Historical Research on the Sacred Name
What do scholars have to say about the Divine Name in history?
The "Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II [Assyrian king], has five tiers of bas-reliefs and 190 lines of inscription. Among the Tributes of the Nations is Jehu (Ya-u-a) 'son' of Omri. It was found at Birs-Nimroud by Sir Henry Layard and is now in the British Museum." -F.C. Norton, "A Popular Handbook of Information for Beginners in the Study of Assyriology," 1908, p.31. [This is very valuable for verifying the true Sacred Name, since this king of Judah was named after his God, "YA-U-A". Although the Hebrew language did not contain vowels, the Assyrian did, and enables us to know the correct pronunciation of the Sacred Name.]
"Diodorus of Sicily tells of constructions of the Queen Semiramis at a place in "Media" called 'Khauon', which, given the absence of 'V' in Classical Greek, is not a bad rendering of the Armenian 'Van'." -Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, II.13.iii. [Compare the spellings of the Sacred Name as Yahuah and as YHVH. In early times the U and V were interchangeable, and in fact the letter 'V' developed out of the letter 'U'.]
"[In the post-exilic province of Yehud] later governors names preserved in extrabiblical artifacts: Yeho'ezer, Yehezqiyah." -Currents In Research: Biblical Studies Vol. 1, Tamara C. Eskenazi, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, 1993, p.80. [Note that in Judah the early pre-exilic form of the Sacred Name was Yahu, while the later post-exilic form was Yeho or Yehe; in Samaria it was Yao, as shown elsewhere. Of course, Yahweh was an even later form of the Sacred Name.]
"That is to say, there never existed a set of vowels designed to accompany any of the pronounced consonants whose letters, vocalic or consonantal, were Y-H-W-H." -p.438, "The Names of God: Poetic Readings in Biblical Beginnings," Herbert Chanan Brichto, Oxford University Press, 1998.
"In the Elephantine texts the name for Israel's God is regularly and without exception YHW." [i.e., pronounced YAHU, not Yahweh] -ibid., p.438, n.28
"...a Shosu-land which the Egyptians called 'Yahwe' is attested in a topographical list of Amenophis III (c. 1395-1358)...it would have been situated somewhere in northern Canaan and not in the south, as many a wishful thinker assumed. I myself have proposed to interpret the name [m] Ia-we in the El-Amarna letter No. 154:6-7 as another designation of the people of YHWH...the people of YHWH were probably 'Apiru in the service of prince Aziru of Amurru in the middle of the 14th [century]." -Johannes C. DeMoor, Kampen, "Ugarit and Israelite Origins," p.213, in "Congress Volume Paris 1992," Brill, 1995. [Note: The Israelites had not yet conquered and entered northern Canaan at this time. This was near the time of the Exodus, centuries before the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, and possibly even before the exodus from Egypt took place!!! Was the name YAHWEH originally of foreign pagan origin and only much later during apostasy (when Israel adopted foreign pagan religious customs) replaced the Israelite name of God, Yahu/Yahuah? Was YAHWEH a pagan god? The tribe called above "Amurru" are known to us today as "Amorites," and were NOT Hebrews!]
Although ancient Hebrew did not have vowels to aid in pronunciation, we do know the following: Judah was spelled yh-w-d {i.e. Yahud] in Aramaic, and Ia-a-hu-du (yahudu) in Akkadian. -Per Raymond DeHoop, "Genesis 49 In Its Literary and Historical Context," Brill, 1999, p.120. [Note that dropping the last consonant gives the pronunciation of the Divine Name.]
THE ALTERATION OF THE DIVINE NAME:
Sanhedrin VII:5 (Mishna): "The blasphemer is not guilty until he reproduces exactly the Name, that is, until he make use of the exact Name."
"[This is] confirmation of the proposition…that the name was sometimes purposely mispronounced…the alteration was not accidental, but due to the purpose to prevent the utterance of the ineffable name…the alteration took place, accordingly, sometime during the 4th century, B.C.…to avoid its actual pronunciation…The altered word is 'entirely devoid of meaning' [a non-word]…In the 4th century, B.C., YHWH was pronounced YAHWA." -Dr. William R. Arnold, Andover Theological Seminary, "The Divine Name In Exodus 3:14," Journal of Biblical Literature 24, pp. 159-162.
[NOTE: "Yahwa" then over time became pronounced "Yahway," so neither of those pronunciations is original.]
Shaddai…most like is Aramaic, rather than Hebrew...in origin." P.34
Shaddai etymology "uncertain" probably from Shadad and means "the mighty one" or "the Almighty" –p.35,
Eloah is of Aramaic origin too. P.37
EL = "Lord of the Earth (and Sea)"
ELYON = "Lord of the Astral Sky, the seat of sun, moon, and stars Gen. 14:18-20, p.17
"…both deities were from the very beginning actually one, merely manifestations of Yahweh, and naught else." P.19
-Julian Morgenstern, Hebrew Union College, "The Divine Triad," Journal of Biblical Literature, no.64
"[In the post-exilic province of Yehud] later governors names preserved in extrabiblical artifacts: Yeho'ezer, Yehezqiyah." -Currents In Research: Biblical Studies Vol. 1, Tamara C. Eskenazi, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, 1993, p.80. [Note that in Judah the early pre-exilic form of the Sacred Name was Yahu, while the later post-exilic form was Yeho or Yehe; in Samaria it was Yao, as shown elsewhere. Of course, Yahweh was an even later form of the Sacred Name.]
"In the Elephantine texts the name for Israel's God is regularly and without exception YHW." [i.e., pronounced YAHU, not Yahweh] -ibid., p.438, n.28
"Since the Masoretes could have precluded the entire problem by vocalizing the opening preposition with a qames, it is my suspicion that here (as so often elsewhere) the Masoretes preserved a deliverate ambiguation in the text." -ibid., p. 439, n.3
In 701 B.C., Sil-Bel, king of Gaza and Padi, king of Ekron are assigned a large number of Judean cities "taken away by Sennacherib from Hazaqi-Iau (Hezekiah) king of Judah." -"Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Part 1", p.1172 [Again we see that this famous Judean king, Hezekiah, was actually known as Hazaqi-Iau, with the Divine Name appended at the end: Iau or Yahu. As an interesting connection, the Druids worshipped God as "IAO", probably pronounced identical to the Hebrew, "IAU" and an evidence of the influence of King Solomon's ships trading to the Western lands (1 Kings 9).]
"In the fifth and fourth centuries [B.C.], the Israelite [i.e. ten tribe House of Israel] form of the theophoric element in personal names, -yw instead of Judean -yhw, is attested among Judeans in Yehud [i.e. Persian-era Judah],in the Shephelah, and in Babylonia." -Ernst Axel Knauf, University of Berne, Switzerland, "Bethel: The Israelite Impact On Judean Language and Literature," p.294 (in "Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period," 2006). [Note: the Hebrew "-yw" is equivalent to our English letter form, "Iao" or "Yao," while the Hebrew "-yhw" is written in English as "Yahu." The House of Israel (ten tribes) had a slightly different pronunciation of the Divine Name than did Judah in the south, yet neither of them used the word, "Yahweh" in the pre-exilic period.]
Dr. Gary Knoppers, Pennsylvania State University, "Revisiting the Samarian Question in the Persian Period," in "Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period," 2006, page 276, writes on "Yahwistic names" in fourth century, B.C., Samaria:
hnnyh, or in English, Hananyah
yhw'nh, or in English, Jeho'anah (J should be pronounced as Y)
bdyh, or in English, Bodyah
dlyh, or in English, Delaiah
slmyh, or in English, Shelemiah
yrb'm, or in English, Jeroboam
[Note: We see above that the prefix "yhw" is pronounced "Yeho" or "Yahu", while the prefix "yw" is pronounced "Yeo" or "Yao" or the Druidic "Iao." The Hebrew "yh" is pronounced "iah" or "Yah".]
Hebrew King Abijah (as spelled in Chronicles) or Abijam (as in the Book of Kings), lived approx. B.C. 958, and was son of Judean King Rehoboam, Solomon's son. "...the Book of Kings, that chargeth him with the wickedness of his father's ways, doth him not that honor in his name, but hath changed Jah into Jam." -Maximilian Geneste, London, 1843, "The Parallel Histories of Judah and Israel," p.19.
[Note that the message here was that this wicked king was led by the people, not led by God! (i.e. Yah = God and Am = people)]
"It [Priestly Code] has God revealing himself in stages: to the first generations he reveals himslef as 'Elohim'; to the Patriarchs as 'El Shaddai'; and only to Moses and those after him was he revealed by his name 'YHWH'." -Alexander Rofe, "The History of the Cities of Reguge in Biblical Law," p.225 [Note: the Sacred Name has also changed over time in stages, from Yahu(a), to Yahwah, to Yahweh]
YHWH "was, as Professor Sayce has pointed out, known in Babylonia, in the Kassite age, down to the 14th century B.C. Mr. Clay, of the Philadelphia Exploration at Nippur, has found tablests, on which are the names Ya-a-u, Ya-u-ba-ni. The words Yau and Ilu, are used indifferently by Sargon, when Mentioning the king of Hamath." -F.C. Norton, "A Popular Handbook of Information for Beginners in the Study of Assyriology," 1908, p.95.
"Yau-ilu: Yahu is Good. This name is found in tablets dating from about B.C. 2000." -F.C. Norton, "A Popular Handbook of Information for Beginners in the Study of Assyriology," 1908, p.192.
"...the theophoric element YAHU commonly found in Judah" [in the pre-exilic era]. -Nadav Na'aman, "Sennacherib's Letter To God On His Campaign to Judah," in "Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors," 1994, p.151.
"Yehova" or "Yahu" pronunciation; "Yahweh" is an imperfective verb form in Hebrew:
A summary of scholarship is given in a Wikipedia article: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_name) which states, Yeho or "Yehō-" is the prefix form of "YHWH" used in Hebrew theophoric names; the suffix form Yahū" or "-Yehū" is just as common. This has caused two opinions:
In former times (at least from c.1650 CE), the prefix pronunciation "Yehō-" was sometimes connected with the full pronunciation "Yehova" derived from combining the Masoretic vowel points for "Adonai" with the consonantal Tetragrammaton YHWH.
Recently that, as "Yahweh" is likely an imperfective verb form, "Yahu" is its corresponding preterite or jussive short form: compare yiŝtahaweh (imperfective), yiŝtáhû (preterit or jussive short form) = "do obeisance".[28]
Those who argue for argument 1 above are: George Wesley Buchanan in Biblical Archaeology Review; Smith's 1863 A Dictionary of the Bible;[29] Section # 2.1 The Analytical Hebrew & Chaldee Lexicon (1848)[30] in its article הוה.
Smith's 1863 A Dictionary of the Bible says that "Yahweh" is possible because shortening to "Yahw" would end up as "Yahu" or similar.
Note: Much of the other scholarship presented on this site agrees that the form "Yahu" is ancient and preceded the form "Yahweh," rather than Yahu being a "shortening" of Yahweh.
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