Talk:Iabe

IABE DISCUSSIONS

Is IaBe a translation of "yafe"?

Gene Gardner wrote:

Thoughts of A Karaite: Yohanan Shalom Jacobson

Originally the Samaritans or Shamerim (keepers, as they call themselves) were divided into two groups,

Dosithean and Sabbuai.

The Sabbuai later became known as the Kushaniyya,

the modern day Samaritans are from this group.

The Kushaniyya refused to pronounce the divine name

and supplanted it with the term Shema

(Aramaic for "The Name").

The Dositheans on the other hand used the divine name,

but as they no longer exist it cannot be known how they pronounced the divine name.

Many scholars claim that the pronunciation of the Divine Name as "Yahweh" is accurate due to Samaritan inscriptions written in Greek which write the Divine Name as "Yabe."

The Samaritans in most instances pronounce beth, veth, waw, pe and fe as a "b".

But what these scholars fell to realize is that the Samaritans like the Rabbinates subsituted a the Name with another word when they came accross the Name written in the Torah.

The Samaritans unlike the Rabbinates

did not read Adhonai when they came accross the Divine Name,

but "yabe" or innon-Samaritan pronunciation "yafe" (Beautiful).

Therefore the pronunciation of the divine name as Yahweh is inaccurate

based upon the Samaritan/Kushaniyya desire 'not' to pronounce the divine name.

Thus, not even the Samaritans to our knowledge remained as one group, who were in complete agreement with one another.

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How do you answer Gene's point that Yabe may derive from Yafe?

Is it true that the Samaritans would have pronounced Yafe like Yabe?

Or is this a pious myth to deflect the charge that Samaritans were misusing the Name?

Is IaBe a translation of "yafeh"?

The article quoted below is titled: “God’s Name51.pdf” Tetragrammaton

This article, like the article quoted by Gene Gardner, critiques the Greek spelling “IaBe”, believing that it was inaccurately based on the Samaritan pronunciation, "yafeh", "the beautiful one".

Note that b-hebrew transcriptions within brackets were Hebrew font in the original Article!

Snip/snip

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Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounce the name YHVH as IABE (pronounced Ya-be).

Now if we were to translate this directly back into Hebrew we would get something like [ Y:ABEH ] Yabeh.

This example highlights some of the problems with using Greek transcriptions to precisely reconstruct Hebrew pronunciation.

First, we must observe that ancient Greek did not have an H sound in the middle of words.

So the first H in YHVH, whatever the vowels attached to it, would be dropped by the Greek.

Secondly, Greek did not have a W or a V sound.

So the third letter of the divine name must also be dropped or distorted by the Greek.

Finally the vowels of ancient Greek were much different than the Hebrew vowels system.

Biblical Hebrew had 9 vowels which do not have exact correspondents vowels in Greek.

For example, Hebrew's vocal Sheva

(pronounced like a short i in "bit")

has no equivalent in ancient Greek.

So whatever Theodoret of Cyrus heard from the Samaritans, his mission of transcribing the name in Greek was hopeless.

What of the form IABE?

Most scholars claim that the B in IABE is a distortion of a Hebrew Vav and that the first He of YHVH dropped because Greek does not have a H sound in the middle of a word.

As a result most scholars translate the Samaritan IABE back into Hebrew as Yahweh [ Y:AH:WEH ].

[Note the author of this article places a hatef-patah under the yod]

This is the "scholarly guess" of which the Anchor Bible Dictionary spoke.

The reason this pronunciation is given so much credence is that it is assumed that the Samaritans were not yet under the ban of the Rabbis and still remembered how to pronounce the name in the time of Theodoret.

But is this the best explanation of the Samaritan IABE?

It turns out that the ancient Samaritans called God [ YFPEH ] Yafeh meaning, the beautiful one.

Now in Samaritan Hebrew the letter Pe is often replaced by B.

So what probably happened is the Samaritans told Theodoret that God is called Yafeh, "the beautiful one", but in their corrupt pronunciation of Hebrew it came out as Yabe.

This seems supported by the fact that the Samaritans did in fact adopt the ban on the name, perhaps even before the Jews.

Instead of pronouncing the name YHVH the Samaritans call God [ $:MF) ]shema.

Now shema is usually understood as an Aramaic form of hashem meaning "the name", but we cannot help but observe the similarity between the Samaritan shema and the pagan [ ):A$IYMF) ] ashima, which according to 2Ki 17:30 was one of the gods worshipped by the Samaritans when they first came to the Land of Israel in the 8th century BCE.

So already c.700 BCE the Samaritans called upon Ashema and not YHWH.

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snip/snip

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How do you answer the point that Yabe may derive from Yafeh?

Is it true that the Samaritans would have pronounced Yafe like Yabeh?

Or is this a pious myth to deflect the charge that Samaritans were misusing the Name?

Gene Gardner: Yahweh and Samaritan origins

Gene Gardner g_gardner1234 at yahoo.com Sun Jul 24 19:01:13 EDT 2005

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There are many different versions out there about how the name “Yahweh” came into existance.

In one discussion that I read, it was said the Samaritans

had inadvertently played a part in the rendering

that had ended up as Iabe in the Greek.

It was reported that here were two groups of Samaritans

that were divided on usage of the name.

One group used the name,

while the other group supposedly

substituted the word "yapheh" in place of the name.

Note! James Strong pronounces "Yapheh" as "yaw-feh" which probably sounds like "yah-veh"

It is my understanding that yapheh translates as beautiful in a few of the semitic languages.

This pronunciation was heard by some of the early writers,

and was transliterated into Greek as Iabe.

From there it is believed that it morphed its way into

Yahveh/Yahweh.

H03303 hpy from (03302) Transliterated Word Yapheh fair, beautiful, handsome

I am not sure if there is any scholarship behind this idea,

as Yahweh existed in cuneiform from other cultures,

so I will just throw it out there for discussion among the list members.

Potential new sub-section

Gene Gardner wrote:

>>>

Many scholars claim that the pronunciation of the Divine Name as "Yahweh" is accurate due to Samaritan inscriptions written in Greek which write the Divine Name as "Yabe."

The Samaritans in most instances pronounce beth, veth, waw, pe and fe as a "b".

>>>

When Theodoret learned the Samaritan name which he translated into Greek as "IaBe", the "B" in Greek had a "v" sound.

It would appear that Theodoret heard "Iave" and translated that into Greek as as "IaBe".

In classical Greek, beta was pronounced b, as you would expect. However, over the course of two and a half thousand years the pronunciation has gradually altered, so that in modern Greek the letter is pronounced v and called veeta. This shift is not as bizarre as it first appears: both b and v are pronounced with the lips, the main difference being whether you let the sound go (b) or hold onto it for a while, blowing it (v). ¹

Footnotes

1. SCBD The Greek Alphabet: Beta

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Discussion of [jɑ-vɛ'] for יָפֶה‎ [jɑ-fɛ']

For pronunciation of transcriptions, see the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The person(s) above did little to leave room for comments from others, so I went ahead and started a different topic to allow for discussion.

In phonetics, it is said that b and p are "minimal pairs," which means that there is only one phonological feature that they do not share. They are both bilabial stops. The one (b) is voiced, while the other (p) is unvoiced. Thus, it makes sense that they could alternate between languages.

The transition between the f in יָפֶה‎ and the b in Ἰαβέ requires the shifting of two features. From f to p is a shift in quality of aspiration, and the shift from p to b is one of voice. This is according to the Erasmian pronunciation of the Koine, which is most common among teachers and scholars of New Testament Greek.

There is a trend now to pronounce the Koine (and Classical) Greek with the pronunciation currently used in Greece, in which the β is pronounced as the v in English. If this is how the writers of the period used the β, then we have a direct transliteration of the scholarly suggest Yahweh [jɑ-vɛ'], where the Hebrew letter Vav ו‎ bears the sound that it currently carries in Ashkenazi and Sefardi pronunciations [v] rather than the older [w].

Whereas Ἰαβέ with the Erasmian pronunciation would require two shifts from יָפֶה‎, [jɑ-vɛ'] would only require one shift, and it would be much more likely. Remember that the Vav was originally pronounced like a w, but came to be pronounced as v. This explains the difference between "Iabe" and "Iaoue" (which we often see as an alternative transcription in Greek sources). There was no Greek equivalent of [w], so they used a vowel combination to represent this. "Iaoue" (presumably ) would also sound like Yahweh if the w bears the sound of English: [jɑ-wɛ'].

In other words:

Greek	English	IPA
(β = [v])	Yahweh	[jɑ-vɛ']
(ου = [w])	Yahweh	[jɑ-wɛ']

Interesting discussion. I just wish that the article would stick to the issue rather than wandering through questions of Samaritan origins, etc. It should probably also be written by someone who is familiar with the Greek sources so that they can be pointed out. I would appreciate the references. :)

Regards,
יונה‎

Relevance and Creativity

While a discussion of the history of the Samaritans is interesting, it is hardly the meat of what a discussion on ΙΑΒΕ (that is, various Greek transliterations of the Divine Name יהיה‎). I would be very interested in seeing where the accents are placed in the edited texts that we now have. This could be a very interesting and important article in the Wikipedia system. Instead, it is full of irrelevant discussion about where the Samaritans came from, which would be far more appropriately linked as an aside to Samaritans. This article should focus only on the issues of transliteration as they existed between the Hebrew of Second Temple times and the Greek that was spoken at the same time (). However, since this article attempts to focus on only one of the several competing theories of how the Tetragrammaton ought to have been pronounced, it should lay out succinctly the proofs that can be pulled for this transliteration. If it cannot be shortened and the copying removed from it, then perhaps this article should be deleted altogether in deference to the discussion at Tetragrammaton. - Yonah mishael 18:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)