tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 16 10:02:23 1996
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Re: Words for "God"
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>Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 05:59:22 -0700
>From: "A.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
>Re words for "God", I once tried to translate the Old Testament sentence "He
>is who he is" (Hebrew <yahwe man yahwe>) used to explain the old Hebrew Divine
>Name.
Um, you mean "'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh" (Exod something:something)? <man>
looks Arabic to me; have you gotten something confused? That's in first
person, so it's more like "I am who I am" (or even I will be who I will be,
etc). The tetragrammaton YHWH appears to be related to the root "to be"
(H-Y-H, actually, not Y-H-Y... though it may also have something to do with
the less common root H-W-H, "to strike," indicating power, but existence is
more likely), though its exact form is unclear.
> The nearest I could get was {ghaH ghaHbogh ghaH} = "He is `he who is
>him'".
Not bad. Cumbersone, though. And even in the Bible God isn't called "I am
who I am" anywhere outside of that passage, is he?
> It seems likeliest to me that the Hebrew name <Yahwe> is a by-form of
>the verb form "He who is", "He who exists" (root Y-H-Y, Y-H-W) (distinct from
>surrounding nations' heathen gods such as Baal etc which by definition do not
>exist), i.e. {<exist>bogh ghaH}, or {<exist>wI'}, or perhaps {<exist>wI''a'} -
>if a word for "exist" can be found or provided. But I have seen a guess that
>the Hebrew verb form in <Yahwe> is causative: "He who creates".
Also plausible, given the forms the H-Y-H takes.
~mark
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