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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The logic of the Yahweh discussion (or lack thereof)
  • Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 09:56:28 +0100

Dear Robert,

I have a few comments to your observations:


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.

It is true that we today cannot know exactly how words were pronounced B.C.E. But the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that the vowel system of the Masoretic text resembles the system used when the DSS were written. See E. Y. Kutcher. 1974. "The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll." We must therefore conclude that the Masoretic text by and large is a reliable text.


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.

Because of superstition, probably based on the views of Plato, the tetragram was not pronounced by some groups, but is was pronounced by others B.C.E. You are right when you say that the Masoretes did not know how to pronounce it. The Masoretes pointed YHWH with the vowels e(a)-o-a because they probably pronounced the name as )DNY. I have seen the argument that because of this we must conclude that the modern form Ye-ho-wa is wrong. This is a fallacious argument, because the name may very well have been pronounced like this by the Pharisees and the Morningbathers. What the Masoretes did is in this context irrelevant. Their "wrong" pointing of the name may perhaps coincidentally parallel the old correct pronunciation of it.

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.

If we leave theology and tradition aside, the pronunciation of YHWH is not unimportant. I am not speaking of the correct (original) pronunciation, because any name form in modern translations of the Tanakh does not represent the original pronunciation. In translations, names must be rendered in accordance with the stock of phonemes of the target language, and therefore we find different forms in English, Norwegian, and Spanish. And here is the important point: A fundamental rule of translation is that proper names referring to particular persons or particular places should not substituted with other words but should be given a modern form. It follows-and we must still avoid theology and tradition-that to substitute YHWH with another word, such as LORD or L'Eternal, is a violation of the fundamental principles of translation. From a translational point of view it is a falsification of the source text. One may argue that because of this particular tradition or this particular theology, in this instance this must be allowed. I will not discuss tradition or theology here, only state that from a technical translational point of view, to leave out the proper name of God, or any other proper name from the Hebrew Bible is nothing but falsification.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
Univeristy of Oslo



Robert Shannon Sumner
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