Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kevin Riley <klriley100 AT gmail.com>]

Karl,

Your comments make it sound like this is something Garth has come up with -
mere speculation.  It sounds a little different if you acknowledge that his
'specualtion' is built on centuries of scholarship, and that no one
seriously questions that 'OU' was pronounced as /u/ at least by the C5th
BCE.  U was used for /u/ [or more accurately, /w/ ] only in diphthongs,
where today it is pronounced as /v/ or /f/.  Later than C5 you are very
unlikely to have OU representing a diphthong.  It had long since become /o:/
in all Greek dialects, and been raised to /u:/ in Attic-Ionic and some
others.  From memory, OU is only ever /u:/ in Greek texts from the classical
period onward.  In those dialects where /ou/ > /o:/ never became /u:/, you
find either a simple O or W, with U used for /u:/.  There was never a time
when OU and U were confused by Greeks.  U had become /y/ before /o:/ became
/u:/.  By the Koine period, most cities seem to have been well on the way to
using OU for /u:/ regardless of how the original /ou/ had developed in their
dialect.  For those Greek dialects that preserved /w/, either a special
symbol [derived from waw] was used, or /w/ was simply omittted - a practice
familiar from Homer.  If a writer wanted to represent /w/ or /j/ in Greek
letters, what would he do?  From the little I have seen of Latin names
transliterated into Greek, he would us OU and I.  IOULIOS is obviously
JULIUS, and it seems safe to assume the I represents a /j/.  I tried to find
examples of OU used to represent Latin initial U, but a quick search didn't
turn up anything in the books I have, although I know I have read of
examples where it was used.  Yahwe, assuming it is the correct pronunciation
in Hebrew, could be represented by IAOUE.  If the /w/ is the beginning of
the 2nd syllable, then U may have been felt to be wrong, as the A does not
form a diphthong with the W as it does in Greek AU.  You are right that this
says nothing about the pronunciation at the time of Moses.  But if it does
indicate that at least some Jews pronounced YHWH as /jahwe/ at a later time,
then it removes some of the uncertainty and speculation.

I am somewhat puzzled by how you conclude that evidence of OU being used to
represent /w/ is somehow evidence against IAOUE representing YaHWeH.

Kevin Riley

On 7 March 2010 04:28, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Garth:
>
> What you have demonstrated is that “Yahweh” can be derived from late
> (emphasize the ‘late’) pronunciations of both Hebrew and Koiné Greek. But
> what were the original pronunciations of both languages? Why would a first
> century speaker of Koiné Greek have carefully spelled out ‘ou’ if it were
> not a diphthong and not pronounced the same as ‘u’ as modern readers of
> Koiné Greek pronounce it?
>
> On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Garth Grenache <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Must IAOUE represent 3+ syllables?
> >
> > …
> > Evidence that Greek -OUE could represent a single syllable, -w(e):
> >
> >  *Greek OUAU transliterates waw in Psalm 118:41.
> >
>
> There is no Psalm 118:41.
>
>
> >  *Greek AOUE transliterates 'ah(a)wa in Ezra 8:21&31.
> >
>
> Again, what was the original pronunciation, not the late pronunciation that
> was preserved? This word could have had four syllables.
>
>
> >  *Greek THEKOUE transliterates Tiqwah in 2Ki 22:14 & Ezr 10:15.
> >
>
> Again late pronunciations. Putting dashes between what was heard, we could
> get the-ko-ue even for a late pronunciation. Even making the assumption
> that
> ‘ou’ is a single sound, it still was a syllable separate from the ‘e’ that
> followed. The pronunciation for the Hebrew that you give is modern.
>
>
> > …
> >
> > The above list evidences that Greek digraph OU is used to transliterate
> > 'w'.
> >
>
> Only in late documents, we still don’t know the original. Or more
> accurately, I see these as evidences against your argument.
>
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > Garth Grenache.
> >
> > Again I repeat that your arguments are based on speculation built upon
> speculation, a castle in the sky as another writer put it, that needs
> implausible presuppositions in order to be true. Absent those
> presuppositions, your whole argument falls down.
>
> Karl W. Randolph.
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