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  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yhwh pronunciation
  • Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 14:20:13 -0500

This is a good point. Pronunciation when?

Personally, I think that when the alphabet was first
developed, it stood for one letter, one consonant. Only
later, and I think this happened during the Second Temple
period and later, were additional sounds added to the
letters.

Secondly, I suspect that each consonant had a vowel
following it, like modern Japanese. However, the vowel
was not specified.

Third, how early were the matres lectionis invented? I
think it was very early. I saw photographs of one
inscribed stone, first in a book (for the life of me, I
don't remember which one) later on a flakey internet site
(this time larger and in color) showing a woman blowing a
recorder/flute and a man dancing. The inscription below
is in Proto-Sinaitic, read left to right,

L( QBR.Z.LHSR.H(DW.DMYT.LMRT

(periods for dots between words, space for a missing dot).
Apparently Proto-Sinaitic could be written either left to
right or right to left. With a couple of minor variations,
this is good Biblical Hebrew. From this inscription, it
looks as if matres lectionis were in use already during
Proto-Sinaitic times.

So what was the original pronunciation of YHWH? If the W
was a matre lectionis, it could have been YaHoWHe, or if
the indication of a name would be Hu pronunciation at the
end, YaHoWHu, shortened when combined in a name as YaHoW-,
as in YHWXNN pronounced YaHoWXaNaNe or something like that.

Too bad we can't interview native speakers. That would
clear up a lot of theses questions.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Uri Hurwitz" <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>

>
> What compounds this issue is the fact that YHWH as a deity was
> definitely attested in the Mesha Inscription, that is, the end of
> the ninth century BCE; there is no reason to assume that this was
> a brand new deity. It may well have been worshipped some centuries
> before that as the Egyptian "The People of YHW" strongly suggests,
> even if the expression refers to a toponym.
> During these centuries, before the name became taboo, its
> pronounciation may well have changed, both according to regions and
> with time. So when the attempt is made to reconstruct it one may
> well ask -- to what period, to the way it was pronounced by the
> Masoretes, by writers of the DSS, by scribes in the Persian period,
> by those who erected the first temple?
>
> Uri

--
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