Saturday, January 05, 2019

YHWH "the Impassioned One?"

PROF. ISRAEL KNOHL: YHWH: The Original Arabic Meaning of the Name (TheTorah.com).
God reveals his name to Moses as “I am,” from the Hebrew root ה.ו.י, “being.” The name YHWH, however, originates in Midian, and derives from the Arabic term for “love, desire, or passion.”
I am not an expert on pre-Islamic Arabian language and culture, so I have no opinion about this proposal. It was published in 1956 and has not caught on, which is not a good sign. But perhaps someone will take it up again in a peer-review publication. We'll see.

For another proposal for the origin of the divine name YHWH, see here.

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