On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 5:58 PM, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> Dear Dave,
>
> Gesenius was a very fine scholar. But the form Yahweh is an
> artificial construction that has absolutely no basis in ancient
> Hebrew sources. As a matter of fact, today we have no knowledge as to
> how YHWH was pronounced i the day of the first or second temple.
> However, on the basis of the use of a part of YHWH in personal Hebrew
> names (also seen in Akkadian transcriptions of some of these names),
> the name of God probably had three syllables and not two, as is the
> case with Yahweh.
What Akkadian evidence are you referring to? The standard Akkadian
evidence of yhw is yau, which can be interpreted as the full name
(-yahwu). Is this what you read as "part of YHWH"? If so, in what
other theophoric name do we find only part of the deity's name
used?