Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vadim Cherny <vadimcherny AT mail.ru>]

I wonder why everyone ignores the direct evidence of ancient pronunciation of 
Tetragrammaton as iao. Feldman cites Diodorus and Varro to this extent, and 
of course we have parallel with Egyptian for ass. Final hey is most likely a 
suffix of result, such as in cotev - ctiva, or perhaps in milhama. Any 
similarity to the verb is surely coincidental, or else the whole story of the 
pronunciation known to the high priest only would be ridiculous.

One may or may not accept my view that iao is "I, thou, you," the society, 
but of course iao has nothing to do with the verb.

Vadim Cherny



> >first poster again:
> >_______ wrote: 
> >but what about the prefix Yi? Where do you obtain the phonetic 'i'? 
> >
> >
> >The Y is the prefix used in the third person in this particular tense 
> >(usually 
> >thought of as future, but that's not exactly accurate) in every single 
> >verb in 
> >the Hebrew language, no exceptions. When the verb is of the simple 
> >construction, as is the case here, then the first vowel is i except in 
> >some 
> >special cases, which I don't want to get into here, because H's name is 
> >not one 
> >of those special cases. 
> > 
> >  
> >
> No, it is one of those "special cases". The argument here seems to be 
> that the divine name is the qal "imperfect", third person masculine 
> singular, of HWH. But according to the regular rule for verbs with a 
> guttural first radical, the first vowel is patah (a) rather than hiriq 
> (i). Admittedly there seems to be some variation when the first radical 
> is he: in HYH but apparently no other case the first vowel is hiriq; in 
> some others e.g. HGH, HDP, HMH the first vowel is segol (e); whereas 
> others e.g. HPK, HRG, HRH, HRS, HLK when not contracted follow the rule 
> for gutturals, with patah. So, we can conclude that we cannot be sure 
> what form the qal "imperfect", third person masculine singular, of HWH 
> would take, but the chances are that it would be either YAHWE or YEHWE 
> (each with a final he mater lectionis), and the only reason for thinking 
> it might be YIHWE is an assumption that HWH would be irregular in the 
> same way as HYH just because the verbs are apparent synonyms.
> 
> I note for completeness that the *hiphil* "imperfect", third person 
> masculine singular, of HWH would also be YAHWE, and thus this 
> pronunciation, the one preferred by many scholars, might mean either "he 
> is" or "he causes to be". I understand that "first poster" prefers the 
> non-causative sense, apparently because of the parallel with the 
> unambiguously (as pointed) non-causative first person form 'EHYE "I am" 
> of Exodus 3:14.
> 
> -- 
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
> 
> 
> 
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