Talk:Tehom

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What's up with "Tehwom"? That's just a mis-reading of the Hebrew spelling. There is no consonantal /w/ in the word. It should be deleted.

check the reference to Genesis 51:10. it does not exist.

(I assume the above is supposed to read Isaiah 51:10, as Gen 51:10 indeed does not exist.)

Cognates

The word tehom is not cognate to Tiamat according to the majority view that Tiamat is from Sumerian meaning mother of life while tehom is from the Semitic root t-h-m found also in Ugaritic meaning the ocean. It is cognate to Akkadian tamtu which is NOT another name for Tiamat, in fact not a name at all but again simply the word for ocean. Please stop cranky "Bible-is-derived-from-paganism" innuendo POV edits in this regard. The tehom = Tiamat claim is a well known error thoroughly discussed and dismissed already in the 1930s, see The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian by A.S. Yahuda, Oxford University Press, 1933. Kuratowski's Ghost (talk) 03:16, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately for Mr Yahuda, his views haven't left any impression on later scholarship :) PiCo (talk) 06:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Not true at all, his work is still regularly cited. Kuratowski's Ghost (talk) 11:46, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

In this humble editor's view, the controversy above should be made explicit but inconclusive in the article itself. Simply declaring that an error is 'well known' or that someone's work is 'regularly cited' is dangerously close to weasel-wording, and it strikes us that making rigid, clear pronouncements about the meaning of ancient words is an exercise in folly. 70.89.20.65 (talk) 18:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

The line from the Hebrew Bible needs to be transliterated in some standard, and consistent, way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bhutamsa (talk • contribs) 01:51, 14 October 2008 (UTC)