archives for examples, but can't promise when.


HH: I don't know if Samuel read the entire page of the link he
provided, but it states at the bottom that LMW might be singular a
few times:

In the following 5 cases, it *could* be X3ms but may be X3mp; listed
below are the references in the order of descending likelyhood,
according to Jon-Muraoka:

gn9:26,9.1 L/F^MOW L@PpX3ms &#8220;probably&#8221;
gn9:27,9.1 L/F^MOW L@PpX3ms &#8220;probably&#8221;
dt33:2,7.1 L/F^MOW L@PpX3ms &#8220;perh.&#8221;
dt33:2,18.1 L/F^MOW L@PpX3ms &#8220;perh.&#8221;
is53:8,14.1 L/F^MOW L@PpX3ms &#8220;perh.&#8221;

Yours,
Harold Holmyard
>From kwrandolph AT email.com Fri Dec 10 15:56:24 2004
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From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
To: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:56:23 -0500
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Isaiah 53:8
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Samuel:

The -MW suffix is used well over 170 times in Tanakh, less than a third of
those connected to the L- prefix. When we take into account all the uses of
the suffix, there are several times that it refers to a singular object. That
is more than the at least three times (Genesis 9:26-27, Isaiah 44:15) that it
is connected to the L- prefix referring to a singular object. Examples
include Genesis 19:15 referring to the dawn, Exodus 15:5 where it refers to
"a stone", shall I go on? You need to refer to all of these uses, not to
restrict yourself to those connected to the L- prefix.

I agree that the majority of uses is plural, but not by a long shot all.

The insistance that the -MW suffix has to have a plural meaning comes from
its use in Isaiah 53:8 because of the theological implications of its use as
a singular in that verse. Therein lies the impetus to eisegete a plural
meaning into verses that have a singular construction.

It seems to me that the use of the -MW suffix indicates an emphatic, as in he
does obeissance to that very piece of wood Isaiah 44:15, or as that very dawn
broke Genesis 19:15.

Karl W. Randolph.

Ps. I noticed that the list you referrenced does not include all the uses of
LMW, where the L- prefix is used with the -MW suffix. Why were those examples
omitted?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Samuel Arnet" <samuel.arnet AT theol.unibe.ch>
>
> Karl Randolph wrote:
>
> > The construct LMW occures over 50 times in Tanakh. Though the
> > majority of its uses are for plural subjects, it refers to what is
> > unquestionably a singular subject often enough that the numerical
> > value of the -MW cannot be determined from the form. The only people
> > I have run into before who insisted that LMW had to be plural did so
> > for ideological, not linguistic, reasons.
>
> L/F^MOW is a plural form. For a discussion, and some literature, see
>
> http://whi.wts.edu/WHI/MORPH/BugTracker/7
>
> Samuel
--
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  • [b-hebrew] My five cents about the name, Vadim Cherny, 12/10/2004

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