Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

RE: [b-hebrew] YHWH pronunciation> Some time ago Peter brought to our 
attention the linguistic research that
shows that lamed-he verbs are derivitive from older lamed-yodh/lamed-waw
verbs.

That is quite possible, though I don't think certain.

> Howerver, it has little bearing on the discussion as there is no extant
attestation of the name as YHWY or YHWW but only YHWH and so only helped to
demonstrate that the final 'he' has never been pronounced (according to
Peter).

I don't see a reason for silent waw or iod final.

> However, I am interested to know how you would view the pronunciation of
IAO. Do you consider it as bisylabic or monosyllabic (as in ciao)?

As I mentioned earlier, in my opinion, Iao is a compoud of the possessive 
suffixes: 1s, 2ms, 3ms with the meaning "I, thou, you," a society. Final he 
could be a suffix of result (catav - ctiva).
This sense of the Tetragrammaton, a society, is congruent with my--and 
seemingly Milgrom's--argument that Judaism is a social ethics wrapped as 
religion.

> Both the English alphabet and the ancient Greek alphabet do/did not have 
> the ability to represent
a schewa sound and so the aplha could equally represent an alpha sound or a 
schewa sound just as Peter rightly explained.

My argument is a fortiori. If they heard schwa, all the more they heard 
radical he and final he.

Vadim Cherny


> Then it cannot be well-attested root hwh or hih. What is that ayn-ayn root
hwy/hww Peter suggests? I don't recall such root at all.

Peter's suggestion also have a problem with mappiq.

Vadim Cherny

> It's starting to look like the original tri-consanantal root was
HWY/HWW with a final H in the present form which serves only to lengthen
the final vowel, which we are still unsure of.



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