Subject: Are old words proper for Scripture? |
Bible Note: You're welcome! Or, Yod Hei Waw Hei / Yod Heh Waw Heh. Seems like there is disagreement over Vav or Waw, though today most lean toward or boldly claim it was Vav, I think. At this point, I go with W, thinking the current idea may have partly come about through confusions over older-English and German spellings, and some of the scholarship around that. (I am under the impression that much of the Biblical "scholarship" of the last few centuries before the 20th was in German.) Wasn't the ORIGINAL 1611 AV/KJV really spelled Iehouah? but when changing the KJV to "standardized" spellings in the 1700s, they changed all the Is to Js instead of Ys (not terribly smart because it confused people). The Name "Jesus", spelled in the 1611 version as "Iesvs" -- notice the v for a u -- ended up getting the old font lettering style corrected with the more-standard u. But with the 1611 spelling of "Iehovah", they didn't do the same thing!, but left the v in! confusing generations of readers and teachers and scholars alike. In German, the J was and is pronounced as a Y sound. And English is called a Germanic language. (In the USA, German vied with English early on.) The J is the same Y sound in the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). So, from those angles, I can see them thinking a J would be good. I don't know why the spelling changers missed the V in "IEHOVAH", leaving it in there. Maybe there was an argument even then about the Hebrew being Vav or Waw. LOL. I'd like to see some definitive info about this, as I have not read as much as I'd like to about it. AND, to help decide, I think what could really help is if we found ancient TRANSLITERATIONS of the Tetragrammaton. I did a paper in college on the "effability" of the Name, called "The Effable Ineffable", and believe I found a Greek transliteration that was similar to Ie(h)oua, and some other texts; but it's been a long time, and I don't have the document on my current computer, or remember the exact form, or what texts they were found in. :( What are the best places to find the Encyclopedia Judaica online? Regards, --corrective. ©2008. |