Pronouncing YHWH

[SeekingUnderstanding]

48 minutes ago, PacMan said:

First, nonsense is completely subjective and, therefore, unhelpful.  A real academic would say it is unsupported. 
 

Respectfully, TikTok videos aren’t where Dan does his academic work. It’s where he makes academia accessible to a general audience. In that context, it’s completely fine usage in my opinion. 

48 minutes ago, PacMan said:

Second, Dan still can't know every moment in Hebrew history.

obviously. That doesn’t make an unsupported assertion that goes against everything we *do know any less nonsense. 

48 minutes ago, PacMan said:

Rather, I disagree with Dan's lack of analysis,

Um, are you sure?

48 minutes ago, PacMan said:

his hyperbole, and bombastic certitude--all of which undermine his status as useful.

I could not disagree more. Academia is full of jargon, it’s stuffy and boring. Dan brings the right amount of facts, sass and attitude to make academia accessible and entertaining. 

[Emily]

2 hours ago, PacMan said:

A real academic would say it is unsupported.  

Well, I don't know if I'm an academic. I don't publish papers or anything which I think is probably necessary to be considered a "real" academic. But I'm still going to take a stab at being slightly more "academic" in my critique of this video.

The man in the video is an eloquent speaker and he makes his theory (if it's his theory and not something he stumbled over on the Internet) sound lovely. 

So we will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he attempted to follow some kind of logical thought process to lead him to his theory. Or at least, a thought process. Maybe something like this:

1. Fact: Ancient Hebrew didn't use vowel symbols in their written language

2.Fact: Since no one has pronounced יהוה‎ for a very long time, we don't know what vowels were used to pronounce it. 

3. Remote Possibility: Maybe יהוה‎ was a completely unique word in Hebrew and no vowels were used to pronounce it. (There is currently no evidence to suggest that this is or was ever true. But it fits within the realm of a remote possibility, so we won't summarily dismiss it.)

4. Remote Possibility: If you pronounce יהוה‎ without vowels, it would sound like breathing in, or breathing out.

This is debatable. The Hebrew letters יהוה‎ aren't pronounced exactly how English speakers would pronounce the transliterated YHWH or YHVH. Since both transliterations are commonly used for יהוה,‎ the word isn't even consistently assigned the same "breathy" English consonants the speaker is appealing to. As such, there is no evidence to support a heavily breathy pronunciation. 

Additionally, most people would say an inhale sounds very different from an exhale.  So even if יהוה really did sound like a breath, when pronounced, would it be accurate to assume it sounded like both an inhale and an exhale?

But let's go ahead and say this theory also falls within the realm of a remote possibility. I imagine the next step was something along these lines:

5. Fact: You inhale at birth and exhale at death. 

6. Personal Opinion: It is very fitting for the name of God to be the first thing you speak at birth and the last thing you speak at death.

Conclusion presented as a proven fact in the video: הוה‎ was pronounced like a breath.

Now, I'm gonna go out on my own logical limb here:

1. One definition of nonsense (as defined in Google search) happens to be: "Spoken or written words that have no meaning or make no sense."

2. It makes no sense to present a theory as a proven fact, particularly when your theory depends on two completely unsupported, debatable remote possibilities and a personal opinion. (We could debate that I'm expressing a personal opinion here, but if he's allowed to use opinions as evidence, so am I.)

Conclusion: This man is speaking nonsense.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2024 by Emily