Skialalia

Watching a doco on ancient Israel tonight reminded me of something I noticed a while ago. It's not provable, by any means, but as a thought experiment, I rather like it.

The name of the Israelite God - and by extension, now ascribed to the Jewish God, and sometimes the Christian one - is written in Hebrew as (transliterated) YHWH. Usually, it's pronounced 'Yahweh', which is a best guess, but since the name was not meant to be spoken, who knows? But anyway ...

For no apparent reason one day, I read it backwards. HWHY. Something about it looked familiar. Then it clicked - the name of the first woman in Genesis. To most of us, that name is 'Eve'. Like a bunch of Hebrew names, however, it's an Anglicisation by way of Germany (which also gave us 'Jehovah'). Transliterated from the Hebrew it's 'HWH', usually pronounced 'Hawwah'. It's glossed as meaning 'Mother of All Living'. Add the 'Y', which is the Hebrew suffix for 'my', and you have 'My Mother of All Living'.

So ... read backwards, the Father God of ancient Israel is also the Mother of All Living - which is as good a Goddess name as I've ever heard.


Think about that for a minute. It kinda does something one's understanding of that particularly deity.



I really rather like that.






Of course, I may just be a sad nerd with a thing for funky language coincidences, but whatever ...