...
Peter,
James, I brought in the word "scholarly" only because Steven referred to the "consensus on a scholarly
forum" and to "scholarship". Steven seemed to argue that the self-perpetuating group of "scholars"
whose consensus since the 19th century has been for "Yahwe" had changed its mind.
"self-perpetuating group" -- this almost sounds like a parody of the
"scholarship"position :-)
Peter
But I see no evidence of this. That same group of "scholars" continues to support
"Yahwe" and is largely unaware of the arguments of outsiders to whom they would pay
little attention.
Fine. Again, are they really very relevant ? Who are they ? Do they have any current
writings ? Do they offer more insight than the diverse crew on this forum ? Is the
fact that they are not interested in dialog a point of favor or disfavor ? Is there
really a "they" there ? :-)
...
Nehemiah Gordon's view is that the dropping of the cholam was the full Adonai qere methodology, and he gives arguments for that view.
...
Here is the critical Nehemiah discussion-- note that the 50 mentioned here are,
seemingly, NOT the Elohim cases. Yehovah is mentioned, not "Yehovih".
"This means that the Masoretic scribes knew the name to be Yehovah and suppressed its pronunciation by omitting the "o". This
is confirmed by the fact that the scribes actually forgot to suppress the vowel "o" in a number of instances. The way scribes copied
ancient writings was to read the words either out loud or under their breath. The scribe sometimes made a mistake and wrote what he heard from
his own lips, even if this differed from what he read with his eyes. This is a common mistake in modern English as well. When English speakers
are writing quickly or typing they often write down "know" instead of "no" or "their" instead of
"there". This is not due to ignorance since most people who make this mistake know full well the difference between these homonyms.
Instead this is an error stemming from how the words sound. In the case of the divine name the scribe knew that
the word YHVH sounded like Yehovah and even though he was supposed to suppress the vowel "o" he left
it in, in a few dozen instances. In the L19b Masoretic manuscript, the earliest complete Masoretic manuscript
(and the basis of BHS), the name is written Yehovah 50 times out of a total of 6828. It is significant that no
other vowel besides "o" was "accidentally" inserted into the divine name."
Peter has counterpointed this ..
"The evidence seems to be that the holam was never written."
...
...
NOTE ON QERE PERPETUUM
btw.. this is an important summary of one paragraph from Nehemiah, relates to
a question,
I believe by James.
"Yet nowhere in Scripture is there an instance of Qere Perpetuum in which the word written
one way but read another way always lacks a scribal note. If we were to apply the Qere Perpetuum
rule to YHVH it would be unique in this class of Qere-Ketiv since it never has a scribal note
saying "read it Adonai", not once in the 6828 times the word appears."
=============================
MODERN PRINTED TEXTS
And Nehemiah claims that later printings of the Masoretic Text actually modified the vowels to match the Adonai theory, which is rather interesting. This might have had a lot to do with the enthusiasm of the "scholarship" of the last 100+ years.. .they were used to looking at the wrong vowels in their texts !
================================
HEY DISCUSSION
"by the rules of the Hebrew language the first hey in YHVH must have some
vowel...."
Peter Kirk
This point is misleading. The Hebrew *language* does not require a pronounced vowel following the he. There are many words e.g. EHYEH "I am" in which he is followed directly by a consonant. The rule which Gordon presumably has in mind is a rule of the Hebrew *writing system*, with Tiberian Masoretic pointing, by which, except at the end of a word, each consonant which is to be pronounced (i.e. excluding matres lectionis - but he is never a mater lectionis in the middle of a word) must carry a point. But that point may be not a vowel point, but sheva, which (in a context like this) indicates the lack of a vowel sound, that the consonant is the first in a consonant cluster.
Schmuel
Yes, I was doing a small extract, and I believe you had seen the article
For the forum, here is more in context, and basically the same points are
covered by Nehemiah.
"A fundamental rule of the Hebrew language is that a consonant in the middle of a
word must be followed by either a vowel or a silent sheva. Now there are sometimes
silent letters in the middle of a word that have no vowel or sheva (e.g. the Aleph in
bereshit ). But this is never the case with a he in the middle of a word. In Biblical
Hebrew, it is common for H to be silent at the end of a word, but there is no such
thing as a silent he in the middle of a word. This means that by the rules of the
Hebrew language the first he in YHVH must have some vowel. So what happened to this
missing vowel? Perhaps the answer can be found in another medieval scribal practice.
When the biblical scribes wanted to omit a word they would remove its vowels. The
medieval reader knew that when he came across a word without vowels that this was a
word that was not to be read. It is possible that the medieval scribes omitted the
vowel in the first he รค of YeHVaH to prevent the readers from reading the name out
loud."
And the fact that these are writing system rules is precisely the issue, we
are dealing with folks who are reading text from the Masoretic writing system
:-)
Peter
However, this rule needs to be modified in cases of Qere and Ketiv, especially where there are fewer Qere vowels than Ketiv consonants,
It would help here if you could you show other qere/ketiv cases that have comparable ungrammatical omissions in the vowels in the Masoretic Text.
...
Peter
But my point was explicitly about Codex L, the basis of BHS. It seems clear that by Ben Chayyim's time the pointings of YHWH had been regularised, probably to just two - and perhaps another two after prefixes. But at the earlier stage of L there were at least nine different pointings, although four of these are found just once or twice which may indicate copying errors..... And it is going back to this earlier stage, before Ben Chayyim, which is helping us to understand the original intentions of these pointings.
That depends on your viewpoint. There are many that feel that an "older"
manuscript can simply be a corrupt manuscript, of less value.
Examples:.. In the NT realm, Aleph and B were maintained in good physical
shape precisely because they were junk and unused. ...
... The Leningrad text is just one Masoretic Text, not up to the standards
of the Received Text.
From this viewpoint, what really counts is the Received Text. And it is not likely to have the annoying small copying errors. And the consistency of such a text is not just accidental, but actually a reflection of the process of Inspiration --> Preservation of Scripture at work.
Now of course, in scholarship circles "Inspiration" and "Preservation" of scripture are often considered off limits :-) However, it is important to mention that our view of manuscripts will in fact often be a function of our view of those concepts. And that is why I personally consider the Ben Hayim text far more significant than Leningrad.
...
But it seems that in the great majority of cases the Masoretic scribes didn't write the holam from Y:HOWIH, as well as in Y:HOWFH. So a different explanation is needed of why the holam is sometimes written and sometimes not.
Agreed. Although note my interest is principally in the Ben Hayim text, as discussed above :-)
However, this Leningrad reference possibly can be forwarded to Nehemiah, asYou are welcome to forward to him anything I have posted to the list.
it seems he built a lot of his views on the implication of a consistent
cholam inclusion in the Elohim cases.
That does not necessarily overall make his general case weaker or stronger, (ie. that the cholam is part of the Tetragrammaton) but it potentially deep-sixes one or two of the logical threads therein.
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