Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Okay, let me rephrase: in Jewish tradition, God's true personal name is
YHWH. Jewish tradition, however, considers this name to be too sacred to
pronounce, and thus does not bother itself with the question of how to
pronounce it. Instead, tradition adopted a series of surrogate
pronunciations, the most common of which is Adonai, meaning "my Lord(s)".
The second most common is "Elohim", mostly when YHWH is proceeded by the
word "Adonai" spelled out - as in Deut. 3:24. The Mesorets indicated which
of these pronunciations should be used by the Nikkud that they supplied for
the word in various places. 

Yigal Levin

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
davedonnelly1 AT juno.com
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 10:18 PM
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [b-hebrew] Would B-hebrew discuss the name Jehovah with a KJBO
Christian?

On Thu Aug 26 08:34:36 EDT 2010 
Yigal Levin leviny1 at mail.biu.ac.il  wrote:

>>>
Dave, the two positions are not mutually exclusive. 

Without getting into the question of the precise pronunciation of the
Tetragramaton, Jewish (Masoretic) tradition never denied that that was
God's
true name. 

the tradition is simply that God's true name is sacred and should
thus never be pronounced. Vocalizing "Adonai" and the like goes back to
Second Temple times, and is reflected by the LXX "Kyrios", which was
rendered "Dominus" Latin and became the English "Lord". 

The various
Mesoretic pointings of the name simply indicate which substitute
pronunciation should be used, not that that is the "true" pronunciation
of
YHWH.

Yigal Levin
>>>
======================================================================
Vigal,

You used two "that"'s in a row in two different sentences above.

In the sentence immediately above You wrote:

"The various
Mesoretic pointings of the name simply indicate which substitute
pronunciation should be used,
not that that is the "true" pronunciation of  YHWH."

If the substitute pronunciation is "Adonai" or Elohim" it doesn't seem
like anyone is likely to believe that either of those readings is the
true pronunciation of God's Name. 

However in the first sentence above you wrote:
Without getting into the question of the precise pronunciation of the
Tetragramaton, Jewish (Masoretic) tradition never denied that that was
God's
true name. 


What were you referring to as that
and which you stated that  Jewish (Masoretic) tradition never denied that
that was God's
true name. 

Dave Donnelly
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