Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Garth Grenache <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>]

Dear Karl,

K> What you have demonstrated is that ?Yahweh? can be derived from late
(emphasize the ?late?) pronunciations of both Hebrew and Koin? Greek. 

That is correct.  Clement was second-century, who wrote IAOUE in Koine Greek. 
 Koine Greek is the Greek between about 330BC and 330AD, the period of both 
Greek 'Testaments' and of the Greek Ante-Nicene Fathers.

K>But what were the original pronunciations of both languages? Why would a 
first century speaker of Koin? Greek have carefully spelled out ?ou? if it 
were not a diphthong and not pronounced the same as ?u? as modern readers of 
Koin? Greek pronounce it?

Again, Clement is not a 1st century speaker, but a second-century speaker, 
who wrote IAOUE.  But this makes no difference.  The pronunciation of ou was 
not a diphthong o+u, but was a pure vowel throughout the whole Koine period, 
and even before it in Attic Greek.

Attic Greek is the Greek of Alexander the Great, and it is from this Greek 
that Koine derives.

In Attic Greek the Upsilon, which was previously pronounced as a back 'u' had 
come to be pronounced as a front 'u' like French 'u'.  Therefore the back 'u' 
came to be represented by omicron-upsilon OU instead of Upsilon alone.  Words 
which were once spelled with just Upsilon, representing back 'u', began to be 
spelled as OU in Attic Greek, and then in Koine.  (French likewise uses a 
digraph ou for back 'u' and uses u for front 'u'.)

This is common knowledge.

IAOUE is a spelling that we have from very late in that period.


To insist that OU is a diphthong in this late Koine spelling would be to set 
this spelling apart from the common use of OU in that time and the preceding 
several centuries.

Berkeley University's excellent resource has these words:

"Note on OU: In classical Attic this was a
single sound (monophthong) written with two letters (digraph)."
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ancgreek/pronunchtml/omicronU.html


Garth Grenache.
                                          
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