Thread: Refunds and Religion

Originally Posted by Redhat7

Yes, I am sure many do believe they know how to pronounce gods name... but they cannot be 100% sure. The Hebrew language is written in a way that does not include the vowels, the vowels are indicated by 'dots' or 'symbols', thats why we only have the four letters YHWH. Copiests removed the little dots and symbols from th early Bibles (out of fear of their lives and superstitions) so we do not have a reliable source of pronunciation today.

People generally agreed it is pronounced 'Yahweh' (catholic encyclopedia) or 'Yahwe' (encyclopedia britanica) or 'Yaveh' (jewish encyclopedia)

But no one is 100% sure.

Your explanation of the use of male and femail foms of an 'argument' I found amusing and insightful, I will discuss this with my wife :)

It appears that Hebrew was spoken in the Garden of Eden, so the language itself does seem to have some divine origin. It would not surprise me if we are all speaking Hebrew when Gods will has been acomplished.

Actually wrong. In hebrew, dots represent the vowels, and are guideines to pronounciaction. If a word is prounounced with a AH, EE, I, Aye, OE sound - then that is a direct derivative of the vowel structure. Therefore, yes, we know the name of God and how it is pronounced. Perhaps Wikipedia and the other Christian scholars who don't speak our language have problems getting it - but for us, the name is not God, just a description of his powers. As mentioned before, it just means "It will be...". If you believe that is his name, then you don't believe in Jesus, cause that would mean you accept that "It will be" hasn't been yet. According to our belief, when God reveals what his true desire for us in this word - then the name changes to the reality of the time. For us, holy names only define the relationship of God and his divine presence in this world. So many people want to give him one name - as if to limit him. If he is War, then how can he be the opposite, hence compassion?

The ancient egyptians had it really crazy. They didn't want to accept God cause they claimed if his name and power (at any given time) represents compassion, then when their enemies come, God would be their enemies friends. If Gods power or name represented War, the Egyptians feared would either be killed, mamed or oppressed. So for the ancient Egyptians, they just decided to not accept any God and became athiest. Before them, you had civilizations who actually thought they could fight with God.

But to your statement - the name is not pronounced YAVEH in hebrew cause that is not a word. Trust me, this is my mother tongue. Ya Ah Veh is the correct pronounciation and literally means "it will be". Since God's power is predominately in the male form for being the power to influence (and not be influenced), the correct state is male. However, they say that sins can cause the female form (hence the name to be influenced instead of the influencer). This can be cryptic and really tricky to understand - so I don't want to confuse you.

But for a hebrew speaker - its easy. The problem is that in English writing and pronounciation, you wouldn't get it. Hebrew has letters that are pronounced from the bottom of your throat. Like the R sound is actually garggled from the bottom of our throats and not from the tip of our teeth.

The language of hebrew (both written and spoken) is very unique. Letters have mathmatical value. Dates, times, and reference can be given in the form of letters/words. It can be extremely cryptic, but also has a "root" form for every word so that even if you don't know the word that somebody says to you, you will know its root form to know what they are talking about.

Example: The word "Sefer" in hebrew means "Book" at its root level. However, the word Library, Literature, Writer, etc., are based off that root word and so all proceeding words to describe those nouns are very similar to the word "Sefer". That way if you know the root noun, if somebody we're to use additional words - you know what they are talking about.

In English, you have many words that can be spelled 500 different ways. Take the word "Fish". Do you know that for a non-english speaker, they may think that Fish starts with a GH cause cough ends with a F sound. So in my opinion, English is a hell of a lot harder to learn.

Nevertheless, in Hebrew you don't have all that cause for people who understand the language, there are very few individual letters that sound alike. Each letter stands on it's own.

Also, for all you Christians, there was no "JESUS" cause there is no J in the Hebrew vocabulary. Simply no words with a J sound. Before you say we are incorrect, remember it's our language that the name was first given. So its us who have it the correct way.

The correct hebrew name would have been Ya Yo Shu Ah.

Originally Posted by Redhat7

I must not have been clear in my previous post, let me restate my position again for you.

The oldest Hebrew manuscripts present the four consonants as YHWH. So the Hebrew consonants of the name are know. The question that nobody can answer is which vowels to combine with these consonants. You cannot tell me which vowels go between these consonants.... can you? This is not a trick question, you either know or you dont. If you do know then please share, I am sure there are also many Hebrew scholars who would be interested

Sure, you can take an educated guess, that's what most Hebrew scholars do... but they still dont claim to know the correct pronunciation because they do not have enough evidence.

Just as a side note, apparently, the vowel pointing in Hebrew (little dots and symbols used to distinguish vowels) did not come into use until the second half of the first millennium AD.

I was aware of no 'J' in the Hebrew language, seems kind of odd that the English translation of Gods name is 'Jehovah'

The hebrew bible does not contain any vowels because vowels are not for literature or reading purposes, rather for phonetic (spoken) purposes. We teach kids with vowels when they are young to make it easy to learn how to write in hebrew or properly pronounce words, but once the rules and tenses (past, present, future and pronounciation) are learned - nobody uses them.
Written vowels are specifically for people who don't read and/or speak the language at mother tongue.

In other words, nobody uses vowels to read a book, or write a letter, etc.. Newspapers, books, and literature are not written with dots or vowels. Actually, sometimes vowels are used only when taking an English (or foreign) word and spelling it in Hebrew so that we'd know how to pronounce the word - cause foreign words don't follow the same hebrew vowel rules. In English you only have A E I O & U and maybe a Y for vowels, and regardless of the vowel - the word could be past, present or future tense.

In hebrew its different. Vowels are not just for pronouncing the word, but also for knowing it's tense. You really can't get confused in hebrew once you know the rules. If you have the word Danny, you can spell the name several ways in English. Sure, by spelling the name with a E as opposed to an A, there would be a slight difference in pronouncing - however, if you hear a guy from the UK, Ireland or better yet Scotland pronounce the word Danny or Denny - as opposed to an American - you wouldnt know the difference.

Dani
Danee
Dany
Danie
Deny
Denny
Dannie

You see, with us crazy Jews, you don't have that problem in spelling or articulation. In hebrew there is only one way to spell the word Danny.

That is why I am telling you that your scholars don't speak the language cause if they did, they'd know the rules by heart without even having to read the letters in written form.