Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

See comments below.

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Vadim Cherny
Sent: Wed 7/20/2005 5:58 PM
To: Medina, Vincent; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yhwh pronunciation
 
Besides suspicious preservation of final hey in the future tense, the
Tetragrammaton-as-a-verb hypothesis has fundamental flaw:

who in his right mind would call vocalization of a well-established verb
secret?

I don't think the purpose of banning pronouncing the name was to
make the correct pronunciation secret so much as stop it from being 
used in vain as an exaggerated view of one of the ten words.

Making the vowels secret--a great secret, indeed--made sense only if the
vowelization was not evident to any Hebrew-speaker. And that rules out any
standard morphological form, including verbs.

Again! No-one intended to make the vowels secret. This was just the 
consequence
of receiving a text without vowels. Anyway, the current evidence seems to 
be pointing towards a correct Masoretic pointing of the vowels as 
the other internal evidence already discussed seems to be in agreement with 
the qere/ketib vowels of adonai superimposed on yhwh.

Why would anyone use hwh root in the Hebrew scriptures instead of hyh?

The use of hwh evidently predates the use of hyh and so when the scriptures 
were compiled the common form hyh would have been used. Whereas, yhwh already 
being a well established proper name would maintain its archaic pronunciation.

Also consider mappiq in final hey. It doesn't suggest a verb. Rather,
perhaps, mappiq distinguishes final hey as the only consonant in the word.

I feel that in order to dismiss the name being a verb we would also have to 
dismiss 
the first hand knowledge of the ancient Hebrew language of the author of the 
Torah who I think we will all agree may have lacked the grammatical analysis 
skills
that we have today but had a lifetime's experience of speaking and hearing 
the 
language firsthand.

Of course, the Tetragrammaton came into existence well before matres
lectionis, but it seems possible to me that the Tetragrammaton is the
earliest instance of matres lectionis, and only much later everyone started
using them.


Vadim Cherny


> Yaho, Yahu and Yah all appear to be variant forms of the name. The one
thing that they have in common, and appear to establish firmly, is that
the first syllable of the name is Yah. If yhwh is a verbal form, the
final he would appear to support a final syllable with seghol, "weh,"
whether the verb stem was either qal or hiphil. A verbal yqtl form would
almost certainly have two syllables. In my opinion, all this seems to
support the widely accepted pronunciation Yahweh.

G. Vincent Medina
Associate Professor
Central Bible College
Phone: 417 887-6559
Email: vmedina AT cbcag.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Vadim Cherny
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 3:00 PM
To: Read, James C; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Cc: David P Donnelly
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yhwh pronunciation

Why not allow that ancients knew the grammar? Why not take the things
literally? Perhaps, Yahu and Yaho names are not derivations of the Name,
but
the Name itself.

We know from Diodorus that the accepted reading was Iao, which is
exactly
Yaho - Yho found in names.
Yhu is an expected variant of Yho if the Name is composed of suffixes,
"I,
thou, you."

Vadim Cherny


> I've been reading through the various arguments for the pronunciation
and
etymology of the tetragrammaton and have found the arguments presented
very
interesting and informative. However, I have noticed that the main
evidence
seems to have been neglected. While it can justifiably be argued that
the
pronunciation of the name has been lost through various superstitions
and
pharisee style over-burdening the same cannot be said for the multitude
of
YaHo's and YaHu's we see appended and prepended to many names as early
as
Ex17:9's YeHo$ua. I think these testify greatly to a second long vowel
after
the first 'he'. Plus the fact that the vast majority of Hebrew verbs are
trisyllabic I see no reason to doubt that it was of the form
YaHoWah/YeHoWaH/YaHuWaH/YeHuWaH.

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>From patrick AT clubgraves.com  Wed Jul 20 13:25:35 2005
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yhwh pronunciation
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James,



Yes, I believe in a chapter or in the prologue discussing recently
interpreted hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts.  I would have to pull it off
my shelf to be sure, but I could do that and type up the text for you if you
would like.



-patrick



  _____

From: Read, James C [mailto:K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 12:58 PM
To: Patrick J. Emsweller; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] yhwh pronunciation





Thanx. Do you know if yhwh is attested in these texts? And if so where?

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Patrick J. Emsweller
Sent: Wed 7/20/2005 5:49 PM
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yhwh pronunciation


James wrote:

Does anyone know of extra biblical Semitic texts which attest to the divine
name as a foreign god?

Reply:

I don't know if this has been mentioned or if you are already familiar with
it, if so I apologize.  If not, you might want to pick up "Cory's Ancient
Fragments of the Phoenician, Carthaginian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Other
Writers".  ISBN 0766158098.  This is a rare and expensive book, however
Kessinger Publishing has reprinted it at a reasonable price with I think
some added notes.  It is available through Amazon, or probably any online
book store.

Anyway just thought I would throw it out there for you.

-patrick

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Read, James C
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 11:14 AM
To: Harold R. Holmyard III; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yhwh pronunciation

I sometimes wonder, but maybe I am just paranoid, if
there are modern day Hebrews in high standing who keep
the real pronunciation and meaning of yhwh as a closely
guarded secret and pass them down from generation to
generation to keep them alive.
I noticed before that someone mentiones that Josephus
commented that 'it was no longer lawful' for him to
pronounce the name, implying that it happened in his
lifetime and that the current pronunciation was known to
him. Does anyone know where exactly he says that? I
should be very interested in reading the account.
It was also questioned before why ehyeh (hyh) is related
to yhwh (hwh). I have reason to believe that as the name
had already been widely accepted as being pronounced in
certain way at the time of the penning of the Torah that
this is why yhwh remained as it was even though the common
usage in the Hebrew of that time was to use the hyh form.
The reason I have come to this conclusion is the patterns we
see in scripture before the widespread of the superstition
which banned its usage.
1) Early MSS of the LXX show a hebrew tetragrammaton amongst
Greek writing
2) DSS, in places, show archaic lettering of yhwh amidst the
by now widely accepted aramaic lettering of the rest of the
manuscripts
These factors led me to believe that the behaviour was to preserve
its ancient pronunciation against the flow of evolution of the
rest of the language. Thus Moshe wrote ehyeh as the normal way
of saying the verb form in his day while he wrote yhwh which had
already by now been written in stone (so to speak).

Does anyone know of extrabiblical semitic texts which attest to
the divine name as a foreign god?

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