On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 7:37 PM, James Christian wrote:
> Hi,
> thanks for that. I just checked out the fragment you
> mentioned http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak//lxxjewpap/4QLevB.jpg YHWH is
> transcribed as IAW (Iota, alpha, omega). This would suggest Yahow just like
> the theorphoric names we've mentioned and seems to support Yahow... variants
> rather than Yahweh.
> James Christian
No, it does not suggest "Yahow". The -w in "Yahow" is a
misinterpretation, as if any
other addition would continue the w. But this is not the case, and is
unsupported by
the evidence, and even rejected by the evidence (the other evidence I
provided in
my post, which your response ignores). Also, -w- is transcribed in
Greek as ou so we
would expect iawou if there was indeed a w. Furthermore, even though
this particular
pronunciation does not support in itself Yahwe, it does not preclude another
competing pronunciation alongside it. As I mentioned the competing
prefix forms
attested in early Hebrew inscriptions suggest strongly that h- had no vowel
following it, and -w- was consonantal. This means that "Yahow" is a
misrepresentation of what really went on. It's not that -w- followed
an -o- vowel.
It's that -w- was reduced to an -o- vowel at the end of the word:
*yahw > *yaho,
after which open vowels lengthened: > ya:ho:. In this environment of Judean
yhw-, Israelite yw-, just like the Judean form became yah/yaho, so too
the northern
form might have become yaw/yawe. Your response, which completely ignored
everything I had to say, only gives a very strong and bad feeling that
your take on
the evidence is very one sided and close minded, even going to the point of
now
quoting me out of context.