Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Garth:

I think you are making a mountain out of a molehill.

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 8:01 PM, Garth Grenache 
<garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> Dear all,
>
> …
> *Qumran Greek IAO for YHWH and Elephantine spelling YHW are suggestive that
> YHWH had come to be pronounced as "Yaho".  [i.e. it's W became understood as
> long o, and the final H became superfluous.]
>

In discussions on this subject in the past there were several different
transliterations of this name used during the turn of the millennium, i.e.
around the time of the DSS. Because Greek did not have the “h” and “w”
sounds as written phonemes, that leaves us guessing as to how the Greek
pronunciations related to the Hebrew spelling. For example, the above IAO
could be either as you suggest, or possibly “YiHaWo” in that local dialect.
Going from memory, other examples include IAOUE which could either be
“YaHWeH”, “YiHaWeH” or “YaHoWeH” and IAOUEE which could even be a four
syllable word “YaHoWeHe”.

>
> Garth Grenache,
> Australia
>
> Why can’t you just accept that there are limits on what we can know,
because it has been well over 2000 years since the last native speaker of
Biblical Hebrew lived? And we are making guesses, educated guesses for sure,
but guesses just the same, as to what was the original pronunciation?

Karl W. Randolph.