From: pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey)
Subject: Re: The Adam and Eve Thing
Organization: I am that I am
	<BuKzy5.n3C@nntp-sc.Intel.COM>
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 20:22:06 GMT

in various prior articles, rescorla@rtnmr.chem.yale.edu (Eric Rescorla) writes:
<YHWH actually means something like "He who creates" ...
<Ratshit. Go read a textbook on Hebrew Bible. You clearly don't understand
<anything about this issue. ...
<You really are a genuine imbecile.
<Let me give you a clue. Early written Hebrew is a consonantal language. ...
<Modern scholars have attempted at various times to determine a
<vocalization for the name. Yahweh and Jehovah are two such attempts. ...
<In fact, if you'd taken the time to check even the most minimal
<of references, you would have known this. It's explained quite
<clearly in the introduction to the RSV and NRSV, and in almost ...
<In a word, bullshit. ...
<Mystical bullshit. You clearly have no clue of what you speak, sir. ...

Yo! Stop fronting and use your head!
In the interest of sanity, there is a remote possibility that YHWH is a name.
Here's the background: Start with the Semetic tribes, nomadic herding people
who tend their flocks on the grasslands of the Arabic peninsula. In drought
years they go down into the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates where the
people are irrigation farmers and perhaps toward Egypt where grass can be
found. They have an oral story telling tradition of presumably what would 
become the written Torah. They were certainly influenced by Mesopotamian and
Egyptian culture and probably picked up other cultures since the coastal strip
on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea was the highway between the cultures
of S. Europe, S. Asia and E. Africa. But they have a strong tribal indentity
and always maintain a separate sense of themselves, even after living in
Mesopotamia for extended periods, that is they did not readily assimilate.
Then the oral tradition begins to be written down, but only the constanants.
Written Hebrew is created as a phonetic language, an idea presumably from the 
Phoenecians, a maritime culture of the E. Med. , as opposed to the written
languages of Egypt (Hieroglyph) or Mesopotamia (Cuneiform). Prehaps this
written form without vowels was only a guide, a cue sheet for those who
already knew most of the words. Perhaps the concept of written vowels did not
occur until later. The transfer of these sacred stories from oral to written
was a very slow process. Much later, people began to make a notation of the
vowels on the texts, to actually indicate how to pronounce the written words
without prior knowledge of the oral text. You can see that a shift from oral
to written tradition is taking place. The word for the Lord, YHWH, was first
written with only constanants, as where all written words. It is possible that
the pre-written oralists actually pronounced something for what would later
be written as YHWH, this we will most likely never know. But, when the time
came to note vowels in the text, YHWH was noted as being pronounced either as
Lord or God, in other words, the actual word YHWH was not pronounced. In
Judaism, this makes complete sense, the Lord is transcendent of name, the Lord
is "I am that I am". But when it came time for the various Christian factions
to translate YHWH, they for some reason insisted on finding a name for this
Jewish God. Perhaps the people they sought to convert where only interested in
Gods with names, as was the pagan tradition of S. Europe. Thus the search for 
the "correct" pronounciation of YHWH continues to this day. For some reason, 
many Christians don't seem to really understand this Jewish God or the Hebrew 
scriptures, you'd think they would ask the Jews who ought to know, after all 
it is their religion, isn't it? Instead the Christians thought they knew 
better, they came up with Yahweh, Jahweh and Jehovah, on various theories. 
Perhaps one day all Christians will come to know the true name for this Jewish 
God. Perhaps one day they will realize that the so-called "Old Testament" of 
theirs is really the scriptures of Judaism, once they clean up the mistakes.
Perhaps they will come to know the meaning of transcendent. Perhaps they will
get the meaning of "I am that I am".
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