So, not much in the way of discussion regarding the TETRAGRAMMATON
issue I raised the other week. OK; someone'll eventually get to it
I guess.
Another thing I was thinking about, while toying with Hebrew fonts.
Often, letters are substituted in _nomina sacra_ in order to avoid
writing a holy name, much as the various symbols for the
tetragrammaton are used. And indeed, sometimes they're used in that
name too, as I mentioned, usages like ידוד or ידוה and so on.
There's an example in the paper that shows אלדים instead of אלהים.
Much more common today would be אלקים and in fact people frequently
even pronounce it that way (when it refers to big-G God, in
non-sacred contexts. But for little-g gods, the same word is
pronounced without the avoidance, because it isn't holy. It's
weird.)
I wonder if it makes sense maybe to encode not a codepoint, but a
variant sequence(s) to represent this sort of "defaced" or "altered"
letter HEH. It's still a HEH, it just looks like another letter,
right? (QOF or DALET or occasionally HET) That would keep some
consistency to the spelling. On the other hand, the spelling with a
QOF is already well entrenched in texts all over the internet. But
maybe it isn't right. And what about the use of ה׳ or ד׳ for the
tetragrammaton? Are they both HEHs, one "altered", or is one really
a DALET? Any thoughts?
(and seriously, what to do about all those tetragrammaton symbols?)
~mark
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Received on Wed Mar 25 2015 - 21:32:02 CDT