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

[visionary]

I see no problem with the concept that while the sounds of the letters were starting to take hold, the original was pictorial and both having a time period where they were interchangeable and valid either way.

 

[rakovsky]

I get it---thanks. But I meant is the ' wrong.

Back in 1700 BC or so, the letter yod in Hebrew (meaning arm) was written like an actual arm:

Then in about 500 BC after they already wrote down most of the Bible, what happened is that the entire Hebrew alphabet changed over to the Assyrian alphabet, which is what they still have today.

One of the changes is that they changed the VISUAL LOOK of the letter

into a simple
'
But they still kept calling it yod like they did before. Yod means arm.

So after they made the alphabet changed, they stopped VISUALLY writing God's name Yahweh as starting with

and switched to writing that

to look like a '

It's a visual issue.
It's still Yahweh. It's still fundamentally the letter

, but now they draw the

to look like a '


It's not totally "wrong", it's just a different alphabet that looks VISUALLY DIFFERENT.
Let me give you an example. If America decided to switch over to the Greek alphabet, would writing the p with П be wrong? No, because Americans would have chosen to change the alphabet that way. All the letters are still there, they just VISUALLY draw them differently than before. The Americans would still have p but they just make it look like П

Does everything make sense now?

 

[benelchi]

I personally do not put much stock in most of these claims. Many have a grain of truth, but then stretch the truth far beyond the evidence. The evidence we have about the original meaning of letters in the Hebrew alphabet is incomplete, some letters like the Yod, Aleph, Vav, etc... are pretty well know but others are pure guess work.

Furthermore, the claims made by many who tried to interpret Scripture using these methods have been nothing more that wild conjecture. The coded יהוה in Esther mentioned in your link is a good example, the examples shown in the text is nothing more than random chance. That isn't to say that there are not acrostics in the OT, there is! However, they are much easier to spot than this. Some examples: Ps. 119 and Prov. 31 (starting at vs. 10).

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.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Firstly, what does the Tetragrammaton YHWH mean? It seems to be from a hebrew triconsonantal root meaning 'to be', rendering the name etymologically 'He that Is' or as Philo translated it 'Being'.
Now the oldest reference to this name is amongst the Shasu of YHW in the Sinai in Egyptian sources of the 15th century BC. Thus the name greatly predates the paleo-Hebrew script.

Now the Hebrews didn't invent the alphabet (more precisely the form of alphabet called an Abjad). They likely received and adapted an existing Abjad from their neighbours as repeatedly happened as the principle spread (like Indian tongues were adapted from Imperial Aramaic script or Phoenician adapted to write Greek and thus create the first full alphabet or Etruscan adapted from Greek and in turn adapted to create our own Latin one).
Thus a pre-existing name was written using a new consonantal writing system. Even if specific signs were used in a logographic sense initially as well (not proven), longer terms were written consonantally and we have no etymologic support for a logographic reading here at all.
Even more fanciful alternate theories deriving YHWH from the titulature of El or some such, etymologically does not fit the presumed meaning of the letters very well.

Further we have no evidence of this occuring in surrounding peoples utilising Abjads or any form of Alphabets at all. The various Baals or Persian gods were written phonetically by sound, not based on the presumed meanings of the letters.

For those using logographic writing systems like the Egyptians this is different since they created a sign to signify the god in question's name in entirety, so obviously created one that fits their presumed nature. Even here though, we have later gods represented by multiple signs like Osiris or Isis with little relation to their mythological natures.

The Sumerians though used a mixed logographic and syllabic system similar to modern Japanese. As the gods' names tended to be represented by logographs, one sign for the name, they used a determinitive for 'god' to differentiate. These logographs had to do with their nature as they represent a similar stage of the development of writing as the early Egyptian gods. However, again syllabic signs were also utilised to write some gods, so this system is far from clear.
When the Babylonians adopted this complicated cuneiform system they mostly equated their own gods to Sumerian counterparts and thus adopted their signs as well. This thus created another set of gods whose nature supposedly is mirrored in the manner they are written.

So while the assumption of written form reflecting function can be made for the earliest Egyptian and Sumerian gods and with caution to Babylonian gods, I don't think it holds much water in any alphabetical system or later cuneiform.

With YHWH especcially I think the name predating its writing system, late date of it being written down after earlier forms in another writing system, it being written alphabetically and the fact that of the etymology not fitting the letters, renders this of very doubtful significance.

 

[benelchi]

Firstly, what does the Tetragrammaton YHWH mean? It seems to be from a hebrew triconsonantal root meaning 'to be', rendering the name etymologically 'He that Is' or as Philo translated it 'Being'.
Now the oldest reference to this name is amongst the Shasu of YHW in the Sinai in Egyptian sources of the 15th century BC. Thus the name greatly predates the paleo-Hebrew script.

Now the Hebrews didn't invent the alphabet (more precisely the form of alphabet called an Abjad). They likely received and adapted an existing Abjad from their neighbours as repeatedly happened as the principle spread (like Indian tongues were adapted from Imperial Aramaic script or Phoenician adapted to write Greek and thus create the first full alphabet or Etruscan adapted from Greek and in turn adapted to create our own Latin one).
Thus a pre-existing name was written using a new consonantal writing system. Even if specific signs were used in a logographic sense initially as well (not proven), longer terms were written consonantally and we have no etymologic support for a logographic reading here at all.
Even more fanciful alternate theories deriving YHWH from the titulature of El or some such, etymologically does not fit the presumed meaning of the letters very well.

Further we have no evidence of this occuring in surrounding peoples utilising Abjads or any form of Alphabets at all. The various Baals or Persian gods were written phonetically by sound, not based on the presumed meanings of the letters.

For those using logographic writing systems like the Egyptians this is different since they created a sign to signify the god in question's name in entirety, so obviously created one that fits their presumed nature. Even here though, we have later gods represented by multiple signs like Osiris or Isis with little relation to their mythological natures.

The Sumerians though used a mixed logographic and syllabic system similar to modern Japanese. As the gods' names tended to be represented by logographs, one sign for the name, they used a determinitive for 'god' to differentiate. These logographs had to do with their nature as they represent a similar stage of the development of writing as the early Egyptian gods. However, again syllabic signs were also utilised to write some gods, so this system is far from clear.
When the Babylonians adopted this complicated cuneiform system they mostly equated their own gods to Sumerian counterparts and thus adopted their signs as well. This thus created another set of gods whose nature supposedly is mirrored in the manner they are written.

So while the assumption of written form reflecting function can be made for the earliest Egyptian and Sumerian gods and with caution to Babylonian gods, I don't think it holds much water in any alphabetical system or later cuneiform.

With YHWH especcially I think the name predating its writing system, late date of it being written down after earlier forms in another writing system, it being written alphabetically and the fact that of the etymology not fitting the letters, renders this of very doubtful significance.

One small correction, you said that "Thus the name [YHWH] greatly predates the paleo-Hebrew script." While I would agree that the name predates any known paleo-Hebraic text, the script used in paleo-Hebraic is Phoenician and had developed by the time that the lists at Soleb and Amarah-West were written.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

One small correction, you said that "Thus the name [YHWH] greatly predates the paleo-Hebrew script." While I would agree that the name predates any known paleo-Hebraic text, the script used in paleo-Hebraic is Phoenician and had developed by the time that the lists at Soleb and Amarah-West were written.

Paleo-Hebrew script is a variant of the West Semitic Phoenician script, but it is not the same thing. The Phoenician script was adapted to write Hebrew, but this could only have conceivably occurred at a point long after the name YHWH was already in use amongst them.

The letters had already become altered a bit, most notably for our purposes Waw, so I disagree the script already existed by this time. It turns on when a script and its parent are considered sufficiently dissimilar. I applaud your eye for detail though.

 

[benelchi]

Paleo-Hebrew script is a variant of the West Semitic Phoenician script, but it is not the same thing. The Phoenician script was adapted to write Hebrew, but this could only have conceivably occurred at a point long after the name YHWH was already in use amongst them.

The letters had already become altered a bit, most notably for our purposes Waw, so I disagree the script already existed by this time. It turns on when a script and its parent are considered sufficiently dissimilar. I applaud your eye for detail though.

I would have to disagree on this point. The majority of Hebrew scholars consider Phoenician letters to be glyph variants of Hebrew letters, not distinct characters. Among those who hold this opinion are Patrick Durusau, Director of Research and Development of the Society of Biblical Literature, and Dr Stephen A. Kaufman, Professor Emeritus of Bible and Cognate Literature at HUC.

Overall though, I do appreciate your post.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I would have to disagree on this point. The majority of Hebrew scholars consider Phoenician letters to be glyph variants of Hebrew letters, not distinct characters. Among those who hold this opinion are Patrick Durusau, Director of Research and Development of the Society of Biblical Literature, and Dr Stephen A. Kaufman, Professor Emeritus of Bible and Cognate Literature at HUC.

Fair enough. Both have the same 22 letters encoding similar consonants, so it is a valid point. I'd argue though that the devil lies in the details, since there are clear ethnic and religious factors at play here. I'll look into it a bit though, maybe I am a little too generous in asserting Hebrew exclusivity.

Regardless, it changes little to my original points.

Overall though, I do appreciate your post.

Thank you, always pleasant to see people reading my sometimes overly long posts. Nice to be appreciated.

 

[rakovsky]

It is interesting
Mechanical Translation

in~SUMMIT רֵאשִׁית bê'rey'[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]

he~did~FATTEN בָּרָא ba'ra

Elohiym אֱלֹהִים e'lo'him

In the beginning God

Oh that is funny!! The Hebrew pronunciation for "in the summit" comes out as a curse word!!! The last four letters are sh it!!

What is your point?

Is this just a crude joke by you?

 

[rakovsky]

I see no problem with the concept that while the sounds of the letters were starting to take hold, the original was pictorial and both having a time period where they were interchangeable and valid either way.

A lot of languages started out that way, according to scholars.
Like Babylonian writing was a mix of words and sounds. So is ancient Egyptian writing.

 

[rakovsky]

I personally do not put much stock in most of these claims. Many have a grain of truth, but then stretch the truth far beyond the evidence. The evidence we have about the original meaning of letters in the Hebrew alphabet is incomplete, some letters like the Yod, Aleph, Vav, etc... are pretty well know but others are pure guess work.

Furthermore, the claims made by many who tried to interpret Scripture using these methods have been nothing more that wild conjecture. The coded יהוה in Esther mentioned in your link is a good example, the examples shown in the text is nothing more than random chance. That isn't to say that there are not acrostics in the OT, there is! However, they are much easier to spot than this. Some examples: Ps. 119 and Prov. 31 (starting at vs. 10).

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

 

[visionary]

The tetragrammaton is the Hebrew theonym יהוה‎, commonly transliterated into Latin letters as YHWH. It is one of the names of God used in the Hebrew Bible. The name may be derived from a verb that means "to be", "to exist", "to cause to become", or "to come to pass".

 

[visionary]

Exodus 3:13-15, God names Himself first: אהיה אשר אהיה (I AM WHO I AM), then אהיה (I AM), and finally יהוה (YHWH) and states that this is his name forever and a memorial name to all generations.

The Mesha Stele bears the earliest known reference (840 BCE) to the Israelite God

 

[rakovsky]

Firstly, what does the Tetragrammaton YHWH mean? It seems to be from a hebrew triconsonantal root meaning 'to be', rendering the name etymologically 'He that Is' or as Philo translated it 'Being'.
Now the oldest reference to this name is amongst the Shasu of YHW in the Sinai in Egyptian sources of the 15th century BC. Thus the name greatly predates the paleo-Hebrew script.

Interesting issue.

WIkipedia's article on the Shasu says:

There are two Egyptian texts, one dated to the period of Amenhotep III (14th century BCE), the other to the age of Ramesses II (13th century BCE) which refer to 'Yahu in the land of the Šosū-nomads' (t3 š3św yhw3), in which yhw3/Yahu is a toponym.

Regarding the name yhw3, Michael Astour observed that the "hieroglyphic rendering corresponds very precisely to the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH, or Yahweh, and antedates the hitherto oldest occurrence of that divine name – on the Moabite Stone – by over five hundred years."[6] One hypothesis is that it is reasonable to infer that the demonym 'Israel' recorded on the Merneptah Stele refers to a Shasu enclave, and that, since later Biblical tradition portrays Yahweh "coming forth from Seʿir",[7] the Shasu, originally from Moab and northern Edom/Seʿir, went on to form one major element in the amalgam that was to constitute the "Israel" which later established the Kingdom of Israel.[8] Anson Rainey came to a similar conclusion in his analysis of the el-Amarna letters.[9] K. Van Der Toorn concludes that, "By the 14th century BC, before the cult of Yahweh had reached Israel, groups of Edomite and Midianites worshipped Yahweh as their god."

It looks like major word and geographical similarity with YHWH and YHW. But it does say that YHW is a toponym, NOT a deity like YHWH.

The article lists then a lot of arguments over whether the Shasu were Israelites.

Now the Hebrews didn't invent the alphabet (more precisely the form of alphabet called an Abjad). They likely received and adapted an existing Abjad from their neighbours as repeatedly happened as the principle spread (like Indian tongues were adapted from Imperial Aramaic script or Phoenician adapted to write Greek and thus create the first full alphabet or Etruscan adapted from Greek and in turn adapted to create our own Latin one).
Thus a pre-existing name was written using a new consonantal writing system.

Interesting issue was whether the primitive preliterate people were associating YHWH with the meanings of the sounds composing it (yod sound as arm, for example), or whether when they went to set down in writing YHWH (either as it was or as a version of YHW), they envisioned in it a special meaning, or if later on mystics interpreted a letter based meaning that was not original to the composition of YHWH.

Even if specific signs were used in a logographic sense initially as well (not proven), longer terms were written consonantally and we have no etymologic support for a logographic reading here at all.

To see if there was logographic etymological support for that reading of YHWH, I think you would have to decode the logographs and see if they match up with anything in their meaning.

Even more fanciful alternate theories deriving YHWH from the titulature of El or some such, etymologically does not fit the presumed meaning of the letters very well.

Further we have no evidence of this occuring in surrounding peoples utilising Abjads or any form of Alphabets at all. The various Baals or Persian gods were written phonetically by sound, not based on the presumed meanings of the letters.

Good point, although the Babylonians were a surrounding Semitic people and wrote their main god using the meaning of the letter, which they got from the Sumerians and referred to a heavenly star or to brightness or to the heavens or to something being high.
Babylonians it seemed used a mixed script.

Egyptians were also a surrounding people and used mixed script, even when talking about deities. Terms related to divinity could be written logographically or with a mix of phonetics and logographs. (like the NTR sign plus some phonetics).

For those using logographic writing systems like the Egyptians this is different since they created a sign to signify the god in question's name in entirety, so obviously created one that fits their presumed nature. Even here though, we have later gods represented by multiple signs like Osiris or Isis with little relation to their mythological natures.

The Sumerians though used a mixed logographic and syllabic system similar to modern Japanese. As the gods' names tended to be represented by logographs, one sign for the name, they used a determinitive for 'god' to differentiate. These logographs had to do with their nature as they represent a similar stage of the development of writing as the early Egyptian gods. However, again syllabic signs were also utilised to write some gods, so this system is far from clear.
When the Babylonians adopted this complicated cuneiform system they mostly equated their own gods to Sumerian counterparts and thus adopted their signs as well. This thus created another set of gods whose nature supposedly is mirrored in the manner they are written.

So while the assumption of written form reflecting function can be made for the earliest Egyptian and Sumerian gods and with caution to Babylonian gods, I don't think it holds much water in any alphabetical system or later cuneiform.

With YHWH especcially I think the name predating its writing system, late date of it being written down after earlier forms in another writing system, it being written alphabetically and the fact that of the etymology not fitting the letters, renders this of very doubtful significance.

The exact form of its "name predating its writing system" is in question. And whether the etymology means "to be" is in question.
Hebrew though in general is a phonetic alphabet as a normal writing of speech, although numbers are written as letters too. This all makes it very very hard for me to see YHWH as basically logographic in origin.

 

[rakovsky]

One small correction, you said that "Thus the name [YHWH] greatly predates the paleo-Hebrew script." While I would agree that the name predates any known paleo-Hebraic text, the script used in paleo-Hebraic is Phoenician and had developed by the time that the lists at Soleb and Amarah-West were written.

Good point.

 

[visionary]

Translation of what is Written on the Stone.
"I am Mesha, son of Chemosh[-yatti], the king of Moab, the Dibonite. My father (had) reigned over Moab for thirty years, and I reigned after my father. And I made this high-place for Chemosh in Qarcho . . . because he has delivered me from all kings, and because he has made me triumph over all my enemies. As for Omri the king of Israel, and he humbled Moab for many years (days), for Chemosh was angry with his land. And his son reigned in his place; and he also said, "I will oppress Moab!" In my days he said so. But I ltriumphed over him and over his house, and Israel has perished; it has perished forever! And Omri took possession of the whole land of Medeba, and he lived there in his days and half the days of his son (Ahab): forty years. But Chemosh restored it in my days. And I built Baal Meon, and I built a water reservoir in it. And I built Qiryaten. And the men of Gad lived in the land of Atarot from ancient times; and the king of Israel built Atarot for himself, and I fought against the city and captured it. And I killed all the people of the city as a sacrifice for Chemosh and for Moab. And I brought back the fire-hearth of his uncle from there; and I brought it before the face of Chemosh in Qerioit, and I made the men of Sharon live there, as well as the men of Maharit. And Chemosh said to me, "Go, take Nebo from Israel." And I went in the night and fought against it from the daybreak until midday, and I took it and I killed the whole population: seven thousand male subjects and aliens, and female subjects, aliens, and servant girls. F

For I had devoted them to destruction for (the god) Ashtar Chemosh. And from there I took the vessels of YHVH, and I presented them before the face of Chemosh. And the king of Israel had built Yahaz, and he stayed there throughout his campaign against me; and Chemosh drove him away before my face. And I took two hundred men of Moab, all first class (warriors), and I led it up to Yahaz. And I have taken it in order to add it to Dibon. I have built Qarcho, the wall of the woods and the wall of the citadel; and I have built its gates; and I have built its towers; and I have built the house of the king; and I have made the double reservoir for the spring in the innermost part of the city. Now the innermost part of the city had no cistern, in Qarcho, and I said to all the people, "Each one of you shall make a cistern in his house."

And I cut the moat for Qarcho by using Israelite captives. I have built Aroer, and I constructed the military road in Arnon (valley). I have built Beth-Bamot, for it had been destroyed. I have built Bezer, for it lay in ruins. And the men of Dibon stood in battle formation, for all Dibon were in subjection. And I am the king over the hundreds in the towns which I have added to the land. And I have built Beth-Medeba and Beth-Diblaten and Beth-Baal-Meon, and I brought there . . .flocks of the the land. And the House of [Da]vid dwelt in Hauranen, . . .Chemosh said to me, "Go down, fight against Hauranen!" I went down . . . and Chemosh restored it in my days . . ."

 

[rakovsky]

Paleo-Hebrew script is a variant of the West Semitic Phoenician script, but it is not the same thing. The Phoenician script was adapted to write Hebrew, but this could only have conceivably occurred at a point long after the name YHWH was already in use amongst them.

The letters had already become altered a bit, most notably for our purposes Waw, so I disagree the script already existed by this time. It turns on when a script and its parent are considered sufficiently dissimilar. I applaud your eye for detail though.

Yeah I think your point is good.

 

[visionary]

Even within the bible the translations of manuscripts have variations of YHVH.
Genesis 2:4 יְהוָה Yǝhwāh This is the first occurrence of the tetragrammaton in the Hebrew Bible and shows the most common set of vowels used in the Masoretic text. It is the same as the form used in Genesis 3:14 below, but with the dot over the holam/waw left out, because it is a little redundant.
Genesis 3:14 יְהֹוָה Yǝhōwāh This is a set of vowels used rarely in the Masoretic text, and are essentially the vowels from Adonai (with the hataf patah reverting to its natural state as a shewa).
Judges 16:28 יֱהֹוִה Yĕhōwih When the tetragrammaton is preceded by Adonai, it receives the vowels from the name Elohim instead. The hataf segol does not revert to a shewa because doing so could lead to confusion with the vowels in Adonai.
Genesis 15:2 יֱהוִה Yĕhwih Just as above, this uses the vowels from Elohim, but like the second version, the dot over the holam/waw is omitted as redundant.
1 Kings 2:26 יְהֹוִה Yǝhōwih Here, the dot over the holam/waw is present, but the hataf segol does get reverted to a shewa.
Ezekiel 24:24 יְהוִה Yǝhwih Here, the dot over the holam/waw is omitted, and the hataf segol gets reverted to a Shewa.

The only consistency is the YHVH or YHWH as they have it here.

 

[rakovsky]

I would have to disagree on this point. The majority of Hebrew scholars consider Phoenician letters to be glyph variants of Hebrew letters, not distinct characters. Among those who hold this opinion are Patrick Durusau, Director of Research and Development of the Society of Biblical Literature, and Dr Stephen A. Kaufman, Professor Emeritus of Bible and Cognate Literature at HUC.

Overall though, I do appreciate your post.

I guess you would want to consider whether Hebrews were using that script at the time they thought up the name YHWH, and whether those letters existed in the Hebrews' version of that script.

 

[rakovsky]

Exodus 3:13-15, God names Himself first: אהיה אשר אהיה (I AM WHO I AM), then אהיה (I AM), and finally יהוה (YHWH) and states that this is his name forever and a memorial name to all generations.

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.