Gesenius theorizes that "Yahweh" came directly from Egypt - Tregelles rips to shreds - G "thoroughly retracts" something

Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Gesenius theorizes that "Yahweh" came directly from Egypt - Tregelles rips to shreds - G "thoroughly retracts" something

Gesenius page showing how he actually used the Jupiter connection in favor of the pagan yahveh, placed on Pinterest by Nehemiah Gordon
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/230105862191295670/

"To give my own opinion, I suppose this word to be one of the most remote antiquity, perhaps of the same origin as Jovis, Jupiter, and transferred from the Egyptians to the Hebrews." Gesenius' Hebrew Chaldee Lexicon Old Testament Scriptures, translated by Tregelles, 1857, page 337. The words in brackets are the commentary of the translator.
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[What an idea! God himself revealed this as his own name; the Israelites could never have received it from the Egyptians]...- Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, translator and commentary
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The Gesenius conjectural blunder opens up the Egyptian and Latin paganism theories for "Yahweh". It also is part of showing that Gesenius had little substance in his argumentation.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
the Gesenius theory is noted

Here was a later summary:

The Presbyterian Quarterly Review, Volume 6 (1857)
MacWhorter on the Memorial Name (Review)
George Rapall Noyes
https://books.google.com/books?id=6-0WAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA90

*The hypothesis of a foreign origin of the name “Jehovah” had not appeared in the third edition of Gesenius' Hebrew and German Manual Lexicon. From this edition, his Hebrew and Latin Manual was revised, and enlarged, and published, A. D. 1833. And here this hypothesis is first broached, very hypothetically, as follows:

“Ut dicam, quod sentio, hoc vocabulum remotissi-mae antiquitatis esse suspicor, nescio an ejusdem stirpis atque Jovis, Jupiter, ab Acgyptiis translatnin ad Hebraeos, ab his autem paululum inflexum, ut formam ct originem semiticam redoleat.”

But in the Thesaurus, A. D. 1839, Gesenius returned to the opinion of his youth, and the received opinion of the world, strongly declaring,

“... oleum fere et operam perdidisse censendi sint, qui peregrinam huic vocabulo originem vindicare vellent.”
https://books.google.com/books?id=XfpEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA578 (1840)

Thus the great philologist began right and ended right, and was gone timidly astray not more—we know not how much less—than six years.
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The Bible in the Workshop. Part II. A Refutation of the Second Part of Bishop Colenso's Critical Examination of the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua. By Two Working Men, a Jew and a Gentle [i.e. E. Eisenstadt and C. J. Whitmore]. - (1863)
https://books.google.com/books?id=3uRUAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA95
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The Gesenius theory is noted in a number of spots:

Belgarnie properly doubts the "retraction":

Arkite Workshop (1881)
Robert Balgarnie
https://books.google.com/books?id=TqQCAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA91
Gesenius says of the name Jehovah : ‘I suppose this word to be one of the most remote antiquity, perhaps of the same origin as Jovis, Jupiter, and transferred from the Egyptians to the Hebrews.’ Tregelles adds that he ‘afterwards thoroughly retracted this opinion,’ which is doubtful; and Tregelles on such a subject is more to be distrusted than Gesenius.
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"Gesenius derives the name of Ihuh from a root huh, which root does not exist in Hebrew."—Gerald Massey

Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World: A Work of Reclamation and Restitution in Twelve Books, Volume 1, (1907)
https://books.google.com/books?id=3k4XAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA498
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
early notes

Did the Yahweh error really begin with Gesenius?

The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Volume 25 (1909)
Notes on the Name YHVH
George F. Moore
https://books.google.com/books?id=DaxBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA317

Moore finds a Yahweh-type of form in Gesenius in 1815, 1823, 1825, 1833 and 1839, after an unusual 1810 approach.

In English we have Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr. translating Gesenius in 1824 (also 1827 an 1832), Chrisopher Leo in 1825 and Edward Robinson in 1836 (also 1854.) Later Tregelles in 1860 (and other years).

It would be helpful to look at those editions.

A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament: Including the Biblical Chaldee from the German Works of Gesenius (1824)
translated by Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr
https://books.google.com/books?id=He8tAAAAYAAJ

Jehovah is on five pages, there is no Yahweh or Yahveh.

Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr. (1790-1861)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Willard_Gibbs,_Sr.
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=====

A Hebrew Lexicon to the Books of the Old Testament: Including the Geographical Names and Chaldaic Words in Daniel, Ezra, Etc, Volume 1 (1825)
Christopher Leo
https://books.google.com/books?id=1t1EAAAAcAAJ

Jehovah is on five pages, there is no Yahweh or Yahveh
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===


A Hebrew and English lexicon of the Old Testament,
including the Biblical Chaldee.
Tr. from the Latin of William Gesenius. By Edward Robinson. (1836)
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001231757

Edward Robinson (1794-1853)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Robinson_(scholar)

Jehovah commonly used.
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
There is a similar back and forth involving Elias Eisenstadt and John William Colenso.

Norbert Elias and Shmuel Eisenstadt
C. J. Whitmore

John William Colenso (1814-1883)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Colenso

The Bible in the workshop. Pt. 2. A refutation of the second part of bishop Colenso's critical examination of the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, by two working men [E. Eisenstadt and C. J. Whitmore] (1863)
https://books.google.com/books?id=3uRUAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA91

The ideas concerning tho name of Jehovah being taken from the Latin Ju-piter and Jov-is are found in the Lexicon of Gesenius (p. 337), where the statement is thus printed:—“ I suppose the word to be one, of the most remote antiquity, perhaps of the same origin as Jovis Jupiter.”

1742609472976.png
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Seyffarth
https://books.google.com/books?id=lPgDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA123
Die Grundsätze der Mythologie und der alten Religionsgeschichte sowie der hieroglyphischen Systeme de Sacy's, Palin's, Young's, Spohn's, Champollion's, Janelli's und des Verfassers: eine berichtegende Beilage zu der Schrift des Herrn Prof. Dr. Movers, Untersuchungen über die Religion der Phönizier und zu dessen Antikritik (1843)
1687903337637.png


B. Gesenius Thesaurus .577 nicht gelesen habe, wo dieser sagt:

„In hac igitur explicatione (Hebrew) antiquitus recepta (v. supra Clem. Al. et Epiph.) acquiesci potest, eo magis quum oleum fere et operam perdidisse censendi sint, qui peregrinam huic vocabulo originem vindicare vellent. Nam neque in Phonicia (''leveo apud Phil. Bybl. I. c. est ipse Hebraeorum V. T.) neque in Aegypto vetere (Iaw Gnosticorum est (Heb) V. T.) vestigia ejus reperta sunt: neque eorum opinio, qui et (Heb) et Jovis ( unde Ju-piter ) ex antiquissimo quodam fonte orientali fluxisse coniecerunt, magna veri specie gaudet. Sonach hat also Rec. weder zum Lobe noch zum Tadel des Verf. eine „Luge“ gesagt.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Facebook - the Creator's Name
https://www.facebook.com/groups/744...101&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

Here is the Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791) section from 1784, the first paragraph of the section in p. 524-526:

Supplementa ad lexica hebraica, Volume 1
https://books.google.com/books?id=kKwPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA524

The flipper Gesenius actually gave his theophoric name defense a compliment.

You will find lots of excellent material in the English translation of his work by Herbert Marsh.

can bring over comments

============================

Facebook - The Creator's Name
https://www.facebook.com/groups/744...923&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

The Divine Name according to the disciple of Gesenius:

Despite the fact that Gesenius began to use the form Yahweh, there were Protestant biblical scholars who continued to use the Divine Name - YEHOVAH, including: Gesenius' student, Rudolf Ewald Stier (1800-1862) a German theologian and Hebrew lecturer from Basel. In his commentary on the words of the Messiah, he used the Hebrew form of the Divine Name יְהֹוָה as well as the transcribed form Jehovah. Also in his Polyglot's Bible - including the Hebrew text and the parallel text of the Greek Septuagint, Latin of the Vulgate, Luther's German with the most important variants of German translations and footnotes - published by him in Leipzig since 1854, he systematically used the form יְהֹוָה and in the footnotes explained as Jehovah. This Bible was designed for practical use and came out gradually in four volumes, and due to popular demand it went through several editions.

Rudolf Ewald Stier published it together with Karl Gottfried Wilhelm Theil (Thiele), a professor and dean of the faculty of theology in Leipzig.
Below: Front page of Polyglotten Bibel zum praktischen Handgebrauch, Leipzig 1854, and Deuteronomium 6:1-5 with the Divine Name, vol. 1, pp.852-853 From the right; the text of the Vulgate, Luther, the Hebrew Masoretic with the Name יְהֹוָה and finally the Greek text of the Septuagint.

Steven Avery
Thanks, good info!
George F. Moore (his own conclusions are terribly flawed
🙂
) article has:
" Learned defenses of this usage continued to be made from time to time in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; for
example, by
J. D. Michaelis (1792),53
Rudolph Stier,54 and
Holemann.55
It is interesting, in the light of his later writings, to know that Ewald, in his earliest publication (1823), entered the lists not only for the unity of Genesis, but for the pronunciation Jehovah."
Good references, each one deserves a post, noting also the major omission: David-Paul Drach and possibly Samuel Prideaux Tregelles as a strong defender, however not the depth of scholarship.

No photo description available.


Steven Avery
We may find his defense of Jehovah section in:
Rudolf Stier
Lehrgebäude der hebräischen sprache, als durchgängige Hinweisung auf eine allgemeine Sprachlehre dargestellt
1833
https://books.google.com/books?id=P...em_nk9Uu4ZCojd2ausJRKYQyg#v=onepage&q&f=false
1849
https://books.google.com/books?id=p...em_9T-MoGMTR_jku9iyMDzDDw#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
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