Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

   Hello Ed,

   Just to clarify the issue: Ehyeh is 1st pers. imperfect
 of the root HYH, which is the regular root of 'to be'
 in Hebrew.

                               YHWH of the Tetragrammaton
 is 3rd pers Ms. of the root HWH, which  has the same
 meaning in Aramaic.

  The first root occurs thousands of times in the
 Hebrew bible.( People with the appropriate electronic
 program can provide the correct number.)

 The Aramaic verbal form, HWH, occurs only a few times.

  The above is factual. However the answer to the
 question why the Tetragrammaton uses the
 Aramic root , must be speculative.

  Johannes C. De Moor in The Rise of Yahwism, 1997,
 provides an approach which I support:
 
  YHWH is abreviated from a longer name such as
  *YHWHEL or *YHWHBAAL,  meaning  "El Is", or "Baal Is".
  This was a name of an ancestor, eventually deified.
  Such a phenomenon can be found in Ugarit and elsewhere
  in the Ancient Near East.
   
    (In the HB one finds exactly such type of names,
  for example Yehoyakhin, which means the 'Yahweh
  is established'. One needs to keep in mind that
  at that point, much later in time, the Tetragrammaton
  has long been accepted as the name of the deity).
  
    This name of  a deity was brought to Canaan by Aramaic
  speaking people, some of the forefathers of the 
  early Israelites.  Eventually the longer name was
  shortened to the familiar form in the Hebrew bible.
 
  Uri Hurwitz                            Great Neck, NY
   

....Would anyone happen to have references to articles or other materials 
which give a fair treatment and/or history of the question whether there is a 
grammatical relationship between Ehyeh and the Tetragrammaton?

Thank you in advance for anything you might be able to offer.

Ed Ahrens