Customer Reviews

The Name of God Y.eH.oW.aH Which Is Pronounced As It Is Written I_Eh_Ou_Ah: Its Story

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Plato taught that God has no name (Timaios 28b,c). Philo, the Gnostics, Justin Martyr, and Clement of Alexandria likewise considered God nameless or unnameable. However, Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate, wrote in his Prologus Galeatus: "And we find the name of God, the Tetragram, in certain Greek volumes even to this day expressed in ancient letters." Due to the fact that these Hebrew letters were consonants, and there were originally no written characters for the vowels, it is held that the pronunciation of God's name is lost to us. Or it is thought God's name should be pronounced "Yahweh" due to the weight attached to the evidence of the Egyptian Elephantine Papyri. Gerard Gertoux in quite convincing fashion demonstrates the inaccuracy of these concepts in the light of compelling linguistic and historical evidence. Gertoux asks (p.114), "Was there really a prohibition on pronouncing the Tetragram in the first century? The answer is no, as, according to the Talmud this prohibition appeared from the middle of the second century." Gertoux readily exposes a solidly entrenched factoid (p.3): "that Jehovah is a barbarism originating from a wrong reading. As unbelievable as it may seem, this last affirmation is known to be false among scholars. This crude error has been denounced by Hebraists of all confessions, and with the support of the Vatican's Congregation of propaganda, but without result." Worthwhile reading, for as Gertoux quotes Maimonides, "it is impossible to have a deep relationship with a nameless God."

Although technical in substance, this book was fascinating. It contained excellent facts while sticking to the accuracy of the Bible. Must reading for any Bible student.

Note: the stars do not match the rating with how I currently feel about this book!

Gerard Gertoux goes from the beginning of time til the present and explains (in his opinion) why Jehovah is the "closest in form" to the original pronunciation.

However, it is written from a scholar's point of view, and therefore very hard to understand. The man is obviously a Frenchman and expresses his thoughts in a French style. Even when someone credits his research at the start, if it's a Frenchmen, he keeps the quote written in French! I assumed the book was written in English...

He obviously doesn't understand that "Yah" and "Yahu" are abbreviations (shortened forms) for the divine name Jehovah. He gets the term "abbreviation" confused with subsitute! Lord and God are substitutes, but certain not "Yah" or "Yahu!"

I think if this book had a pronunciation key of the various forms of the divine name in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, that would make it a lot easier to understand what he meant.

However, I don't want to "push all the negatives," because not all the information in this book is incorrect. He does cover a lot of territory, goes into a lot of depth into the languages with their grammar (speakers of various semitic languages would probably find this book a gem in that regard and would get the most out of it), uses a few diagrams and so forth, so in that respect, maybe I am saving this review for 3 stars from my earlier more positive review.

I did research on the early Church Fathers and apparently their form is more like Yahweh which he touches on in his book but seems to disguise the evidence from his audience. However the more you read it the more (I believe) his arguments for Yehowah are flawed.

This would probably be one of the most difficult books to understand and needs to be put in more layman's terms... I read this book 2-3 times and the more I read it the more I misunderstood and disagreed with him and crazy as that sounds. Ironically, the form Yehowah (Jehovah) does not seem to go on a lot of evidence. I now believe that "Yahweh" is more accurate that "Jehovah." And I no longer believer this notion that the original Hebrew had a "J" in it and I think even though "Yahweh" is more acceptable, I think like most people that NO ONE REALLY KNOWS THE TRUE PRONUNCIATION!

Linguists recognise that in the evolution of a language, the vowels change more noticably than the consonents. For example, The short vowels of British Recieved Pronunciation are manifested as dipthongs or even tripthongs in many accents of the Southern United States. In 1940s Britain, the present [ć] phoneme was pronounced more like [e], and this is a time difference of only 60 years!!!

Anglo-Saxon words of 900 years ago, are recognised by etymologists as antecendents of Modern English primarily by their consonents, because vowels, semi-vowels, and glides change even from generation to generation. The Anglo-Saxon language of 900 years ago is a "foreign language" in that it has changed beyond recognition due to linguistic factors such as ablaut, semi-vocalisation, palatisation.

The fact that the name YHWH is made up entirely of slippery semi-vowels, and possibly aspirants, renders it very difficult for linguists to extrapolate an original form.

palatal [j] --- semi-vowel [y] --- vowel[i]

labiodental[v] --- biablial[β] --- semi-vowel[w] --- vowel[u]

(This demonstrates semi-vocalisation, palatisation and the forming of approximants)

Ablaut is shown in the gradual vowel changes of the Proto-Indo-European *[pod] to the Latin *[ped] to the authors own language French: 'pied' [pye] ('d' not reflected in modern pronunciation)

To be objective though, the change from PIE *[pod] to the Anglo-Saxon [fo:t] to our present pronunciation of 'foot' [fut] is less striking with regard to consonent preservation, but we still notice a general trend of vowel "slipperyness".

Ablaut (or apophony) is also demonstrated by the the pluralisation of 'man' to 'men' or that of 'goose' to 'geese'. This is common in Amharic, ANOTHER SEMITIC LANGUAGE.

ASSUMING that the Hebrew language underwent linguistic changes similar to Amharic, in the 1070 years between the first and last books of the Old Testanment (compared to the 900 years between Beowulf and the present literature), it is quite possible that many pronunciations of The Name came in and went out of use, especially in view of the Jewish prohibition of pronouncing the name.

Due to the ablaut of the unwritten and "un-pin-downable" vowels in Hebrew, the name Y.eH.oW.aH (Jehovah/Yehowah), could easily have been Y.aH.oW.eH (Yahweh/Yahoweh) or even hypothetical Y.iH.uW.H (Jihuβh) or iY.H.uW.H (Ihuh).

I appreciate the depth of research and reasoning that Gertoux has undertaken but i still believe from a linguistic point of view that is impossible to determine the original pronunciation of The Name and therefore any dogmatic attempts to support ANY of the varients are futile, even with the support of personal names such as Yehoshuah/Yahushuah/Yeshua.