Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Garth:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Garth Grenache
<garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> Dear Karl,
>
> Karl> 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?.
>
> If they did perceive the w as a vowel or diphthong, that is *not* an
> argument against the pronunciation YaHWeH, because that is a reconstruction
> of Hebrew phonemes and 2 syllables... which you are suggesting the Greek's
> may have perceived as 3 syllables.
>
> If Greeks called YaHWeH/IAOUE 3 syllables, it wouldn't mean that the Hebrew
> word is 3 syllables!
>

True it doesn’t rule it out, but it does rule out the insistence that it
necessarily means that the Hebrew had to be a two syllable name. That the
Greek had three syllables could just as well mean that the Hebrew spoken at
that day had three syllables.

>
>
> You have been suggesting that IAOUE *could* represent 3 syllables of a
> Hebrew word, which I do not deny.
>

OK then, And if the Hebrew evidence also points to three or four syllables,
why insist on a 19th century guess?


> I and others have demonstrated that it could represent simple 2 syllables,
> as OU is used for foreign 'w'.
>

But you have not demonstrated that the Greeks actually pronounced it as a
‘w’. In fact, that may be unknowable.

>
> But if OUE is 2 syllables,  the OU could represent 'uw' as both these
> vowels would sound as long u to the Greek, and thus they might represent
> 'uw' with a single digraph OU, rather than OUOU.
>

No, you have only made that claim. You have not demonstrated it beyond a
reasonable doubt.

>
> But for OUE to be transliterating 'owe' is less likely, as the Greek reader
> would read the OU as long u or w and not as o+w.
>

How do you *know*?

>
> Suppose, for example, you are suggesting that the long o of Yeho- names is
> before the 'w'.  This Hebrew vowel is rendered with O:MEGA.  If it were
> YaHo-WeH with this Hebrew vowel, it would likely be rendered IAO:OUE.
>

Not at all.

If the original pronunciation was “Ya-ho-wa-heh” with the final ‘e’
unstressed, which would lead to a late pronunciation of “Ya-ho-wa-h” or
maybe even “Ya-ho-we-h”, the Greek transcription of “ho-we” would be “oue”
representing a diphthong ‘ou’ and not the long ‘o’ of the omega. Thus we end
up with a Greek transliteration of “IAOUE” representing three syllables.

>
> Having demonstrated that IAOUE could represent either YaHW- or YaHuW-, I
> suggest we discuss what evidence is in favour of these two interpretations
> of the Name.  Karl, would you offer the Hebrew evidence you speak of?
>

Rolf already mentioned some of it.

>
> Garth Grenache.
>
> Karl W. Randolph.