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  • From: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
  • To: <tladatsi AT charter.net>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] YHWH & Elohim - A Bit More
  • Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 15:42:36 +0100


I,for one, quite like your observations. Transliterations like IAO show a
great
likelihood that Yaho/YaHu was used a divine name in everyday speech.


Another theory I've been giving much consideration is that names which we see
pointed as YeHoNaTHaN were originally YeHoWeNNaTHaN, with the final
'He'dissappearing
and causing and a doubling of the following consanant.
Of course, I have no proof to support such a theory but still consider it to
be
a possibility.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no other Hebrew names in the corpus
that
employ such shortenings, so either YaHo/YaHu was a name in use or there was a
doubling
of the following consanat or I'm totally wrong and it was perfectly normal to
put
shortened version of words in common names.

However, one good observation you have made is that YaHo does not shorten
YaHWeH and
I think this should adequately show that it is time to abandon the two
syllable theory.

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of tladatsi AT charter.net
Sent: Sun 8/7/2005 5:53 AM
To: Peter Kirk
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [b-hebrew] YHWH & Elohim - A Bit More

Peter,

I was actually thinking of personal names rather than place
names. Sorry I was not clear. My note was just an initial
observation and a thought, it is not in opposition to much
of anything yet.

Here are my initial thoughts in regards to your email.

1) What is the point of shortening the full formal personal
name to begin with? The ancient Israelites did not seem
particularly adverse to having long formal personal names.
Obviously shortened nick-names were probably quite common
but those only make sense relative to the full formal name.
I would expect in the context of the OT, the authors would
have naturally favored the more formal names over nick-
names. Even if some of these names are nick-names surely
there should be at least some theophoric names that were
not shortened? There should be a few personal theophoric
name that include YHWH or Elohim if shortening were the
process.

2) If one wished to shorten a theophroic name, I do not see
any particular motive to shorten the divine portion of a
theophoric name. It seems to me that the only point of
having a theophoric name is to include God?s name.
Shortening the divine element of a person?s theophoric name
seems to defeat the entire purpose of having a theophoric
name. Why not shorten the non-divine elements?

3) If the names were shortened, they were not shortened by
much, if at all in many cases. For example Yahu-natan(Yahu
gave)is no shorter than Yahweh-natan when spoken (four
syllables each)and only one letter shorter when written.
Yesha ? Yah (Yah saved)is but one syllable shorter than
Yesha ? Yahweh. Shama-El is significantly shorter than
Shama-Eloah or Shama-Elohim.



> From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
> Date: 2005/08/06 Sat PM 06:43:33 EDT
> To: tladatsi AT charter.net
> CC: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] YHWH & Elohim
>
> On 06/08/2005 23:20, tladatsi AT charter.net wrote:
>
> >...
> >Even more interesting, YHWH and Elohim never occur in
> >theophoric names, at least I found none. ...
> >
>
> There is Gibeath-haElohim or Gibeah of God in 1 Samuel
10:5.
>
> ...
>
> >The logic of lengthening a short name to a longer name
is
> >pretty obvious. It is both visually more impressive and
> >sounds better. ...
> >
>
> I see your point. But isn't there an even more obvious
logic to
> shortening a long name, especially when it is
incorporated within a
> compound name? In that case YHWH and Eloah/Elohim would
have been the
> original full forms, and YH/YHW and El abbreviated
versions used largely
> in names and (perhaps where it fits the "metre" better)
in poetry.
>
> So why is your suggestion better than my tentative one?
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
>

Jack Tladatsi
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