Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi,

2010/1/18 Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>

> On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 10:44 PM, James Christian wrote:
> > Are you suggesting that God's full name is Yahoo? We seem to have gone a
> > long way from YaHWeH in this discussion.
> > James Christian
>
> No, James, and I never supported "Yahweh" as the pronunciation.  I only
> said
> that your rejection of "Yahweh" was flawed because you did not address the
> evidence on which "Yahweh" was based.  The following conversation shows
> that you are very prone to simply ignore the evidence rather than handle
> it.
>

Excuse me. I've given you a pretty good summary of the factors in
transliterating from Hebrew to Greek and you have not addressed one issue
and you then say "you are very prone to simply ignore the evidence rather
than handle it". You have not addressed one iota of any of these issues. You
have not even so much as attempted to show a single Greek transliteration
which transliterates Waw midword with no preceeding O or U vowel with Greek
Omega. If you attempted to do so you would realise the error of your flow of
logic.


> My view of the name is that it is originally a qatl- formation, and I went
> into
> great detail about it in an earlier message to you.  Unfortunately, despite
> the great time I invested in explaining my opinion to you, it seems you
> ignored everything I had to say and all you took from that particular
> message was the photo link to 4QLXXLev-b, as if it gave you ground to
> ignore the IAOUE evidence.  No wonder you are now surprised about my
> position.  But my position is not "Yahoo", it is "Yahwu" and its
> pronunciation
> evolved over time.
>
>
This pronunciation is both a) impossible and b) rests of the shaky
foundation of so many assumptions about the evolution of Hebrew language
that it is not even worth critiquing. All of this rickety framework with no
foundation is based on zero data. What it all boils down to Yitzhak is that
we have:

1) A handful of Hebrew MSS
2) A handful of Greek transliterations
3) A rough idea of Greek pronunciation scheme
4) A rough idea of the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation scheme

You are going far beyond the data and putting your trust in secondary
sources with little to no foundation. How can you possibly expect me to take
you seriously?



> While I have generally tried to be patient with you, I find your messages
> consistently disparaging in tone.  If not for the tone, I'd probably give
> you
> again all the references for the Masoretic vocalization I've given in the
> past.
>

You can rest assured that your dismissive tone and your more
academic-than-thou attitude is equally disparaging. Address the data! But
don't start name calling. It adds very little of value to your arguments.

I am still waiting for you to show with data a good transliteration scheme
from Hebrew to Greek. Your failure to do this shows me one of two
possibilities:

1) Your understanding of the secondary sources is too shallow to be able to
reproduce a comprehensible summary for the list members to follow
2) You are too lazy to do so

Neither of these possibilities fits well with good debating technique and
leave me unconvinced of the strength of your arguments. If you expect me
(and many other laymembers of the list) to take you seriously then show us
that you have at least a basic understanding of the phonetical issues in
transliterating from Hebrew to Greek.

Now it's my turn to be dismissive. Learn to read Greek and we might be able
to take you a little bit more seriously!

James Christian