Sbf, Notwithstanding my dismissal of the importance of how people should pronounce a name for any God since it is in the realms of superstition, I agreed that the matter would be of use in understanding the evolution of religious myth, and indeed it is, especially in the area of “onomastics” as your blurb quotations mention. (Oh, how recondite!).
I agree, you might describe the book by Frank Shaw as “amazing” not because of its niche academic obscurity but by being conspicuously relevant to JWs as an adjunct to the proper understanding in the origins of one of the names of an ancient Canaanite god, one of which they (unthinkingly) promote as their partisan trade mark and talisman.
The word under Shaw’s spotlight is not the tetragrammaton or Yahweh but “Iao,” once used much more informally it seems when referring to God. (Did Jews, Greeks or others ever translate it YH or “Yah”, do we know?) To understand and isolate any matter or artefact or item of language from the past, it is essential to understand it in its everyday social context including the prevailing perception of the numinous. The text has to reconcile the archaeology and sociology of a particular time and location. I do not know if Shaw does this?
Reading only a scholarly review (!) Shaw’s text is a reworking of his PhD dissertation. I picked up the idea that the evidence leads to the earliest known references of “Iao” being without “apotropaic” use (i.e. talismanic). It was only in Gnostic and Christian times when it became mysticised whereas the tetragrammaton from early on (8th century BCE) had value as an amulet inscription (for good luck and warding off evil).
The highlighting of Shaw’s text is an insight for those not familiar with what goes on in academic evidence based writing as opposed to ‘popular’ takes on a subject (you don’t have to agree but must give evidence and references for disagreeing) and this is reflected in the price of the book; cheap at 50 Euros. Probably not a big seller!