Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Kevin:

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Kevin Riley <klriley100 AT gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 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
>
> No, my question is: did the Greeks, who had no ‘w’ phoneme, perceive a ‘w’
as a ‘ou’ diphthong? If so, then this is an argument against the
pronunciation of “YaHWeH”, rather an argument for a trisyllabic “YaHoWeH”.

Even if we assume that ‘ou’ referred to a ‘oo’ (as in ‘pool’) vowel, we
still come out with three syllables.

So my original conclusion, that the pronunciation of YHWH was most like not
‘Yahweh’, with a close to 100% certainty, still stands.

Karl W. Randolph.