...
Or indeed this form could have been pronounced YAHWE, as these letters
predated the wide use of matres lectionis, and most interpreters
understand the final he of YHWH (however it is pronounced) as a mater
lectionis.
I cannot imagine that any Hebrew linguist would suggest that the YHW in the
Elephantine papyri was pronounced YAHWE. In that case we would expect a
final H. ...
Not at all. There is a general phonological rule by which an original
qamats in this position is reduced to sheva, and a patah is impossible in
this position.
Your words are both right and wrong. The Masoretes used the rule you mention, and it
may have been very old, because the Masoretic vowel tradition seems to go
back to the B.C.E. ...
... There is good evidence that the tetragrammaton existed
before the matres were invented, and this means that all the four letters were used as consonants
and not as vowels.
The two independent forms of the divine name found in the Tanakh are YH and YHWH. My point was that the form YH in proper nouns as a rule comes at the end of the name. In the few instances were these letters are the first element of the name ( I count 14 such names with a Yah-element that can refer to the abbreviated divine name), there is no vowel following the H. So the particular name is formed on the basis of the abbreviated divine name YH and not on the basis of the full name YHWH. ...
... To argue that the "a" vowel (actually qamets and not patah) ...
... of this YAH-element suggests that the full name YHWH was pronounced YAHWE betrays a lack of phonological knowledge. ...
...
The name Yeho$ua is interesting in our context because it has four consonants just as YHWH, ...
... and because the the first syllable of the divine element has shewa and the second syllable has holem. This shows that the short vowel shewa would be found in such a word with three syllables and not only in longer words. ...
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