tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 17 08:20:43 1996
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Re: Words for "God"
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>Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 23:34:48 -0700
>From: [email protected]
>In a message dated 96-07-16 13:06:55 EDT, ~mark writes:
><< 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" >>
>The main reason that I as a Jew do not even attempt to pronounce the
>tetragrammaton is that I would butcher the name of G-d horribly and I wish
>only to pay the highest respect to G-d by pronouncing even a facsimile of any
>of the many names correctly.
I don't pronounce it either, for the same reason. The pointing
(vocalization) of the Name, if it was ever known and set down and
determined, is no longer known (and the pointing of just about all the rest
of Hebrew has undergone drastic changes since Biblical times as well,
according to most Hebrew scholars).
> In other words, the point is: YHWH (yud hey
>vav hey) are the unpointed Hebrew letters for three parts of "to be"
>simultaneously. Hayah = I was; Hoveh = I am; Yihyeh = I will be (Note that
>these are actually third person, but G-d was speaking in first person to
>Moses). In my opinion, I cannot simultaneously pronounce all three of these
>words; so, I do not even try.
The derivation of YHWH isn't really known. The explanation that it's a
combination of forms of HYH, or that it's some other derivation of HYH is a
popular one, but isn't the only one or the only possible one. Actually,
I've long thought it should have been treated as simply a name, and that
Bible translators through the ages have done a disservice translating it as
"The LORD" or equivalent phrases. Of course, by that logic we'd have to
pronounce the Name, and that leads to religious problems as written above,
as well as pragmatic problems in that we don't know how the thing was
pronounced.
>>From the klingon.faq or kli-hist.txt I gleaned that the Klingon name for G-d
>is Durgath [sic]. And, the Klingons believe in Fate and relief from Fate by
>doing good deeds (honorable deeds, most likely) to attract Durgath's
>attention.
This is news to me, but I'm not a real buff of Klingon culture. Didn't
Worf say that the Klingon gods were all dead, killed a millenium (Actually,
I think he said "a millenia") back by Klingon warriors who were exasperated
with them?
>In conlcusion, since only MO sources are canon, joH'a' and qa' work fine for
>me.
With you here.
~mark
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