Post-exilic scribes added thousands of interior yods and vavs to common
words in the pre-exilic portions of the Bible, as vowel indicators in updated,
plene spelling, and in thousands of other cases vowel indicators were not
added to common words. But only rarely was an interior yod or vav added to a
proper name in an early part of the Bible. As to proper names in old parts
of the Bible, were interior yods and vavs added on a random basis? Or, on
the contrary, was an interior yod or vav added to a proper name in an early
section of the Bible only to avoid apparent blasphemy, or to make explicable
what otherwise was inexplicable, in both cases from the point of view of
post-exilic scribes?
The converse is also of interest. The post-exilic scribes could not delete
an interior vav in pre-exilic texts, no matter how much they may have
wanted to. So the presence of an interior vav in an old proper name in the
received text may be very old, and very important.
This thread intends to take a close look at interior vavs and interior yods
in proper names in old parts of the Bible. My controversial point of view
here is that they are not random. Whenever one sees an interior yod or vav
in a proper name in an early part of the Bible, there likely is a rational
explanation for its presence, rather than it being a mere random updating to
plene spelling of some proper names (in my controversial opinion).
In my view, one key to understanding the oldest parts of the Bible may be
to consider (i) what the proper names looked like before a rare interior yod
or vav was added, and (ii) why certain proper names had an interior vav from
day #1, having nothing whatsoever to do with updating the original
defective spelling to full spelling. That is the set of issues that this
thread
intends to explore.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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