Biblical Hebrew Forum

[robertsumner0110 AT wmconnect.com]

Just a few observations:



1.  No matter how logically consistent your arguments are, if you begin with 
a false assumption you are still building a castle in the clouds.  It may be 
a well-constructed castle, it may be an enticing castle, but, unless I really 
do not understand gravity, it will not be a particularly safe castle.
2.  The Masoretic text must be regarded as essentially fossilized Hebrew.  By 
the time the text came into existence, Hebrew had been essentially a 'dead' 
language for eight centuries or so.  It is, moreover, the fossilization of 
only one dialect of Hebrew.  More accurately, it is the fossilization of a 
'form' of Hebrew (since dialect implies a common-place, spoken language) as 
it was pronounced by a specific rabbinical group. I do not know exactly how 
David would have addressed his good friend, but I doubt Moshe ben Naphtali 
would have pronounced it the same eighteen hundred years later.  Consider the 
pronunciation of the Latin Georgius and its Spanish derivative, Jorge.
3.  Also take into consideration the simple fact that the pronunciation of 
the tetragrammaton was purposefully suppressed.  It has not been part of 
Jewish public worship since the destruction of the second temple.  Therefore, 
there is no reason to believe that the originators of the Masoretic text had 
a clue as to how it was to be pronounced.
4.  Unless you are an orthodox Jew striving to avoid offending the deity, or 
up to some Harry Potter stuff, what does the exact pronunciation matter?  We 
do not know how the term was pronounced by Moses, and we cannot know how the 
term was pronounced by Moses, but we have a wonderfully complete presentation 
of the Person to whom the name refers.


Robert Shannon Sumner