Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Dave Donnelly wrote:
> 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.

Hello Dave,

I see Gesenius' as a reconstruction based on evidence.   Now, since
Gesenius much more evidence has turned up.  Gesenius also chose a form
apparently noted as "Samaritan" in Theodoret.  When most of the people
here consider Hebrew vocalization, they are using Judean vocalization, not
Samaritan.  Since Hebrew words sound very different in Judean Hebrew than
in Samaritan Hebrew, I think this leads to a misunderstanding.  Gesenius
worked at a time with much less knowledge of Samaritan Hebrew, and
obviously had no access to all the kind of inscriptional evidence that we
have today, including the Mesha stele, Kuntillet Ajrud, the Samaria ostraca,
the Elephantine papyri, the DSS, etc.  While I think an original qatl based
vocalization (yahwu) does much better at explaining a wide range of the
evidence, I think Gesenius' view is still sufficiently strong.  While
objections
may be raised to its Hebrew, I can generally think of various explanations
that will allow it to withstand the objections.  For example, as an Hiphil 
form,
we have a byform yaqtel (as in yavdel, yaqhel), with a tsere, today often
seen as a preterite form of the Hiphil.  Alternatively, as a divine name, it
would be more susceptible to archaization, so even though y- in general
had gotten an -i- vowel (yi$mor, yixtov), the original -a- vowel may have
remained in this word.   As for the He not taking a silent schewa, we may
respond that perhaps in earlier centuries it did and only several centuries
later did gutturals receive part of the preceding vowel.  All these are
based in the Masoretic pronunciation tradition, but we also have the
Samaritan which is different and could support the reconstruction in other
ways.  So, I think that Gesenius' reconstruction is good in view of the
evidence he had at the time, and seeing how it can still withstand
criticism even in view of all the evidence we have today shows us just
how good it is.

I am leaning to explaining IABE and YAOUE as Samaritan forms standing
opposite Judean forms.  I am not sure the He was still vocalized in the
Samaritan tradition, and the final epsilon may be a vestige from the
final short case vowels.  That is, in Samaritan, I see the original form
*yahwu develop into *ya(:)wu (as we can see in personal names from
Samaria, such as gdyw, $mryw, ywntn), but later, when final case vowels
dropped, the new syllabic structure would potentially lead to *yaw and
could become *yo.  Due to the nature of the name (a divine name, which
can preserve archaic features better), the syllabic division of the word
remained even as case vowels were lost: *yawu < *ya-w, leading to a
syllabic w.  This would be my attempt to explain what IAOU/IAOUE
represents.

Yitzhak Sapir