>Yes, James, this does make sense, at least to me as a linguist. Your
>explanation of how Hebrew W became Greek beta in IABE etc is good, and
>this is good evidence for a pronunciation Ya(h)ve derived from Yahwe;
>the Greek forms IAOUE and IAOUAI also clearly support the pronunciation
>Yahwe. So Rolf is wrong to state that there is no ancient evidence for
>Yahwe.
Do you know where these transliterations come from? Which cultures?
Which dialects? What dates? Which MSS? I just knew about them because
I read about them once in an Anchor Bible Dictionary. But I would
be very interested in learning more about their actual sources.
The Greek forms IAOUE and IAOUAI seem to strongly support a trisyllabic
pronunciation with long middle o/u vowel. I think it is reasonably clear
that the initial I is supposed to represent the yodh consonant. And that
the first vowel was an 'a' and that the 'he' we read in b-hebrew is meant
to be in this position 'IA.H.OU.E/AI'. Which all seems to bolster the
evidence we have seen in hebrew names (Yaho/Yahu) that there was clearly a
long o/u vowel understood to rightly reside in the 2nd syllable.
I'm sure I read somewhere that IABE transliteration was of Samaritan influence
but am not sure of the origin of such a conclusion. But if this is true
would not this just suggest a mere dialectal variation of the more authentic
yehudan trisyllabic version 'YaHoWaH/YaHoaH'.
Theodoret (d. c. 457), born in Antioch, writes that the Samaritans pronounced the name IaBe (in another passage, IaBai), the Jews Aia.
Finally, I find it difficult to entertain the idea that the final 'he' was
nothing more than matres lectionis because the consonant was clearly part
of the orginal root 'HWH' which is the verb in question. ...
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