Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Dave,

Gesenius was a very fine scholar. But the form Yahweh is an 
artificial construction that has absolutely no basis in ancient 
Hebrew sources. As a matter of fact, today we have no knowledge as to 
how YHWH was pronounced i the day of the first or second temple. 
However, on the basis of the use of a part of YHWH in personal Hebrew 
names (also seen in Akkadian transcriptions of some of these names), 
the name of God probably had three syllables and not two, as is the 
case with Yahweh.

To try to find the original vowels of YHWH on the basis of Greek 
transcriptions is a futile exercise; we cannot use an Indo-European 
language to throw any light on the pronunciation of ancient Hebrew 
words. (Just look at how many different Greek vowels are used by the 
LXX, Josephus, Hieronymys, and Origen to transcribe the same Hebrew 
vowels.)  Som LXX fragments have the form IAW (final omega). We find 
a seemingly similar Aramaic form, YHW in the Elephantine papyri, but 
we do not know whether the final WAW was used as a consonant or a 
vowel. If it was a consonant, the name had three syllables with three 
vowels (YOD+vowel, HE+vowel, and WAW+vowel). If the Greek form IAW is 
based on a form similar to the one from Elephantine, and the final 
WAW was used as a consonant there, the Greek scribe misunderstood the 
final HE and took it as a vowel.

BTW, both the W(ay) of WAYYIQTOL and the W(e) of WEYIQTOL was 
transcribed as "ou" in Origen's Hexapla, and not as omega.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


> Hi all,
> I have been lurking in the backgound with my kindergarten understanding
> of Hebrew, and wondering if either James Christian or Yitzhak Sapir would
> be willing to discuss in any way Gesenius's Scholarly Reconstruction of
> YHWH [i.e. yod-patah-heh-shewa-waw-segol-heh] which seems to have been
> accepted by many scholarly sources as possibly accurately representing
> the original pronunciation of God's name.
> The editors of the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon of 1905 boldly posts
> Gesenius's proposed Hebrew punctuation of YHWH, followed by it's
> letter-by-letter English Transliteration "Yahweh"
> http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/264290/bdbandstrong290.jpg
> The same Hebrew Punctuation can be found in William Smith's 1863 "A
> Dictionary of the Bible",
> which gives credit to Gesenius for having proposed this Hebrew
> punctuation.
> http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-/264290/YahwehfromSmithsBibleDictiona
> rylowres.JPG
> William Smith's 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible" also notes that
> Gesenius's proposed punctuation was supposed to be represented by the
> "IaBe" of Epiphanius.
> http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/264290/yahwehfromiabe660pixels.JPG
> William Smith's 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible" also notes their 1863
> evidence that Clement of Alexandria had written "Iaou" and not "Iaoue" in
> his Stromata Book V, chapter 6:34. [Iaou is preseved in the 11th century
> Greek Codex Laurentianus V 3
> http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/264290/1863Smithsoniaou.JPG
> FWIW
> Dave Donnelly
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