Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Garth Grenache <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>]

Deal all, peace!

...and thanks to Karl and James who responded to my post.

Here I offer an answer to your questions:

James asked> Where do you get 'yahwu'? Surely you mean 'yahuw'?!?

Garth replies> I mean -yahwu.  This would be the result of adding the final 
nominative case marker -u to the end of a name ending with -yahwa.  E.g. A 
name formed from the sentence "natan- yahwa" would be Natan-yahw-u.

The final -u was present as a Nominative case marker, -a as Accusative case 
marker, and -i as Genitive case marker, as late as about 1000BCE, in most 
Semitic languages.

To append such a marker to a word which already had a final vowel, would 
involve replacing that vowel: Natan-yahwa > Natan-yahw-u


Karl wrote> There is one slight problem, namely, that we don?t know how 
Biblical Hebrew was pronounced. The vowels were not written down. Some of the 
consonants apparently changed pronunciation over time as well. As a result, 
there have been sometimes strongly worded disputes on this list as to 
Biblical Hebrew pronunciation. Therefore, to claim that we can come to a 
resolution as to the exact pronunciation of a single word (name) within the 
language sounds, well, impossible.

Garth replies> The exact pronunciation of each phoneme(meaningful unit of 
speech to be pronounced) may be unknown, but by comparing Semitic languages 
and their morphology, the phonemes themselves can be evidenced.  For example, 
one might argue about how open or closed the 'a' phoneme was pronounced in a 
certain culture, but few scholars would doubt that the 'a' phoneme existed, 
or that it was in words such as malku, yawmu, etc.  

There were only three distinct short vowel phonemes in the original Semitic 
language, as can be deduced by *comparative Semitic Linguistics* -a i & u- 
and this could allow each to be pronounced slightly differently in different 
words and still remain distinct.  

So even in Arabic today the same long â phoneme can have a quality as forward 
as the 'a' in 'at', or as open as the 'a' in 'father'.

I haven't asserted how open or closed the 'a' in Yahwa is: merely that it was 
an 'a': an open vowel phoneme.


Finally, please note that some of the characters I've used are showing up in 
the text e-mails as ?s, but do read correctly online.

The formatting allowed at this website makes my theory a bit easier to 
understand, and this presentation is more complete, for those who wish to 
understand more.
http://garthg.multiply.com/journal/item/110/The_ancient_and_correct_pronunciation_of_YHWH


Original message:

Dear all at b-hebrew, peace!

My name is Garth Grenache and I am an internet friend of Dave Donnelly.  
I live in the land down under.

I
have been seeking the original pronunciation of YHWH for several years,
publically proposing and challenging various theories on YHWHgroup (
groups.yahoo.com/group/YHWHgroup/ ) whilst developing my understanding
of the history of Hebrew and the Semitic languages.

From YHWH came Yah, Yəhô-, -yāhû, Greek iaō, "Temple of YHW",
  and somehow also Greek 'Samaritan' forms iabe, iaou(e) and magic papyrus 
iaōouēe.
A good theory needs to give a good explanation of all the data.

In
2006 I proposed a reconstruction that I've not been able to better to
this date, though it has been peer reviewed and critiqued on the above
forum and elsewhere.

Dave Donnelly has prompted me to post my also before your eyes, so that you 
too may critique it.

Scholars
like Gesenius could determine from the above forms that the Name began
with Yahw-, and had a final vowel other than î or û.
(If any reader is in doubt about this, I refer them to...
 
http://garthg.multiply.com/journal/item/110/The_ancient_and_correct_pronunciation_of_YHWH
...where I give convincing linguistic evidence of this.)


Why did Gesenius and like-minded scholars accept 'e' for the final vowel?
*Greek 'Samaritan' forms iabe, iaou(e) and magic papyrus iaōouēe supplied an 
'e'.
*Hebrew Imperfective verbs with weak 3rd root consonant have final 'e'. YHWH 
appeared to be the same.

Then why reject the 'e'?
*The
Name is as old as Adam and Eve (Ge 4:1) and the first Semitic language
did not have 'e'. Therefore 'e' could not be original.
*Even
centuries before before the iabe/iaou(e)/iaōouēe forms, the final vowel
was already lost from the pronunciation of YHWH, not appearing in Greek
forms iaō or Hebrew "Temple of YHW", which together suggest that the
pronunciation of YHWH had long come to be Yahô.  If 'e' were original,
and was a contraction from -ayu/-iyu as in other 3-He Imperfectives,
why then did the verbs retain their final 'e', but YHWH did not?  And
having lost its final true vowel, from where did the final 'e' come
from?  Perhaps from the assumption that it was pronounced like the
other 3-He Imperfectives which end in -e!  Or...
*The magical
papyri's iaōouēe is in the context of a syncretist's god who is
simultaneously both Zeus and YHWH: "I summon thee the, ruler of the
gods--Zeus, Zeus, that thunderest on high, king Adonai, lord Iaoouee." 
The long string of vowels is impossible in Hebrew, and includes every
Greek vowel letter.  It is mystical and may be a syncretism of iaō with
iowe/iowi -Latin inflectional forms of of Iuppiter (Jupiter), who is
Zeus! ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyptoton ).
*Samaritan
"Iaoue">"Iabe" may reflect the same syncretism of iaō with iowe,
even as the Samaritans were syncretists who "feared YHWH but also
served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom
they had been carried away" (2Ki 17:33).
Therefore, Hebrew 3-He
Imperfectives suggest that the missing final vowel of Yahw- should be
an 'e', and those who believed that YHWH was Iawe(Jupiter) had even
more reason to reconstruct the lost final vowel as 'e'.  But it could
not have been original, even as the 'e' in 3-He Imperfectives was not
original!


If not final 'e', then what?
*Ex 3:14 implies
that the Name means "He is", and it's consonants also suggest the root
HWY which means 'be/become' and is attested in both East and West
Semitic, being present in Akkadian as well as Amorite, Hebrew and
Aramaic.
*Qal Stative Imperfectives in Central Semitic tend to have
'a' between the 2nd and 3rd root consonants.  "He is" would have been
*yahwayu.
Therefore 'a' was the original vowel after the 'w' in
Yahwa, even before the Name's formation, being present there in the
verb *yahwayu.

But what happened to the -yu in yahwayu?  Why has it been arbitrarily 
truncated?
*I suggest it was not an arbitrary truncation, but a calculated truncation by 
YHWH Himself.
*If
He gave His Name as Yahwayu or Yahway, it would undergo regular
inflection to become Yahwaya, which would be suggestive of the
Subjunctive verb, with the inappropriate meaning of "He would be".
*Truncating the final -yu produced an indeclinable form Yahwa, to which this 
inappropriate meaning would not be attached.
(*A declinable form Yahu/Yaha/Yahi was also supplied, which became the short 
form "Yah".)

How did the Yəhô- names become?  -Further evidence for final -a in Yahwa.
*Even as in regular sentences, Yahwa was followed by other words to form 
names such as Yahwanatanu.
*The -wa- in these names became softened to -ô-, producing Yahônatan, even as 
in 'aḫwatu > 'aḫôt "sister".
*This left the first short 'a' in an open syllable, exposing it to 
antepenultimate reduction: Yahô- >Yəhô-.
*The
reduction of -wa- to a close-mid vowel ô, rather than close vowel û can
be explained by the presence of the 'a'. If the final vowel of YHWH
were a close vowel i or u, we would expect û to result.
*From Yəhô-
names, or independently, the absolute Name Yahwa became pronounced as
Yahô (as evidenced by "Temple of YHW" and BC Greek iaō).

How did -yahû names become?
*The theophoric name's case marker must be appended to the final consonant of 
a name ending in -yahwa, producing -yahwu.
*e.g. 'Elî + yahwa + final case marker -u -> 'Elîyahwu 
*Here with u, the final '-wu' was softened to long -û:  -yahwu > -yahû
*Penultimate augmentation of the vowel in a resulting open syllable 
subsequently occurred: -yahû > -yāhû


In summary: final -a in YHWH is suggested by...
*The presence of 'a' in the second syllable of Qal stative Imperfectives 
yaCCaCu, yahwayu 'he is' being the origin of the name.
*The close-mid ô vowel found in Yəhô- names in the place of 'wa', v.s. the 
close û vowel found in -yahû names from -yahwu.


Thanks for reading.  Your response and criticism is most welcome.
Kind regards,

Garth Grenache.

A more complete presentation of this Yahwa theory can be found here:
http://garthg.multiply.com/journal/item/110/The_ancient_and_correct_pronunciation_of_YHWH

                                          
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