Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Ted,

Research without presuppositions is impossible; an atheist or an 
agnostic may be just as sectarian as a person belonging to a 
Christian denomination, or one being an orthodox Jew or a Muslim. 
And a scholar who belongs to a religious denomination may be more 
balanced than one who does not have any religious faith.

I take issue with your claim that a preference for the form "Jehovah" 
must be faith-based and sectarian. A few years ago I translated many 
Ugaritic Baal-texts into Norwegian, and I also translated several 
Biblical passages dealing with Baal. In these passages I 
transliterated God's name as YHWH, because I took  the target group 
into consideration.

I have worked a lot with the name YHWH, since I wrote a thesis about 
it for my MA degree many years ago. Recently I have completed a study 
of all the uses of YHWH and its substitutes in the Dead Sea scrolls 
(the principal purpose was to find if )DNY was ever used as a 
substitute for YHWH in B.C.E.-the conclusion was negative).

I have written several times before that the form "Yahweh" is an 
artificial construction, which has no basis whatsoever in ancient 
Hebrew manuscripts. Today we cannot know how YHWH originally was 
pronounced, but  on the basis of my work with the issue for more than 
two decades, my view as a scholar is that the YEHOWA  (the last he 
being taken as a vowel) is the best reconstruction we can make on the 
basis of the evidence. This is not a sectarian but a philological 
conclusion! I would even say that there is evidence that the Aramaic 
form YHW from Elephantine may have been pronounced as YEHOWA rather 
than YAHO, which is the universal viewpoint.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


> Hi, All:
>
> snip
>
> To be specific, some of our list members are inseparably attached to the 
> form Jehovah due to their religious affiliation. As far as I'm concerned they
>  are most welcome to participate on this list with their faith-based
> orientation  intact. But they should know that others will often find their 
> perspective preachy and sectarian. Let's try to facilitate 
> understanding  rather
> than polarization.
>
> Peace,
> Ted Brownstein
>
>
> In a message dated 6/29/2010 8:53:31 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
> davedonnelly1 AT juno.com writes:
>
> -----  Forwarded Message -----
> From: James Christian  <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>
> To: davedonnelly1 AT juno.com
> Cc:  b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:11:44  +0300
> Subject: Re: Fw: Re: [b-hebrew] Reading Jehovah in Psalm 16:2 and  in
> Psalm 110:1  ]
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTikP0RanQGHOpLn3ofFhZY3Y8cqYQhlNSDldT58u AT mail.gmail.com>
> References:  <20100625.155916.7387.90925 AT mailpop09.dca.untd.com>