Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 7:37 PM, James Christian wrote:
> Hi,
> thanks for that. I just checked out the fragment you
> mentioned http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak//lxxjewpap/4QLevB.jpg YHWH is
> transcribed as IAW (Iota, alpha, omega). This would suggest Yahow just like
> the theorphoric names we've mentioned and seems to support Yahow... variants
> rather than Yahweh.
> James Christian

No, it does not suggest "Yahow".  The -w in "Yahow" is a
misinterpretation, as if any
other addition would continue the w.  But this is not the case, and is
unsupported by
the evidence, and even rejected by the evidence (the other evidence I
provided in
my post, which your response ignores).  Also, -w- is transcribed in
Greek as ou so we
would expect iawou if there was indeed a w.  Furthermore, even though
this particular
pronunciation does not support in itself Yahwe, it does not preclude another
competing pronunciation alongside it.  As I mentioned the competing
prefix forms
attested in early Hebrew inscriptions suggest strongly that h- had no vowel
following it, and -w- was  consonantal.  This means that "Yahow" is a
misrepresentation of what really went on.  It's not that -w- followed
an -o- vowel.
It's that -w- was reduced to an -o- vowel at the end of the word:
*yahw > *yaho,
after which open vowels lengthened: > ya:ho:.  In this environment of Judean
yhw-, Israelite yw-, just like the Judean form became yah/yaho, so too
the northern
form might have become yaw/yawe.  Your response, which completely ignored
everything I had to say, only gives a very strong and bad feeling that
your take on
the evidence is very one sided and close minded, even going to the point of 
now
quoting me out of context.

Yitzhak Sapir