YHWH - Ya'Wa' - revealed (Not Jehovah or Yahweh) (page 2)

hallelujah

YAWA,

I did a unit in Sanskrit - and a little Hindi. When no vowel is specified, a short "a" is the default vowel which goes with the consonant.

So "L" is pronounced "La" unless otherwise specified.

hallelujah

Yo Pole

Thats axactly haw I thank it goas

hallelujah....The problem, of course, is that Hebrew is not Sanskrit and its writing system does not observe this rule. In fact, vowels in general were not indicated, and if one were to insert "a" everywhere the language would make no sense. YHWH originally was like any other name or word in Hebrew and could have had a variety of different vowel values.

hallelujah

Hi Leolaia

I just got so sick of everyone giving YHWH such a nice little name (Yahweh or Jehovah) simply because it sounds nicer than yawa (or yhwh).

Clearly YHWH is not meant to be pronounced in four separate capitals sounded in English - Why Aich DoubleU Aich.

So I am thinking that this figment of so many disturbed imaginations- YHWH - which has resulted in so much killing in it's "name" should just be read off the page as it is without any added grace.

So in my view ya'wa', or possibly yach'wach' (since Hebrew has a penchant for gutterals) is a more fitting pronunciation and is no more or less correct than Yahweh and certainly far more accurate than Jehovah.

Since the YHWH of WT theology and JW imagination will kill at Armagedon all those who do not do obeisance to HIS () name, the WTBTS really ought to have dreamed up something closer to YHWH than "Jehoovah".

Pole

:So in my view ya'wa', or possibly yach'wach' (since Hebrew has a penchant for gutterals) is a more fitting pronunciation and is no more or less correct than Yahweh and certainly far more accurate than Jehovah.

Should we call it the impressionistic-esthetic phonology of Hebrew?

Having said that, it must have sounded really funny when Jesus read the Scriptures out in the synagouge:

And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,:

"Da Sparat af da Lard as apan mahsalf, bacauz hea (or heach, because Hebrew has a penchant for pharyngeal sounds) hath anaintad mahself ta preach da gaspel ta da paar..."

Pole

Narkissos

Hallelujah,

From your last post I think you are mixing up a lot of unrelated issues.

For a moment, please forget about whatever Yhwh may stand for and focus on the word itself.

It would not be there in writing (Yhwh) had it not been first a real word in oral speech, a specific phonetic construct, including what we reflectively break down into consonants and vowels; then, including specific (not "default") "vowels".

When you speak you pronounce words globally. You don't consciously add vowels to consonants. The notion of "default vowel" is meaningless on this level. Replacing the usual vowels by only one of them (as some of us have been jokingly doing on this thread) is unnatural and requires extra mental effort.

The writing of the name in consonant-letters, according to the Hebrew alphabetic system, is second to Hebrew speech. Any ancient Hebrew reader would transform the signs back into full words, including specific (not "default") vowels (remember, the Masoretic vowel-pointing is only from the 6th-9th century AD).

A modern Hebrew reader might read Yahwah (definitely not Yachwach as "ch," cheth, is another consonant, a written letter distinct from "h," he), adding artificial "default vowels," only because s/he doesn't know the corresponding word. It is very clear from the ancient Greek transliterations (where both vowels and consonants are written) that ancient Hebrew readers did not do that. The Greek forms Iabe / Iaoue / Iabai / Iaouai definitely point to a Yahweh reading for the full tetragrammaton.

"Yahweh" and "Jehovah" are not just alternative hypotheses that you can dismiss altogether. The former is very likely the ancient pronunciation; the latter is nothing but a middle-ages creation.

Pole

:"Yahweh" and "Jehovah" are not just alternative hypotheses that you can dismiss altogether. The former is very likely the ancient pronunciation; the latter is nothing but a middle-ages creation.

Plus, we can only make guesses about the phonemic pronounciation of ancient words, but not really about the phonetic one (as in the so-called narrow transcription). So any argument about the exact "correct phonetic pronounciation" is rather pointless. Let's take Latin as an example. You've got vowels spelled explicitely in ancient Latin texts. You can guess some phonetic aspects of the "original" pronounciation. But if you take two world-class latin philologists from two countries where different native languages are spoken you will have a lot of fun listening to them reading out the same piece of text. This is actually my experience from the Latin classes I had in Poland and Finland. And if you consider the diachronic and dialectic differences in the original pronounciations, the whole issue of phonetic guessing becomes even more tricky.

Pole

Narkissos

Good point Pole.

Transliterations into Greek, of course, are only an indication of contemporary pronunciation; their variations, between b and ou, and between e and ai, show some hesitations as to the exact pronunciation of the last syllable: vé, vè, wé, wè. But they do limit the scope of plausible hypotheses. Moreover, they are but one element in a network of evidence: conjugation morphology of West-Semitic roots -- of course standardised in Hebrew by the later Masoretic vowel-pointing, but backed up to a large extent by the earlier (and often wider) use of matres lectionis in pre-masoretic writings, such as the DSS -- is another. This makes at least a three-syllable form such as Yehowah almost impossible, and Yahweh, otoh, quite a plausible one.

What I meant to say is that our ignorance of the exact pronunciation is only relative, and shouldn't be used as an excuse for any outsider proposal. (Sort of reminds me of scholar's fake argument in another topic: the fact that we can hesitate between 587 and 586 does not warrant 607 by any means.)

hallelujah

This makes at least a three-syllable form such as Yehowah almost impossible, and Yahweh, otoh, ;quite a plausible one.

Hi Nark

A very good book in this regard is "IS IT GOD'S WORD" by Joseph Wheless (published 1926)

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_wheless/is_it_gods_word/

According to this author YHWH is more correctly pronounced Yaho - though I accept that your reasoning may have some validity notwithstanding that language can easily change over a thousand years especially when it is translated into another language.

According to Wheless - god is referred to as YY in Gen ii:4. This is of course translated as Jehovah in the New World Translation which is clearly wrong.

(P.S. unfortunately Wheless did subscribe to the theory current among white Australians and Americans that the so-called "aryan race" was the noble race. I mention this because Wheless is so bold as to state that "this my book speaks truly" but of course in regards to "the aryan race" his book speaks falsely - there is no such thing as an aryan race. Apart from this unfortunate lapse his book does ring true to me.

daystar

*shrug* My attempt in rather ignoring the issue is to pronounce the letters themselves without concern about what vowels may be where - Yod Heh Vav (or Vau) Heh.

YHWH - Ya'Wa' - revealed (Not Jehovah or Yahweh)

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