Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> But why should I avoid suggestions which give substance to the verb
> hypothesis? I am only quoting the evidence.

Iaw is no evidence. Iao spelling is not conformant with the verb hypothesis.
No one could have pronounced the verb as Iao even remotely. Since we have
independent testimonies in Diodorus and Clement, Iao is not a garbled form,
but mainstream, and cannot be a verb.

> True, they COULD have replaced it by gamma or something, as in Russian.
> But the fact is that they did not. It is abundantly clear from many
> transcriptions of biblical and other names that the normal practice was
> simply to omit he.

I wrote to James, loss of the second root he is unlikely, especially in the
environment so emphatic (other two radicals--if that is a verb-- vowelized)
that he is pronounced there even now.

> In fact the evidence is clear that Greeks transliterated
> the "h" sound as zero.

This general trend is unlikely in the present case, see above.

> >... Also, if your careful Greeks represented schwa with alpha, all
> >the more they should represent somehow the second he - much strong than
> >schwa. ...
>
> Well, my position is that the final he of YHWH is in fact silent.

It is not silent in the verb, but vowelized, and so we might a fortiori
expect alpha, if alpha was earlier used even for schwa.

> >I think, Feldman also cites Varro for Iao. It is unlikely that Romans,
too,
> >did not hear any he. ...
>
> Maybe, but very likely Varro was transliterating a Greek version of the
> name.

 I cannot deny this possibility, but is it likely? Varro had plenty of Jews
around.

Vadim Cherny