Biblical Hebrew Forum

[bhebrew AT shields-online.net]

Dear Rolf,

You demonstrate a stubborn insistence on ignoring evidence which does not fit 
with your position, so your conclusions are faulty. Stephen Shead has already 
offered comments, so I shall not repeat his points. I would like to make one 
comment on this claim you keep repeating (and I keep disputing):

RF: There is evidence that in the last two centuries BCE the religious order 
at Qumran did not pronounce God's name, but used )L instead. There is no 
evidence that different groups in the second or first century BCE used )DNY 
as a substitute for YHWH.

MS: You draw your evidence from sectarian manuscripts which contain the name 
Yhwh. How can a legitimate claim be made that a word is being used to avoid 
use of the name Yhwh when the manuscript already contains the name? Why avoid 
it and then use it? It makes no sense.

Obviously the best sort of evidence would be a copy of a scribal manual which 
read "We do not write the divine name, we always substitute xyz." Now since 
such a text doesn't exist, we need to look for other pieces of evidence. 
Other legitimate evidence from the DSS would take the form of manuscripts 
which avoid using Yhwh and refer to God. Furthermore, in order to determine 
where substitutions of the name are being made, the best indication would be 
in quotations from the Tanak. Short of that, the use of alternate forms in 
phrases that are found in the Tanak or are strongly reminiscent of those 
phrases. As I have shown, there are a number of such pieces of evidence which 
use ××“×•× ×™ (ʾădônay). I think there is actually better evidence for 
this than for your claims about אל.

Regards,

Martin Shields.