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  • From: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
  • To: "Shoshanna Walker" <rosewalk AT concentric.net>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The translation of ehyeh
  • Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 23:43:00 +0100


Thank you everybody for your insight.

Summarising the evidence I have noted the following points.

1) LXX translates ehyeh ahsher ehyeh pragmatically (contextually) as
'I am the one who is' i.e I am alive/ I exist
2) Aquila translates literally as 'I'll be what I'll be'
3) Hebrew tanakh never uses root HYH as equivalent of English verb 'to be'
which generally describes state e.g.'I am hungry'
3) Hebrew tanakh describes state with pronoun adjective construct e.g 'I
hungry
= I am hungry' not with verb HYH
4) Hebrew use of verb HYH e.g. WaYHiY... has the sense of 'And it came to
pass',
'And it occured that', 'And it came to be'. i.e. always the sense of
something
happening or coming into being or becoming but never simply being
5) In early Christian theology Yah calls himself the Alpha and the Omega, the
one
who is, was and will be.
6) It has been assumed that YHWH is the 3rd person Hiphil of EHYEH, even
though
EHYEH has always been viewed as a Qal.

Evaluating the evidence, it seem that the translators of the LXX tried to
capture
the original sense of the statement by an expression which basically means
'I'm alive' or 'I exist'. They felt that the context warranted this concept
and this
can be seen from the inconsistent translation of the verb ehyeh, which just
two
verses prior is translated as a future.
Interestingly, it is not 'ehyeh asher ehyeh' that is his name but merely
'ehyeh' as Yah
goes on to say that Moshe' should tell the Isrealites that 'ehyeh' had sent
him *not*
ehyeh asher ehyeh. Therefore, it would seem that the first ehyeh is a manner
of introduction
and this thought is captured by the LXX translation. The name, which is
repeated twice is
'HO WN' *not* 'EIMI'. Thus, the LXX theology puts the emphasis on the deity's
existence
and this seems to be in agreement with the theology presented in Rev1:8 (as
noted by Peter).

Thus, I'm afraid to say (and personally shattered by the evidence) that there
is no reason
to believe that YHWH is a Hiphil. And that therefore the divine name could
well be a 3rd
person Qal and instead of indicating his creative powers (he causes to
become) indicates his
eternity (he exists) as reverberated in his own words of Rev1:8.


All of this brings me to a new line of thought:
If Yah revealed himself as EHYEH (1st person) and Moshe' revealed him as YHWH
(3rd person) why
are there no attestations of Yah's servants adressing him in the 2nd person?
(You exist)

I know that many modern languages (Spanish,Italian,German) use the 3rd person
as a sign of
respect but have never seen anything that would lead me to believe that this
was also a practice
in b-hebrew.

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