Rolf, You mentioned in passing that the Egyptians had already the custom of not calling a god by his name because of his holiness. I believe this refers to Amun as you confirmed in an earlier correspondence on the subject.
It would be interesting to speculate if this ancient custom, and I believe it is among the first attested in the ANE, had a direct influence on the Israeli avoidance of pronouncing the tetragammaton . This becomes all the more interesting because judging by the surviving extra-biblical material, in the pre-exilic period YHWH was treated as regular word. Whereas the Egyptian custom is much earlier. Uri Hurwitz Wilmington, VT _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
