Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David P Donnelly <davedonnelly1 AT juno.com>]

On
Wed Jan 19 04:21:51 EST 2011 
Sesamo m. sesamox at hotmail.com wrote:

I've got a question about the pronunciation of YHWH. I know there is a
lot of controversy and I don't want to 
add to it; I know there are no certainties here, and I just like to
explore the possibilities. In my first post I 
mentioned the possibility that first vowels tended to weaken. William
Parsons points to the possibility that 
those vowels were like that all the time. Now I wonder, in the
hypothetical case that my suggestion were true, 
could it be possible that the theophoric prefix "Yeho-" were originally
"Yaho-" (so the name was "Yahowi", 
Yahowa" or whatever) and that the form "Yah" were just an apocope? 

>>>
Parsons wrote that the LXX rendering "Io-" seem to favour "Yeho-" rather
than "Yaho-", 
but could it be that the hypothetical weakening occurred before?
>>>

Dave writes:
If I am not mistaken there are at least 15 occurrences of  theophoric
names in Hebrew manuscripts
that have both Yeho prefixes and Yo prefixes.

YEHOachaz---------YOachaz
YEHOnathan--------YOnathan
etc etc

Just in passing, the well known Hebrew Scholar Gesenius, 
who has provided us with the proposed Hebrew punctuation Y-a-h-w-e-h, 
and a-p-p-a-r-e-n-t-l-y DOES NOT believe that YEHOwah is the actual name
of God,
has written.

>>>
Also those who consider that Yehowah was the actual pronunciation
are not without ground on which to defend their opinion;
in this way can the abbreviated syllables Yeh and Yo, 
with which many proper names begin, 
be more satisfactorily explained.
>>>  

FWIW
Dave Donnelly

P.S. I am not aware of any Hebrew scholar who posts on b-hebrew who can
derive a "Yeho" prefix from
Y-a-h-w-e-h.
Can any Hebrew scholar who posts on b-hebrew derive a "Yeho" prefix from
YEHOwah?
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>From chavoux AT gmail.com  Wed Jan 19 15:24:55 2011
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Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 22:24:53 +0200
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From: Chavoux Luyt <chavoux AT gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew pronunciation before the Masoretes
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Shalom the list!

Thanks for all the answers on my question about the possible
pronunciation of YHWH. Seeing that it came up again, I have some more
questions.

<snip>
>
> I've got a question about the pronunciation of YHWH. I know there is a
> lot of controversy and I don't want to
> add to it; I know there are no certainties here, and I just like to
> explore the possibilities. In my first post I
> mentioned the possibility that first vowels tended to weaken. William
> Parsons points to the possibility that
> those vowels were like that all the time. Now I wonder, in the
> hypothetical case that my suggestion were true,
> could it be possible that the theophoric prefix "Yeho-" were originally
> "Yaho-" (so the name was "Yahowi",
> Yahowa" or whatever) and that the form "Yah" were just an apocope?
>
>>>>
> Parsons wrote that the LXX rendering "Io-" seem to favour "Yeho-" rather
> than "Yaho-",
> but could it be that the hypothetical weakening occurred before?
>>>>
>
> Dave writes:
> If I am not mistaken there are at least 15 occurrences of  theophoric
> names in Hebrew manuscripts
> that have both Yeho prefixes and Yo prefixes.
>
> YEHOachaz---------YOachaz
> YEHOnathan--------YOnathan
> etc etc
>
> Just in passing, the well known Hebrew Scholar Gesenius,
> who has provided us with the proposed Hebrew punctuation Y-a-h-w-e-h,
> and a-p-p-a-r-e-n-t-l-y DOES NOT believe that YEHOwah is the actual name
> of God,
> has written.
>
>>>>
> Also those who consider that Yehowah was the actual pronunciation
> are not without ground on which to defend their opinion;
> in this way can the abbreviated syllables Yeh and Yo,
> with which many proper names begin,
> be more satisfactorily explained.
>>>>
>
<snip>
> P.S. I am not aware of any Hebrew scholar who posts on b-hebrew who can
> derive a "Yeho" prefix from
> Y-a-h-w-e-h.
> Can any Hebrew scholar who posts on b-hebrew derive a "Yeho" prefix from
> YEHOwah?
Can I come back to my proposition of the pi'el 3rd person imperfectum
(Y'HaWeH - Yod-shewa-He-patach-Waw-Tsere-He)?
1. Can a "Yeho" prefix come from "Yeha"?
2. Can "Yeha" sound like "Yah" when said rapidly?
3. Can it account for the different transcriptions into Greek of the
Name (Some trying to copy the Hebrew pronunciation and some just
trying to repesent the Hebrew consonants)?
4. Does it actually make grammatical sense? (What would be the meaning
of the Yahweh vocalization proposed by Gesenius?).
5. How far back does the differences in the Azkenazi and Sephardic
pronunciation of hebrew go? Is it possible that different dialectal
pronunciations were the reason for the variety of Greek transcriptions
of YHWH? E.g.  the Ephraim tribe already had a non-standard
pronunciation of "shibolet" in the time of the Judges.

Regards
Chavoux