Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

Shalom Chavoux!

On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 22:24:53 +0200, Chavoux Luyt <chavoux AT gmail.com> wrote:
> 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>
> 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"?

It dosn't seem too likely to me.

> 2. Can "Yeha" sound like "Yah" when said rapidly?

Sure.

> 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)?

I doubt it.  As far as I can see, Greeks generally did not attempt to
tranliterate; instead they tried to render what they heard in Greek letters.

> 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?

At least back to the middle ages, since an Ashkenazic-like rounding of qamets
seems to be behind the Masoretic use of qamets to represent both of what is in
origin a long [a:] and the short [o] (qamets hatuph).

> 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.

Due to the restricted use of the name by the time of the Greek transcriptions,
I would think that dialect would not likely be a factor.

-- 
Will Parsons