Judaism Issue: Has anyone in the past read YHWH's letters acronymically per their pictoral meaning?

[rakovsky]

Thanks for quoting the stone.

 

[visionary]

An issue here is that if you check the text, God is not so explicit in saying both "My name is YHWH", and "My name YHWH means I am who I am", right? This is one related question under discussion, what the meaning actually is.

You know that "Taylor" was originally the work the man performed before last names were needed. In the same manner, YHVH declares both.

 

[rakovsky]

OK, so I am very skeptical that Hebrew writing and language was logographic or that the letters play a big role pictorally in their meaning. I don't believe it.

Jewish tradition and mysticism has a practice of looking into the inner meaning of words based on letters, which is a different issue.

The two instances that come to mind are Passover and Pharaoh in Hebrew. For the insight into the word Passover, see below:

The word "pesach" itself has a mystical jump within it. Pesach is formed with three letters: Peh, Samech, and Chet. The kabbalists say pesach can be read as two words, revealing a deeper meaning: Peh Sach which means "the mouth speaks." These two words are spelled with four letters: Peh, Heh, Samech, and Chet. Therefore, the Oral Tradition uncovers that the letter Heh was skipped over.
Conceptually, the "mouth speaking" is what happens during the Seder when we retell the going out of Egypt. Haggadah means "speech." Kabbalah teaches that each month of the calendar has a strong link to a different human quality. This month, Nisan, is connected to the quality of speech. What is speech? It is bringing ideas into reality. From potential to actuality. Nisan is the month in which the world came into reality. It's also the month when the Jewish people went from a nation in potential to actuality.
This transformation from potential to actual required a supernatural jump provided by God. That's the essence of Pesach. We all want more meaning. We'd like to have a transcendent experience. But it's a struggle to work on spiritual growth. It's hard. It requires change. During Pesach we have the rare opportunity of using God's jumper cables -- the ultimate "pass-over." Take the opportunity that's there and ask God to give you the boost you've been waiting for.
Etymology of "Passover"

For the one on pharaoh, see here:

In the Book of Exodus,2 Pharaoh, whose name also begins with a pei, said, “Let us [confine the Jews to slavery] lest they multiply.” The word for “lest” in Hebrew is פן, pen: pei-nun. G‑d was displeased with Pharaoh’s declaration, so He “knocked out his tooth” by knocking out the tooth of the pei in Pharaoh’s “pen,” which made it a kaf. Now the word was no longer pen (“lest”) but כן, ken: kaf-nun, meaning “surely.” Surely the Jews will multiply....

There is a famous teaching of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev11 which explains the meaning of the Passover holiday (Pesach). “Pesach” literally means peh-sach, “the mouth (peh) talks (sach).”On Pesach, the mouth talks about the wonders and miracles of G‑d. Pesach represents the antithesis of Pharaoh, who, as the Megaleh Amukos12 explains, signifies peh-ra, a “bad mouth.” Pharaoh was someone who denied G‑d’s providence in every act of nature. Our mouths were not given to us to slander or denigrate others, but to speak of G‑d’s greatness and wonders.

Pei — Communication

A big weakness here is I don't know other cases of using the exact same approach of letter decipherment. There are lots of cases where words like YHWH are deciphered based on their letters with lots of different ways. So for example, the B in Bereshit that starts the Torah has been looked on as bookending the beginning of the text since it looks a bit like a C that is only open on one end.

So it's not clear that this approach was done with YHWH.

The second problem is that when nowadays some Christian writers like Andre Roomsa have tried to do this with YHWH, they have come to quite different interpretations like I cited earlier in the thread.

If I say Yod = Arm, Vav = Nail/Hook like Jewish Encyclopedia says (and Heh=Behold ?), then turning to YHWH, it looks like there is an arm and a nail in there. So we could relate it to Psalm 22, Isaiah 52-53, and Zech 12-13 each of them being about piercing, the hand(s)/arm(s), and gazing at the heroic victim. But there is no clear nail in there, unless you want to bring in karah in Psalm 22, and karah and the ears in Psalm 40, and the temples and the nail in Judges 5.

So at the end I am left wondering if that is a coincidence. It looks like maybe something there, but also maybe a coincidence.

 

[rakovsky]

You know that "Taylor" was originally the work the man performed before last names were needed. In the same manner, YHVH declares both.

It's like you are proposing that the sound Y in Yhwh meant Yod and "arm" before the Hebrew alphabet was introduced wherein the letter/sound Y =" arm".

It seems hard to be sure what they called their pre-letter sounds in Hebrew. That makes the argument feel weak.

The weakness in your opponent's (for lack of a better term) point would be: "How do you know that YHWH was actually around before the Hebrews had Hebrew script, since we never actually see YHWH in all letters written before they had the script?"

 

[benelchi]

OK, so you are saying that acrostics really do exist in the Bible and in ancient Hebrew writing.

I think that you are not understanding what an acrostic is. The claim that was made is that the acrostics containing the name YHWH were included in the book of Easter. It has nothing to do with the meaning of the word. Below is an acrostic I made that intentionally contains the name YHWH. While there are, as I mentioned some clear examples of Acrostics in Hebrew, many, many claimed acrostics represent nothing more than random chance.

Yes
He
Was
Here

This is the kind of thing I am getting at, whether there is some acronym or acrostic or other inner meaning in the word YHWH, especially in its letters.

The idea that there is a hidden meaning gleaned through pictographs is a question unrelated to acrostics. It is something for which there is zero evidence in support.

 

[benelchi]

The claims made in the link you provided about the meaning of these words are fraught with error. I will address the first one below.

The word "pesach" itself has a mystical jump within it. Pesach is formed with three letters: Peh, Samech, and Chet. The kabbalists say pesach can be read as two words, revealing a deeper meaning: Peh Sach which means "the mouth speaks." These two words are spelled with four letters: Peh, Heh, Samech, and Chet.

The word Pesach is spelled פסח and the letters are spelled פה סמך חת, but they chose only to use the letter name of the first letter פה and then the word סח a word composed of the last two letters of the original word, and not the names of these letters. There is no consistency in how they formed this phrase from the original, and there is no textual support for the idea that "the letter Heh was skipped over." Additionally סח is an unusally word for "say" the common root is אמר, and worse the word סח was not used in the period that the bible was written in. It is a word of much latter origin. Using methods like this, one can invent almost any teaching no matter how crazy because it requires zero support from the underling Hebrew text.

 

[benelchi]

The claims made in the link you provided about the meaning of these words are fraught with error. I will address the first one below.

The word "pesach" itself has a mystical jump within it. Pesach is formed with three letters: Peh, Samech, and Chet. The kabbalists say pesach can be read as two words, revealing a deeper meaning: Peh Sach which means "the mouth speaks." These two words are spelled with four letters: Peh, Heh, Samech, and Chet.

The word Pesach is spelled פסח and the letters are spelled פה סמך חת, but they chose only to use the letter name of the first letter פה and then the word סח a word composed of the last two letters of the original word, and not the names of these letters. There is no consistency in how they formed this phrase from the original, and there is no textual support for the idea that "the letter Heh was skipped over." Additionally סח is an unusally word for "say" the common root is אמר, and worse the word סח was not used in the period that the bible was written in. It is a word of much latter origin. Using methods like this, one can invent almost any teaching no matter how crazy because it requires zero support from the underling Hebrew text.

 

[benelchi]

The claims made in the link you provided about the meaning of these words are fraught with error. I will address the first one below.

The word "pesach" itself has a mystical jump within it. Pesach is formed with three letters: Peh, Samech, and Chet. The kabbalists say pesach can be read as two words, revealing a deeper meaning: Peh Sach which means "the mouth speaks." These two words are spelled with four letters: Peh, Heh, Samech, and Chet.

The word Pesach is spelled פסח and the letters are spelled פה סמך חת, but they chose only to use the letter name of the first letter פה and then the word סח a word composed of the last two letters of the original word, and not the names of these letters. There is no consistency in how they formed this phrase from the original, and there is no textual support for the idea that "the letter Heh was skipped over." Additionally סח is an unusally word for "say" the common root is אמר, and worse the word סח was not used in the period that the bible was written in. It is a word of much latter origin. Using methods like this, one can invent almost any teaching no matter how crazy because it requires zero support from the underling Hebrew text.

 

[rakovsky]

Quid Est Veritas:

What do you think of this claim about the origin of the name Yahweh:

egyptianmythology.org/gods-and-goddesses/khepri/

Khepri’s name was a play on words. In the ancient Egyptian language, kheprer was the word for “scarab beetle,” and the verb kheper meant “to develop” or “to come into being.” Khepri meant “The Becoming One” – the sun in the process of being reborn after having died and sunk into the underworld the previous evening – but still implicitly referenced the scarab beetle as well.
...
In fact, the words kheprer and kheper may have already been deliberately related to each other before Khepri formalized and intensified the connection. After all, the scarab was used throughout Egyptian art as a symbol of creation and rebirth.

The etymological origin of the Egyptian word for scarab is the verb kheper ‘to come into being’, or more simply, ‘to be’ (Assmann 2001: 60). It is interesting then that the word Yahweh is also thought to come from a verb meaning ‘to be.’ ... Yahweh’s name may well be a Hebrew translation of an Egyptian idea, that is, it is possible that the name originates with the figure of Khepri and reflects the importance of the sun in ancient Israel.

It is perhaps more plausible that a false etymology was given in order to equate the two gods after the fact. In Exodus 3:14, the name
היה רשׁ היה,
“I am he who comes into being,” is given. This brings to mind the cartouches of 18th Dynasty Pharaohs, which contain similar titles referring to the sun in its rejuvenating quality (Assmann 2001: 60–61). That the image of the scarab is used in these titles to represent the verb ‘to be’ is especially intriguing.

Read more: Have YHWH's pictoral letters been read acronymically? Part 2 | Ancient Hebrew Forum

www.academia.edu/5562359/Winged_Scarab_Imagery_in_Judah_Yahweh_as_Khepri

I am skeptical.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Quid Est Veritas:

What do you think of this claim about the origin of the name Yahweh:



www.academia.edu/5562359/Winged_Scarab_Imagery_in_Judah_Yahweh_as_Khepri

I am skeptical.

I too am very skeptical.

Khepri is not known to have had much of an independant cult and was more an aspect of Ra. This begs the question why the Israelites would have adopted subsidiary imagery, to the extent of supposedly translating the name YHWH instead of Ra or Horus. If scarab seals really showed such an association then it was not as if they hid the identification, so why not derive it from one of the major forms proper like Amun-Re or Re-Harakthy?

Another problem is that Khepri was not the same as Kheper. The words are associated in a homophonic sense and hence Khepri developed a 'creator' and birth of the sun aspect, but they are clearly not the same word. So to assume an adoption and translation of Khepri to YHWH and the use of Scarab and solar imagery requires more than translation of concept but an assumed Egyptian syncreticism.

Thirdly the seals date from the 8th century when the area was under heavy Egyptian influence, but YHWH clearly greatly predates this influence. So to derive YHWH from Khepri has no evidence to support it until hundreds of years after the name was already in use. This may mean that the Judean Royals may have syncreticised an Egyptian symbol meaning 'creation', the Scarab, but this does not mean a concomittent adoption of Egyptian religion associated with it.
We do see solar imagery associated with YHWH, but we also see storm god imagery, chthonic imagery etc. This is weak evidence especially if you would support a derivation from Khepri that has hundreds of years of YHWH preceding any evidence to support it. Our earliest textual evidence is the Song of Deborah which presumably dates from the 12th century BC stylistically and it depicts more Storm characteristics and already uses the name YHWH. Similarly the Song of the Sea also does not fit, which is often judged pre-Monarchic. These two are arguably the oldest parts of the Bible and along with the possible Shasu connection and late date for scarab imagery, makes this highly implausible.

As the Egyptians used scarabs as seals often, I see no reason to impute a religious reasoning into its Judean use. Also I am unaware of translation of Egyptian or other religious concepts when syncretisation occurs. Usually with gods the name is adopted, equated with their own god and changed to fit the new tongue. Good examples are the Hurrian god Teshub, Egyptian Reshpu or even the Interpraetio Romanum. I am unaware of an example of god names being translated in this manner, so I find this the most implausible of all. Ancient near-Eastern peoples were usually very attached to names and thought of them as unique and powerful in their own right, hence the Commandment not to take the Lord's name in vain, the Book of the Dead using gods' names as spells and talismans and the care taken to write them (such as YHWH still being written in paleo-Hebrew script after Aramaic script had long been in use). Why the Israelites would not then have used Khepri itself or a Hebraised form makes no sense to me from a ethnological point of view.

 

[rakovsky]

Quid,

I liked your thoughtful answer to me. To give a ccomparison, I can see the connection between Tengri, Dingir, and Tien. I see the associated meanings corresponding to a phonetic pattern and referring to the Supreme Deity. With Khepri on the other hand, I agree with you that there is no phonetic pattern. Kh, H, and I, Y doesn't seem a strong enough connection.

The strongest connection I see is in meaning. Calling God or a God "the becoming one" or "the one who is/will be" seems etymologically or linguistically very rare to me globally. The only examples that come to mind are Egypt(Khepri Aka Kheper) and Israel (Yahweh, maybe a variant of YHYH). I guess Brahma in Hinduism, meaning "the Creator", from a root word in PIE meaning "birth" has some resemblance, since one theory says YHWH means "he that causes to be". But that's not quite the same, and I am skeptical of theories that connect Israel to the Indus Valley civilization or Hinduism.

One writer finds a second connection in the Hebrew explanation of the name Yahweh in the Bible:

In an Egyptian grammar, we find this theological motto that sums up the god Khepera. It is a play on word on the meaning of the verb, XPR, to mean "to become":

• kheper-i kheper kheperu kheper
  
  
• kuy m kheperu n Khepri kheper m sep tepy...
• "[when] I became, the becoming became.
  
  
• I have become the becoming [the form] of Khepri who came into being on the First Time...
  
  
• ...when I became, the transformations became, all the metamorphoses coming to pass after I had become."

It is immediately obvious that the above redundant play on the meaning of XPR, "to become," has informed the name given to Moses. In this summary, the word related to the verb, XPR, occurs no less that 7 times. In the Mushite formulation, it only occurs twice and is most related to the first three instances of the verb in the above text:

• [When] I became becoming becomes.

It is obvious that the form and content of this motto is reflect in the Hebrew:

• 'ehyeh asher 'ehyeh
• I become [in] what becomes.

The verbal aspect of the imperfect form denotes incomplete action. Also, like the Egyptia formulation, a redundant play of the verb, hw(y)h is made, and so the form is similar. Also, the semantic cognate is used, hwh to mean "to become," matches the play on XPR.. Thus, the Hebrew formulation looks very much like a very near translation of the first line of the Egyptian text. Indeed, the second line of the Egyptian text looks like an expansion upon the first.

Khepera in Early Israel
This is very interesting for me and is a second major piece of evidence that I would consider to show a connection.

Now let's consider a difference:
There is a theory that Khepri the scarab is cryptically referenced in the 10 plagues of Egypt (ie as a deity attacked by Yahweh). That would help debunk a strong connection between Yahweh and Khepri. But since no scarabs are mentioned, I am skeptical of that:

Plague 3. Gnats or Lice from dust
3. a) Geb: Egyptian god of the Earth;

b) Khepri: Egyptian god of creation, movement of the Sun.

Plague 4. Flies (gadflies)
4. Khepri: Egyptian god of resurrection, creation

Christianity Scrutinized: Egyptian G-ds As The Ten Plagues In The Torah !!!

The 3rd plague, of lice (or gnats or mosquitoes) from the dust of the earth, confronted all the gods of the earth (e.g. Akhor). This and the 4th plague, of flies, confronted another favourite, Khepri, the scarab (dung beetle) god. A plague of flies shows failure of the dung beetle god to do its job of burying the dung, which stops flies from breeding in the dung. This god was also associated with rolling the sun across the sky, like dung beetles rolling balls of dung.

The ten plagues of Egypt - creation.com

In your message to me, you talked about differences between the Yahweh worshiping Shasu and the Egyptians. This writer sees a connection:

In the Hebrew literature of the Hebrew Bible, we have a narrative epic of Israel's "history." But embedded within it are various poetic texts, which seem to be remnants of an Israelite, poetic epic that was written in the pre-monarchic period in the 11th century. The song of Deborah in Judges 5 is thought by me to be an extract from this old poetic epic. In fact, there seems to have been a few epic stories of premonarchic Israel since we have reference to certain lost books, like the "Scroll of the Upright" and the "Scroll of the Wars of Yahweh." The song of Deborah would have been taken from the latter. An extract from the former is found in the so-called, "Oracles of Balaam" found in Numbers 22-24. In it, it told of the dramatic story of Israel's origins and earliest phase of political existence. It reflects that early stage whe Israel solely venerated their version of the Canaanite god EL. Yahwism was only incoporated into it at a subsequent stages, due to Shasu Yahwist joining Israel in the Central Highlands and the arrival of a Mushite Yahwism from the Egyptian exodus.

Khepera in Early Israel

He also makes a good point about the connection between the Biblical and Egyptian Creation stories in my view: "creation story in Genesis 1 shows strong Egyptian rather than Semitic influence, creation by divine Fiat rather than divine Theomachy." Since the Bible picked up elements from Egyptian religion, and Moses came out of Egypt proclaiming monotheism and the newly revealed name for God, Yahweh, one possibility is that Yahweh could have originated as a deity found in Egyptian culture.

I agree when you say:

I too am very skeptical.

Khepri is not known to have had much of an independant cult and was more an aspect of Ra. This begs the question why the Israelites would have adopted subsidiary imagery, to the extent of supposedly translating the name YHWH instead of Ra or Horus.

If scarab seals really showed such an association then it was not as if they hid the identification, so why not derive it from one of the major forms proper like Amun-Re or Re-Harakthy?

The thing is, we already know that the Israelites were a kind of marginal group among Egyptian society. For example, their monotheism could theoretically be compatible, but even there it was far stricter than the Egyptian one. Their purity rules, the sabbath, and other rituals were probably not mainstream for Egyptian society either. They could have picked a marginal Egyptian deity who to them had more inner power than the main Egyptian ones. Alternately, maybe the Egyptians could have picked up Yahweh from the Shasu or Canaanites and turned it into a secondary deity.

Another problem is that Khepri was not the same as Kheper. The words are associated in a homophonic sense and hence Khepri developed a 'creator' and birth of the sun aspect, but they are clearly not the same word. So to assume an adoption and translation of Khepri to YHWH and the use of Scarab and solar imagery requires more than translation of concept but an assumed Egyptian syncreticism.

OK, so the Egyptians were conceptually equating the deity Khepri (scarab) with Kheper (The becoming one). And then per this theory, the Hebrews took or shared this concept of "The Becoming one", maybe along with the association with scarabs and the sun. That seems at least logical, and, barring counterevidence, at least reasonable.

I thought you made other perceptive remarks, but I didn't see them as conclusive one way or the other, either:

Thirdly the seals date from the 8th century when the area was under heavy Egyptian influence, but YHWH clearly greatly predates this influence. So to derive YHWH from Khepri has no evidence to support it until hundreds of years after the name was already in use. This may mean that the Judean Royals may have syncreticised an Egyptian symbol meaning 'creation', the Scarab, but this does not mean a concomittent adoption of Egyptian religion associated with it.
We do see solar imagery associated with YHWH, but we also see storm god imagery, chthonic imagery etc. This is weak evidence especially if you would support a derivation from Khepri that has hundreds of years of YHWH preceding any evidence to support it. Our earliest textual evidence is the Song of Deborah which presumably dates from the 12th century BC stylistically and it depicts more Storm characteristics and already uses the name YHWH. Similarly the Song of the Sea also does not fit, which is often judged pre-Monarchic. These two are arguably the oldest parts of the Bible and along with the possible Shasu connection and late date for scarab imagery, makes this highly implausible.

As the Egyptians used scarabs as seals often, I see no reason to impute a religious reasoning into its Judean use. Also I am unaware of translation of Egyptian or other religious concepts when syncretisation occurs. Usually with gods the name is adopted, equated with their own god and changed to fit the new tongue. Good examples are the Hurrian god Teshub, Egyptian Reshpu or even the Interpraetio Romanum. I am unaware of an example of god names being translated in this manner, so I find this the most implausible of all. Ancient near-Eastern peoples were usually very attached to names and thought of them as unique and powerful in their own right, hence the Commandment not to take the Lord's name in vain, the Book of the Dead using gods' names as spells and talismans and the care taken to write them (such as YHWH still being written in paleo-Hebrew script after Aramaic script had long been in use). Why the Israelites would not then have used Khepri itself or a Hebraised form makes no sense to me from a ethnological point of view.

The two things I highlighted in blue above make me lean toward the view that there is a connection. But I prefer to run this information by you first.

 

[LastServant]

Ancient Babylonian, Chinese, Sumerian, and Egyptian scripts wrote the word for God or or "deity" pictorally, using one or more characters, each of which provided a meaning associated with the concept of God/deity. For example, in ancient Egypt, hieroglyphics could be written either phonetically (each letter as a sound) or pictorally (each letter meant a word). The Egyptians' word for God/deity was NTR and could be written as a flagpole, perhaps denoting those outside their temples, as a perched hawk, bringing to mind the main gods Horus and Ra, or as a sitting man with a chin beard, thus resembling Egypt's image of male rulers.

Scholars say that Hebrew began or developed out of a pictoral script, where the letters had their own meanings. So the letter yod, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, means "hand" or "arm". According to the scholars, it was actually written like an arm __| in the ancient script of Hebrew. Later on, centuries after the writing of the Torah and Psalms, the script was changed to the Assyrian alphabet (AKA Ashurite script).

Some writers nowadays like Jeff Benner and Andre Roosma are proposing that these building blocks of the alphabet were also root elements sometimes to a degree in the Hebrew language itself. So for example a word including a yod might have a meaning related to the concept of a hand or arm.

Question #1 for this thread: What do you think of this claim about the letters sometimes reflecting root meanings in Hebrew words?

The hypothesis seems at least logical. There are numerous words in English composed of simpler roots. Chinese words are drawn with characters that in turn can be made of simpler characters. Babylonian cuneiform used writing by combining letters representing simple sounds. + drawn with two arrows on the left and one on top was the phonetic sound "an", and the symbol with the arrows could also be used to mean the whole word for deity.

One of the big problems I have with this theory though is that I don't know of hardly any accredited university scholars who teach this about Hebrew. Nor do I know of any Jews in previous centuries who used these meanings of the letters to make commentaries on the meanings of any Hebrew words. Do you?

That is not to say that Jewish tradition hasn't drawn any interpretations of the letters to find inner meanings in them. In fact, they have at times, like in the use of Gematria, which uses the numbers of letters to reach mystical conclusions.
Consider the use of acrostics in the TaNaKh. There are cases where passages have numerous words where the first letter of the words ties in to some other word in order to form an acronym. Wikipedia mentions:


The Hebrew for Christians website described how sometimes Jewish writers used letters to derive mystical meanings:


The Hebrew letter Hey/Heh is repeated twice in YHWH and the Hebrew 4 Christians website notices meanings that Jewish writers drew from the Heh symbol:


Another mystical idea that Jewish writers had about letters was the Digrammaton YH. The Hebrew for Christians site explains:


Besides, the name YHWH has central importance in Judaism and is called the Tetragrammaton. It was considered so holy that commonly a practice evolved to pronounce Adonai (Lord), instead of YHWH.



Wikipedia also notes that among the Greek Septuagint texts,


Judaism 101 explains what it sees as the normal linguistic meaning of YHWH:


Judaism 101 also gives an example showing the sanctity of the written name itself:


So this leads to Question #2:
Did anyone in the past drew conclusions or interpretations about the meaning of YHWH based on the meanings of the letters themselves, especially the pictoral meanings that they carried when the Torah and Psalms were written?

Here you can find a chart of the letters from the Early/Middle Hebrew period, along with their names and meanings:

Based on the chart, the meaning of the letters is:
Arm/hand (Yod), Behold (Heh), Nail/Hook (Waw).


Members of the "Church of Yahweh" made a claim about the name YHWH by rearranging the letters vertically like I have seen on another website:

I do find it interesting that the letters appear to form a somewhat anthropomorphic shape when arranged vertically, but don't know what to make of that. This vertical arrangement is in the Ashurite script that the Hebrews starting using only long after the time of the writing of the Torah and Psalms.

Also, it doesn't really address the question I am asking about drawing meaning from that of the pictoral letters used to spell YHWH.

It's a good thing that God can convert his language into any earthly languages for his servants to understand. Can you imagine having to interpret invisible waves ourselves?

 

[rakovsky]

Dear Benelchi,
Thank you for your reply:

The claims made in the link you provided about the meaning of these words are fraught with error. ... Using methods like this, one can invent almost any teaching no matter how crazy because it requires zero support from the underling Hebrew text.

The support that it looks like the text requires for this method is that there be some direct connection between the letter's meaning and the inner meaning drawn from the word. I sympathize with what you are saying about how in that example of Pehsach the author was not consistent if he didn't use all the letters. What about the example of the word for Pharaoh that I cited?

In the case of Pesach internally meaning Mouth and Speaks, it looks like a common tradition in rabbinical Judaism, although I understand what you mean about "late" developments changing the language. See:

Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0195300149
Steven T. Katz, ‎Shlomo Biderman, ‎Gershon Greenberg - 2007
the wise son asks, "What are the testimonies, etc." "...And you also tell him about the laws of Passover." That is, according to the order and according to the matter of the PeSaH. Just as when the mouth speaks, the hidden is greater than what is revealed...

If you click on the Google Books link there, you will see a deeper discussion on the issue.

Passover is also about speech. For example, the sages tell us that the syllables of the word Pesach each represent a word in their own right: "Pe" means "mouth" and "sach" means "speaks". The Seder night is the time for telling about the exodus. The text we read is called the Hagadda, meaning literally "the telling", consistent with the explicit commandment "…and you shall tell your son on that day ...". The Torah calls the matzo we eat "lechem oni". The Talmud offers two opinions about its meaning. The translation "bread of affliction" is the opinion most often quoted in English language literature but the other rendering, "bread over which many matters are discussed" has equal validity.

Freedom and speech are two essential Passover themes and, as we shall see, they are closely related.

Passover - Freedom and Speech

Now here is why I bring this up and the issue sticks with me. I do see a direct potential connection between YHWH and Christ-God with his pierced arms. Jewish Encyclopedia says that Yod and Waw are nail/hook and hand/arm.

In John 20, these same elements show up:

So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

26 And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” 27 Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

28 And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”

Thomas says he needs to behold the arms/hands with the nail print. Jesus shows up and Thomas' response to beholding this is "My Lord and My God".
This has all the elements in that abbreviation/mnemonic and ultimately refers to the Lord God, whose "hallowed name" is YHWH.

Now that could be a coincidence, but three of the main prophecies about Christ's death in the Old Testament also have something like this as its elements.
In Psalm 22, the Messianic narrator's hands/arms are pierced, he pours out, and the assembly of enemies gazes and stares at him, and then after salvation he praises the Lord to the assembly of his brethren, and generations remember the feat. I could connect this to "nails", but only indirectly using Psalm 40 and Judges 5.

In Isaiah 52-53, the Lord's arm is revealed and the disfigured Messiah causes astonishment to the nations amazed at him, it pleases the Lord to bruise him, and the Lord's pleasure (bruising) prospers in the Servant's hand. Bruising, based on the story of the snake in Eden bruising the man's heel, could refer to piercing here again. In Isaiah 53, the Messiah pours out unto death. Earlier the Messiah in Isaiah 11 was described as a "banner" (something fastened to a pole), and elsewhere in Isaiah it talks about a court official serving as a "nail" by being fastened in Jerusalem's court, but then being taken down (to be replaced by Messiah?).

Then in Zechariarh 11-13, the Hebrew grammar actually has God saying "They will look on me whom they pierced". It sounds remarkable, considering Jewish views of God, to prophecy God as being pierced. And it also has a cryptic reference where people ask someone what kind of wounds he has among his arms, and the person responds that he was wounded this way in the house of his beloved.

The issue here is that each of these passages repeats this pattern of Messiah's or the Lord's arms/hands, beholding, piercing of the arms/hands (with maybe a cryptic reference to nails), and the Lord Himself.

With this much coincidence, it makes me thing that there is an inner connection between these elements and verses forming a real pattern.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Quid,

I liked your thoughtful answer to me. To give a ccomparison, I can see the connection between Tengri, Dingir, and Tien. I see the associated meanings corresponding to a phonetic pattern and referring to the Supreme Deity. With Khepri on the other hand, I agree with you that there is no phonetic pattern. Kh, H, and I, Y doesn't seem a strong enough connection.

The strongest connection I see is in meaning. Calling God or a God "the becoming one" or "the one who is/will be" seems etymologically or linguistically very rare to me globally. The only examples that come to mind are Egypt(Khepri Aka Kheper) and Israel (Yahweh, maybe a variant of YHYH). I guess Brahma in Hinduism, meaning "the Creator", from a root word in PIE meaning "birth" has some resemblance, since one theory says YHWH means "he that causes to be". But that's not quite the same, and I am skeptical of theories that connect Israel to the Indus Valley civilization or Hinduism.

One writer finds a second connection in the Hebrew explanation of the name Yahweh in the Bible:

Khepera in Early Israel
This is very interesting for me and is a second major piece of evidence that I would consider to show a connection.

Now let's consider a difference:
There is a theory that Khepri the scarab is cryptically referenced in the 10 plagues of Egypt (ie as a deity attacked by Yahweh). That would help debunk a strong connection between Yahweh and Khepri. But since no scarabs are mentioned, I am skeptical of that:

Christianity Scrutinized: Egyptian G-ds As The Ten Plagues In The Torah !!!


The ten plagues of Egypt - creation.com

In your message to me, you talked about differences between the Yahweh worshiping Shasu and the Egyptians. This writer sees a connection:

Khepera in Early Israel

He also makes a good point about the connection between the Biblical and Egyptian Creation stories in my view: "creation story in Genesis 1 shows strong Egyptian rather than Semitic influence, creation by divine Fiat rather than divine Theomachy." Since the Bible picked up elements from Egyptian religion, and Moses came out of Egypt proclaiming monotheism and the newly revealed name for God, Yahweh, one possibility is that Yahweh could have originated as a deity found in Egyptian culture.

I agree when you say:

The thing is, we already know that the Israelites were a kind of marginal group among Egyptian society. For example, their monotheism could theoretically be compatible, but even there it was far stricter than the Egyptian one. Their purity rules, the sabbath, and other rituals were probably not mainstream for Egyptian society either. They could have picked a marginal Egyptian deity who to them had more inner power than the main Egyptian ones. Alternately, maybe the Egyptians could have picked up Yahweh from the Shasu or Canaanites and turned it into a secondary deity.


OK, so the Egyptians were conceptually equating the deity Khepri (scarab) with Kheper (The becoming one). And then per this theory, the Hebrews took or shared this concept of "The Becoming one", maybe along with the association with scarabs and the sun. That seems at least logical, and, barring counterevidence, at least reasonable.

I thought you made other perceptive remarks, but I didn't see them as conclusive one way or the other, either:


The two things I highlighted in blue above make me lean toward the view that there is a connection. But I prefer to run this information by you first.

The Biblical passage in Exodus has "I AM that I AM". This is a decleration of self-existence, not creation. To me it is not the same as "to become". To state something IS is not the same as saying something Becomes or is becoming. While YHWH is clearly also a creator, His name implies a fixed eternity, without beginning or end, which Khepri fails to do. This is why Philo translated it to a word meaning 'being'.

Similarly to derive YHWH from Egyptian subculture has no backing in archaeological data. The strongest element would perhaps be the seals, but this is a late element centuries after the Shasu references and the very fact that they are called 'Shasu' means they aren't Egyptian. I can see why some people would build fantastic ricketty structures around this idea, but foundationally there is simply no evidence to back it up and a very long period between to somehow explain away. While there were temples to YHWH in Egypt for later Israelite mercenaries (notably at Elephantine), this is clearly a later import. As you yourself noted, Israelite ideas on purity and the sabbath etc. are a little too far for Egyptian culture, but this is even more reason to look for an origin outside of it than to use it as evidence of being an excluded subgroup. Things that seem foreign to a culture usually are.

We know that there were old epics that are now lost to us. It is based on this very idea that the Song of Deborah and the Song of the Sea can be argued to be pre-monarchic. None of these support a Khepri connection and to intimate there must have been others to support it, now lost, seems to be clutching at straws.
Etymologically and historically I find the evidence a little too weak here.

 

[rakovsky]

The Biblical passage in Exodus has "I AM that I AM". This is a decleration of self-existence, not creation. To me it is not the same as "to become". To state something IS is not the same as saying something Becomes or is becoming. While YHWH is clearly also a creator, His name implies a fixed eternity, without beginning or end, which Khepri fails to do. This is why Philo translated it to a word meaning 'being'.

Correct. However, could YHWH mean "He will be", rather than "I am" or "He is"?

One explanation that sounds to me correct is that YHWH is actually the Hebrew verb YHYH turned into a proper noun. I heard that there are other instance(s) of verbs turned into names in Hebrew by switching Y to W. What would HYH mean?

These translations of "will be" occur many places:
I. Hebrew 4 Christians website:

The phrase ehyeh asher ehyeh (rendered as "I AM THAT I AM" in the KJV) derives from the Qal imperfect first person form of the verb hayah: "I will be," and therefore indicates a connection between the Name YHVH and being itself.
...
The Jewish sages note that the four letters of the Name are used to form the phrase

, hayah hoveh yi'yeh, "He was, He is, He will be."

The Hebrew Name for God - YHVH

II. Theopedia

Meaning
According to one Jewish tradition, the Tetragrammaton is related to the causative form, the imperfect state, of the Hebrew verb הוה (ha·wah, “to be, to become”), meaning “He will cause to become” (usually understood as “He causes to become”).

Another tradition regards the name as coming from three different verb forms sharing the same root YWH, the words HYH haya (היה): “He was”; HWH howê (הוה): “He is”; and YHYH yihiyê (יהיה): “He will be”. This would therefore show that God is timeless and self-existent. Other interpretations include the name as meaning “I am the One Who Is.” This can be seen in the O. T. biblical account of the “burning bush” commanding Moses to tell the sons of Israel that “I AM (אהיה) has sent you,” (Exodus 3:13–14). Some suggest, “I AM the One I AM” [אהיה אשר אהיה]. This may also fit the interpretation as “He Causes to Become.”

Yahweh | Theopedia

III. Hebrew Streams and the book Psalms by Gerald Wilson

As he revealed it to Moses, God's full name is actually Ehyeh asher Ehyeh — "I will be what I will be." Ehyeh is the Qal imperfect first person form of the verb havah: "I will be."


God says to Moses: "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'Ehyeh — I will be' has sent me to you" (Exodus 3:14-15). Ehyeh by itself is God's shortened name when he speaks of himself in the first person:

In contrast, when people refer to God in the third person, he taught them to say "Yahveh — He will be" (not "I will be"). [Insights from Gerald H. Wilson, Psalms Volume 1, p. 210]
...
for the One who forbids all static images of himself, the idea that he will be or become what he wants to be — that he is more like wind and fire than frozen images in stone or gold — the vagueness of his Name is appropriate.
...
YHVH—He will be: always himself, always righteous, always holy, always loyal to those who keep his covenant. "This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations" (Exod 3:15).

Hebrew Streams: HaShem

IV. The Biblical World, Volume 28, edited by William Rainey Harper

it was first revealed to Moses and through him was communicated to Israel ...Exod. 6:2 ..."...but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them:"... In Exod 6:7 Yahweh says: "I will take you to me for a people and I will be to you a God"- a form of expression which implies that Yahweh first became the God of Israel in consequence of the revelation to Moses.

These two quotes above are the kind of thing that make it look like "Yahweh" was a name, concept, or deity that came to the Israelites from their stay in Egypt. This suggests to me it could reflect an Egyptian concept or deity.
The book continues:

Exod 3.... "I will be what I will be: thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel Ehyeh [I will be = Yahweh, He will be] hath sent me unto you.

I think the brackets above are confused- Yahweh means He will be / is, whereas Ehyeh means I will be / am, AFAIK.

Similarly to derive YHWH from Egyptian subculture has no backing in archaeological data. The strongest element would perhaps be the seals, but this is a late element centuries after the Shasu references and the very fact that they are called 'Shasu' means they aren't Egyptian. I can see why some people would build fantastic ricketty structures around this idea, but foundationally there is simply no evidence to back it up and a very long period between to somehow explain away. While there were temples to YHWH in Egypt for later Israelite mercenaries (notably at Elephantine), this is clearly a later import.

You are saying that Egyptian overlap with Israel was 800 BC, whereas Shasu and Yhwh can be found centuries before that. OK. But actually Egyptian political and cultural overlap with Hebrews goes back centuries before that too. The Hyksos are commonly considered Canaanites and Levantine Semites who even ruled Egypt in about 1700 BC IIRC. "Zion"/ Israelite Palestine is right on/outside/inside the eastern border of Egypt. Even within the story of the Exodus, the Israelites were people who left Egypt, so direct political control of Zion/Palestine by Egypt like in 800 BC is not a necessary component of the theory.

As you yourself noted, Israelite ideas on purity and the sabbath etc. are a little too far for Egyptian culture, but this is even more reason to look for an origin outside of it than to use it as evidence of being an excluded subgroup. Things that seem foreign to a culture usually are.

We know that there were old epics that are now lost to us. It is based on this very idea that the Song of Deborah and the Song of the Sea can be argued to be pre-monarchic. None of these support a Khepri connection and to intimate there must have been others to support it, now lost, seems to be clutching at straws.
Etymologically and historically I find the evidence a little too weak here.

Well, you know how I am seeing an actual connection with the Tengri/Dingir/ Tien or Di = Heaven/Deity. The Kheper - Yhwh connection seems weaker to me because of the phonetic differences. I also consider the scarab and sun evidences to be relevant enough to open the possibility, but not dispositive, even nearly.

Roman gods' overlap with Greeks' and maybe sometimes even Babyonian or Phoenician gods is much clearer than basic theological overlap between Egypt and Israel.

On the other hand, at least Egypt and Israel did IMO have major cultural, historical, linguistic, and religious overlap, whereas that is not nearly as clear with Sumerians and Turkic peoples. One good example IMO is monotheism. I think there are signs of Egyptians having monotheist ideas. Another is the Genesis 1 Creation-by-Logos/Word overlap with Egypt's Ptah creation by word/thought. A third is circumcision.

The ancients had a practice of equating national gods with other national gods sometimes. Hebrew YHWH looks to mean "He will be" (I await you comments though on it), whereas Khepri/Kheper looks to refer to the scarab /"The Becomer". So the basic concept could be the same (minus the scarab insect part).

But even there, the implications of association are not fully clear. Hebrews did not consider God to look like an insect. Sure, he had wings (as does a scarab) and was associated closely with the sun sometimes, but so did and was the Egyptian hawk ("horus").

One value of the question is that the Tanakh doesnt really explain the full meaning of God as one who exists/will exist. It could be just self evident that existence or coming into existence are key features of God, and the matter could be left at that. But commonly in the Bible when a major concept is introduced, there is more commentary on that meaning in the Bible. But in this case, I don't remember much commentary on this meaning beyond the name itself and the short passage about I will be what I will be.

So if Kheper(Becomer) the Egyptian concept is basically the same concept as the source of Israelite YHWH (He will be), then it could give suggestions for how the Hebrews beheld this concept before and while they wrote about it in Torah.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Correct. However, could YHWH mean "He will be", rather than "I am" or "He is"?

One explanation that sounds to me correct is that YHWH is actually the Hebrew verb YHYH turned into a proper noun. I heard that there are other instance(s) of verbs turned into names in Hebrew by switching Y to W. What would HYH mean?

These translations of "will be" occur many places:
I. Hebrew 4 Christians website:

The Hebrew Name for God - YHVH

II. Theopedia
Yahweh | Theopedia

III. Hebrew Streams and the book Psalms by Gerald Wilson

Hebrew Streams: HaShem

IV. The Biblical World, Volume 28, edited by William Rainey Harper
These two quotes above are the kind of thing that make it look like "Yahweh" was a name, concept, or deity that came to the Israelites from their stay in Egypt. This suggests to me it could reflect an Egyptian concept or deity.

I don't see how it follows from your quotes that YHWH was adopted from Egypt. They clearly use theology and terms very much different from Khepri and derive the names from Hebrew roots, even if they also like to bring in 'will be' to stress the eternity of God in the fashion of He was, is and will be.

The book continues:

I think the brackets above are confused- Yahweh means He will be / is, whereas Ehyeh means I will be / am, AFAIK.

No, its just God speaking in the singular which is then made third person by reference to show where YHWH originates, not that the writer is translating ehyeh per se.

You are saying that Egyptian overlap with Israel was 800 BC, whereas Shasu and Yhwh can be found centuries before that. OK. But actually Egyptian political and cultural overlap with Hebrews goes back centuries before that too. The Hyksos are commonly considered Canaanites and Levantine Semites who even ruled Egypt in about 1700 BC IIRC. "Zion"/ Israelite Palestine is right on/outside/inside the eastern border of Egypt. Even within the story of the Exodus, the Israelites were people who left Egypt, so direct political control of Zion/Palestine by Egypt like in 800 BC is not a necessary component of the theory.

I am not saying there was no overlap. I am saying that the use of the term Shasu means that the Egyptians themselves recognised these people as foreign and by using a term like YHW instead of equating it to one of their own gods, they clearly don't recognise their deity either.
Now Israelite culture emerged at some point between 1500-1000 BC, but we only see scarab seals and such iconography by 800 BC. This is odd if we would derive YHWH from Egyptian origin of the Hebrews or a sojourn in Egypt, thus this is a later adoption due to pervasive influence and not evidence of origin. Obviously Egypt heavily influenced Israelite culture throughout its existence, but to derive elements from Egypt requires them to be present from the misty pre-monarchic time of the Judges, which is markedly lacking here and in fact against our oldest textual evidence. The only reason to think so is based on a alternate etymology for YHWH and the hypothesis of translation of a god's name, the latter of which is unheard of and out of character with semitic peoples. Therefore it has very little ground to stand on, in my opinion.

Well, you know how I am seeing an actual connection with the Tengri/Dingir/ Tien or Di = Heaven/Deity. The Kheper - Yhwh connection seems weaker to me because of the phonetic differences. I also consider the scarab and sun evidences to be relevant enough to open the possibility, but not dispositive, even nearly.

Roman gods' overlap with Greeks' and maybe sometimes even Babyonian or Phoenician gods is much clearer than basic theological overlap between Egypt and Israel.

This illustrates what I said though. Roman and Greek gods have similar attributes and names, they aren't translated names but changed as the languages diverged. They started out as a single Indo-European god. Interpraetio Romanum then stepped in to smooth over where the gods' characters later diverged. Based on such clear connections with certain peoples' gods, the Greeks then extended the concept to Semitic gods thst do not necessarily have a common origin.
I agree that the phonetic and iconographic evidence is weak for Khepri to YHWH, which is further reason why I find this highly doubtful.

On the other hand, at least Egypt and Israel did IMO have major cultural, historical, linguistic, and religious overlap, whereas that is not nearly as clear with Sumerians and Turkic peoples. One good example IMO is monotheism. I think there are signs of Egyptians having monotheist ideas. Another is the Genesis 1 Creation-by-Logos/Word overlap with Egypt's Ptah creation by word/thought. A third is circumcision.

The ancients had a practice of equating national gods with other national gods sometimes. Hebrew YHWH looks to mean "He will be" (I await you comments though on it), whereas Khepri/Kheper looks to refer to the scarab /"The Becomer". So the basic concept could be the same (minus the scarab insect part).

But even there, the implications of association are not fully clear. Hebrews did not consider God to look like an insect. Sure, he had wings (as does a scarab) and was associated closely with the sun sometimes, but so did and was the Egyptian hawk ("horus").

One value of the question is that the Tanakh doesnt really explain the full meaning of God as one who exists/will exist. It could be just self evident that existence or coming into existence are key features of God, and the matter could be left at that. But commonly in the Bible when a major concept is introduced, there is more commentary on that meaning in the Bible. But in this case, I don't remember much commentary on this meaning beyond the name itself and the short passage about I will be what I will be.

So if Kheper(Becomer) the Egyptian concept is basically the same concept as the source of Israelite YHWH (He will be), then it could give suggestions for how the Hebrews beheld this concept before and while they wrote about it in Torah.

The very fact of Khepri being a Scarab and the term kheper meaning 'becoming' is where this whole concept came from in Egyptian thought. Thus to remove or ignore that connection is like taking away Zeus's thunder or Mars's warlike attributes. It simply makes no sense. If you are worshipping a god, you are going to be conservative about elements about it, symbols and such. The Jews kept writing the tetragrammaton in paleo-hebrew for centuries after writing in Aramaic script. We still use iconography of the first century.
To think they not only didn't use the name but dropped his symbols as well, says to me this clearly is a different god.
Pre-monarchic YHWH worship anyway has much more storm characteristics than solar ones, which fit Canaan - more dependant on Baalim watering their lands by rain than a permanent river and flooding.
The oldest Egyptian influence anyway seems more related to Cattle like the golden calf or the calves at Dan and Bethel.
This hypothesis simply has too much that has to be unique in this one case for it to be plausible.

 

[rakovsky]

Quid,
YaHU was the Shasu deity, you explained.

H is written as a man praising in Hebrew, Phoenician, and in Egyptian. The word was Hilleul or Hil in Egyptian.
HallelUYaH is the common refrain "Praise Yahu".
There seemed to be a Biblical understanding that Yahu was a name for God, referred to maybe in the Yahu mention you gave, not just in the Bible where many times it calls God Yahu or uses that as a root word in names like Yeshayahu.

Yahu + Praise = HallelUYaH = Halleluyah?
YaHWH = YahU+H = Yahu + Praise?

"the LORD, [who is] worthy to be praised:"
(הֻלָּ֖ל אֶקְרָ֣א יְהוָ֑ה) (2 Samuel 22:4)

4 Of which, twenty and four thousand were to set forward the work of the house of the Lord; and six thousand were officers and judges:

5 Moreover four thousand were porters; and four thousand praised [YHWH] with the instruments which I made, said David, to praise therewith
(2 Chron. 23)

I wouldn't be surprised if the Tanakh's use of numbers had some inner meaning. In that passage the numbers are listed 4 times. Maybe it's referring to the four letters in YHWH.

BTW, Halal = praise and also "shine".
Remember how we talked about those other languages' ancient names for "deity" associated with "shine"?
So, Yahu shines?

יָהֵ֫לּוּ Isaiah 13:10; — flash forth light, of heavenly bodies, אוֺר = sun Job 31:26
(Strong's Hebrew: 1984. הָלַל (halal) -- shine)