Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com>]

To all the b-hebrew list members and mainly to Yitzhak,

I'm Pere Porta, one of the smallest in this List.
Yitzhak, I wrote some weeks ago an express mail to the list which was
addressed to you.
I wrote: *You are very kind, Yitzhak!*
I'm deeply moved at the announcement of your leaving.

Please, do not leave, Yitzhak!

Even if you have some good reason to leave, please consider this: the
perfect mail list  -even moderated ones-  does not exist  --cannot exist--
in this world.

Give us all a chance of continuing to have you as a co-traveller in our way
to a better knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures!

*WE NEED YOU, YITZHAK!*
*PLEASE, DO NOT LEAVE*!

Pere Porta
(Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain)



On 21 July 2010 15:29, <davedonnelly1 AT juno.com> wrote:

> Yitzhak: You can't leave now. You haven't discussed the 1905 Jewish
> Encyclopedia Article on "Yahweh" yet!
>
> The following text is cut and pasted from the on-line 1905 Jewish
> Encyclopedia,
> which is in the public domain.
>
> http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=52&letter=N#164
> YHWH.
> Of the names of God in the Old Testament, that which occurs most
> frequently (6,823 times) is the so-called Tetragrammaton, Yhwh (    ),
> the distinctive personal name of the God of Israel. This name is commonly
> represented in modern translations by the form "Jehovah," which, however,
> is a philological impossibility (see Jehovah). This form has arisen
> through attempting to pronounce the consonants of the name with the
> vowels of Adonai ( = "Lord"), which the Masorites have inserted in the
> text, indicating thereby that Adonai was to be read (as a "?eri
> perpetuum") instead of Yhwh. When the name Adonai itself precedes, to
> avoid repetition of this name, Yhwh is written by the Masorites with the
> vowels of Elohim, in which case Elohim is read instead of Yhwh. In
> consequence of this Masoretic reading the authorized and revised English
> versions (though not the American edition of the revised version) render
> Yhwh by the word "Lord" in the great majority of cases.
> This name, according to the narrative in Ex. iii. (E), was made known to
> Moses in a vision at Horeb. In another, parallel narrative (Ex. vi. 2, 3,
> P) it is stated that the name was not known to the Patriarchs. It is used
> by one of the documentary sources of Genesis (J), but scarcely if at all
> by the others. Its use is avoided by some later writers also. It does not
> occur in Ecclesiastes, and in Daniel is found only in ch. ix. The writer
> of Chronicles shows a preference for the form Elohim, and in Ps.
> xlii.-lxxxiii. Elohim occurs much more frequently than Yhwh, probably
> having been substituted in some places for the latter name, as in Ps.
> liii. (comp. Ps. xiv.).
> In appearance, Yhwh (     ) is the third person singular imperfect "?al"
> of the verb ("to be"), meaning, therefore, "He is," or "He will be," or,
> perhaps, "He lives," the root idea of the word being,probably, "to blow,"
> "to breathe," and hence, "to live." With this explanation agrees the
> meaning of the name given in Ex. iii. 14, where God is represented as
> speaking, and hence as using the first person—"I am" (, from , the later
> equivalent of the archaic stem ). The meaning would, therefore, be "He
> who is self-existing, self-sufficient," or, more concretely, "He who
> lives," the abstract conception of pure existence being foreign to Hebrew
> thought. There is no doubt that the idea of life was intimately connected
> with the name Yhwh from early times. He is the living God, as contrasted
> with the lifeless gods of the heathen, and He is the source and author of
> life (comp. I Kings xviii.; Isa. xli. 26-29, xliv. 6-20; Jer. x. 10, 14;
> Gen. ii. 7; etc.). So familiar is this conception of God to the Hebrew
> mind that it appears in the common formula of an oath, "?ai Yhwh" (= "as
> Yhwh lives"; Ruth iii. 13; I Sam. xiv. 45; etc.).
> If the explanation of the form above given be the true one, the original
> pronunciation must have been Yahweh (      ) or Yahaweh (       ).
> From this the contracted form Jah or Yah ( ) is most readily explained,
> and also the forms Jeho or Yeho ( = ), and Jo or Yo (, contracted from ),
> which the word assumes in combination in the first part of compound
> proper names, and Yahu or Yah ( ) in the second part of such names.
> The fact may also be mentioned that in Samaritan poetry rimes with words
> similar in ending to Yahweh, and Theodoret ("Quæst. 15 in Exodum") states
> that the Samaritans pronounced the name 'Iaß?. Epiphanius ascribes the
> same pronunciation to an early Christian sect. Clement of Alexandria,
> still more exactly, pronounces 'Ia??? or 'Ia??a?, and Origen, 'Ia.
> Aquila wrote the name in archaic Hebrew letters. In the Jewish-Egyptian
> magic-papyri it appears as ?a????e. At least as early as the third
> century B.C. the name seems to have been regarded by the Jews as a "nomen
> ineffabile," on the basis of a somewhat extreme interpretation of Ex. xx.
> 7 and Lev. xxiv. 11 (see Philo, "De Vita Mosis," iii. 519, 529). Written
> only in consonants, the true pronunciation was forgotten by them. The
> Septuagint, and after it the New Testament, invariably render d??????
> ("the Lord").
> Dave Donnelly
>  P.S.
> In the online article at
> http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=52&letter=N#164
> some Hebrew font is show, although the Hebrew font appears "less than
> perfect"
> In the online article at
> http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view_page.jsp?pid=1&artid=52&letter=N
> the original page with Hebrew font is shown,  although once again, the
> Hebrew font appears "less than perfect"
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-- 
Pere Porta
"Ei nekrói ouk eguéirontai, fágomen kai píomen áurion gar apothnéskomen"
(1Cor 15:32)