Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

Hey was surely pronounced at the time. Still, Diodorus and Clement heard it
as vowel "a." What substance is there for arguing the Tetragrammaton a verb?
Ok, Diodorus might be mistaken, writing from hearsay, but Clement would not
have written a simple verb so wrongly, and surely would not have recorded
variant readings.

Hey is spelled "a" in the Tetragrammaton for the same reason it is spelled
"a" in 2ms suffixes: it is mater lectionis. Similarly, i and o are matres
lectionis and suffixes, and IMHO the Tetragrammaton means "I, thou, you" or
"my, thine, yours" plus suffix hey as in catav - ctivah.

Again IMHO, Clement added u that Diodorus missed because some Jews still
correctly pronounced the third letter as u, which was the original 3ms
suffix (hu - au - o).

Vadim Cherny

> The question arises did Clement say that the Tetragrammaton was
> pronounced Iaou or Iaoue or Iaouai?
>
> "Iaoue" can be transliterated into English as "Yahweh"
> "Iaou" cannot.
>
> Does anyone know the age of the oldest Greek manuscript of Stromata Book
> V. Chapter 6:34 that has the Greek spelling "Iaoue" in it?
>
> Dave Donnelly
>