:
This article is about the literary manifestations of the name of God in Hebrew. For other attributes of the name of God, see Yahweh, Jehovah, God in Judaism, and God in Abrahamic religions.
(10th century BC to 135 AD), old
Aramaic (10th century BC to 4th century AD) and square
Hebrew (3rd century BC to present) scripts.]]
bears the earliest known reference (840 BC) to the sacred
Hebrew name of God - YHWH.]]
The term
Tetragrammaton (from
Greek , meaning "[a word] having four letters") refers to the proper
name of the God of Israel YHWH () used in the
Hebrew Bible.
Occurrences and uses
The Tetragrammaton occurs 6,828 times in the Hebrew text of both the
Biblia Hebraica and
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. The letters, properly read from right to left (in Biblical Hebrew), are:
:
These four letters are usually transliterated from Hebrew as IHVH in Latin, JHWH in German, French and Dutch, and JHVH/YHWH in English. This has been variously rendered as "Yahweh" or as "Jehovah", based on the Latin form of the term, while the Hebrew text does not clearly indicate the omitted vowels.
In English translations, it is often rendered in capital and small capital letters as "the ", following Jewish tradition which reads the word as "Adonai" ("Lord") out of respect for the name of God and the interpretation of the commandment not to take the name of God in vain. The word "", 'the Name' is also used in Jewish contexts; in Samaritan, "" is the normal substitution.
Etymology and meaning of YHWH
It has often been proposed that the name YHWH is etymologically a third person masculine imperfect verb form derived from the Biblical Hebrew
triconsonantal root היה (h-y-y) "to be", which has הוה (h-w-y) as a variant form. This would connect it to the passage in verse Exodus 3:14, where God gives his name as אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh), translated most basically as "I am what I am" (or "I will be that which I now am"). יהוה with the vocalization "Yahweh" could theoretically be a
hiph'il verb inflection of root
h-w-y, with a meaning something like "he who causes to exist" or "who gives life". As a
qal (basic stem) verb inflection, it could mean "he who is, who exists". The word "forever" is "le'olam" which in biblical Hebrew means "always, continually".
Many Scriptures do favour the use of the Name. The biblical law does not prohibit the use of the Name, but it warns against "misuse", "blaspheming" or in ordinary terms, "taking lightly" the Name of YHWH. The Biblical texts suggest the people of the Bible—including the patriarchs—used the Name of YHWH. A wealth of scriptures support this notion.
Evidence
Theophoric names
Yeho or "Y
ehō-" is the prefix form of "YHWH" used in Hebrew
theophoric names; the suffix form Yahū" or "-Y
ehū" is just as common. This has caused two opinions:
# In former times (at least from c.1650 AD), that it was abbreviated from the Masoretic pronunciation "Yehovah", pronounced with the stress on vah.
# Recently that, as "Yahweh" is likely an imperfective verb form, "Yahu" is its corresponding preterite or jussive short form: compare (imperfective), (preterit or jussive short form) = "do obeisance".
Those who argue for argument 1 above are the: George Wesley Buchanan in Biblical Archaeology Review; Smith’s 1863 A Dictionary of the Bible; Section # 2.1 The Analytical Hebrew & Chaldee Lexicon (1848) in its article .
Smith's 1863 A Dictionary of the Bible says that "Yahweh" is possible because shortening to "Yahw" would end up as "Yahu" or similar. The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906 in the Article:Names Of God has a very similar discussion, and also gives the form Yo () contracted from Yeho (). The Encyclopædia Britannica also says that "Yeho-" or "Yo" can be explained from "Yahweh", and that the suffix "-yah" can be explained from "Yahweh" better than from "Yehovah". However, the suffix "-yah" can be explained from Yehovah by taking the first and last letters of the name and joining them, "Y----ah".
Chapter 1 of The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures, under the heading: The Pronunciation Of Gods Name quotes from Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2, page 7: Hebrew Scholars generally favor "Yahweh" as the most likely pronunciation. They point out that the abbreviated form of the name is Yah (Jah in the Latinized form), as at and in the expression Hallelu-Yah (meaning "Praise Yah, you people!"). The forms Yeho', Yo, Yah, and Ya'hu, found in the Hebrew spelling of the names of Yehoshaphat, Yoshaphat, Shefatyah, and others, could be derived from Yahweh, and could also be derived from Yehovah.
Using consonants as semi-vowels (v/w)
In
ancient Hebrew, the
letter , known to modern Hebrew speakers as
vav,
was a semivowel (as in English, not as in German) rather than a . The letter is referred to as
waw in the academic world. Because the ancient pronunciation differs from the modern pronunciation, it is common today to represent as YHWH rather than YHVH.
In unpointed Biblical Hebrew, most vowels are not written and the rest are written only ambiguously, as the vowel letters double as consonants (similar to the Latin use of V to indicate both U and V). See Matres lectionis for details. For similar reasons, an appearance of the Tetragrammaton in ancient Egyptian records of the 13th century BC sheds no light on the original pronunciation. Therefore it is, in general, difficult to deduce how a word is pronounced from its spelling only, and the Tetragrammaton is a particular example: two of its letters can serve as vowels, and two are vocalic place-holders, which are not pronounced.
This difficulty occurs somewhat also in Greek when transcribing Hebrew words, because of Greek's lack of a letter for consonant 'y' and (since loss of the digamma) of a letter for "w", forcing the Hebrew consonants yod and waw to be transcribed into Greek as vowels. Also, non-initial 'h' caused difficulty for Greeks and was liable to be omitted; х (chi) was pronounced as 'k' + 'h' (as in modern Hindi "lakh") and could not be used to spell 'h' as in Modern Greek = "Harry", for example.
Yahweh or Jahweh
The Latin pronunciation of the letter I/J as a consonant sound was , the 'y' sound of the English word 'you'. This changed in descendent languages into various stronger consonants, including at one point in French , the 'j' sound of the word 'juice', and this was the sound the letter came to be used for in English. Thus the English pronunciation of the older form
Jehovah has this 'j' sound, following the English pronunciation of its Latin spelling. In order to preserve the Latin (and approximate Hebrew) pronunciation of
Jahweh, however, the English spelling was changed to
Yahweh.
Kethib and Qere and Qere perpetuum
The original consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible was provided with vowel marks by the
Masoretes to assist reading. In places where the consonants of the text to be read (the
Qere) differed from the consonants of the written text (the
Kethib), they wrote the Qere in the margin as a note showing what was to be read. In such a case the vowels of the Qere were written on the Kethib. For a few very frequent words the marginal note was omitted: this is called
Q're perpetuum.
One of these frequent cases was the Tetragrammaton, which according to later Jewish practices should not be pronounced, but read as "" ("My Lord [plural of majesty]"), or, if the previous or next word already was "", or "" ("My Lord"), as "" ("God"). This combination produces יְהֹוָה and יֱהֹוִה respectively, non-words that would spell "yehovah" and "yehovih" respectively.
The oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, such as the Aleppo Codex and the Codex Leningradensis mostly write (yehvah), with no pointing on the first H; this points to its Qere being '', which is Aramaic for "the Name".
The Leningrad Codex of 1008-1010
Vowel points were added to the Tetragrammaton by the
Masoretes, in the first millennium.
Six Hebrew spellings of the Tetragrammaton are found in:
The Leningrad Codex of 1008-1010 A.D.
as shown below [Note that all six of these Hebrew Spellings [ i.e. variants can be observed in the Online Leningrad Codex, by clicking on the corresponding Codex L. Link provided] ( Also note that the entries in the Close Transcription column are not intended to indicate how the name was intended to be pronounced by the Masoretes, but only how the word would be pronounced if read without q're perpetuum):
{| border="1"
| Chapter & Verse||Hebrew Spelling||Close transcription||
Codex L. Link||Explanation
|-
|
Genesis 3:14||
יְהֹוָה||
||
||This is the most common set of vowels, which are essentially the vowels from Adonai (with the hataf patah reverting to its natural state as a shewa).
|-
|
Judges 16:28||
יְהוָה||
||
||This is the same as above, but with the dot over the holam/waw left out, because it is a little redundant.
|-
|
Judges 16:28||
יֱהֹוִה||
||
||When the Tetragrammaton is preceded by Adonai, it receives the vowels from the name Elohim instead. The hataf segol does not revert to a shewa because doing so could lead to confusion with the vowels in Adonai.
|-
|
Genesis 15:2||
יֱהוִה||
||
||Just as above, this uses the vowels from Elohim, but like the second version, the dot over the holam/waw is omitted as redundant.
|-
|
1 Kings 2:26||
יְהֹוִה||
||
||Here, the dot over the holam/waw is present, but the hataf segol does get reverted to a shewa.
|-
|
Ezekiel 24:24||
יְהוִה||
||
||Here, the dot over the holam/waw is omitted, and the hataf segol gets reverted to a shewa.
|-
|}
is
hatef segol;
is the pronounced form of plain
shewa
Gérard Gertoux wrote that in the Leningrad Codex of 1008-1010, the Masoretes used 7 different vowel pointings [i.e., 7 different Q're's] for YHWH. [Note that one of these different vowel pointings is not a true variant, but was the result of the addition of an inseparable preposition to YHWH] A version of the BHS text, which is derived from the Leningrad Codex, is used to translate the Old Testament of almost all English Bibles other than the King James Bible. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon of 1905 shows only two different vowel pointings [ i.e. variants ] of YHWH are found in the Ben Chayyim Hebrew Text of 1525, which underlies the Old Testament of the King James Bible. Scanned example
Frequency of use in scripture
According to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon,
יְהֹוָה (Qr
אֲדֹנָי) occurs 6,518 times, and
יֱהֹוִה (Qr
אֱלֹהִים) occurs 305 times in the Masoretic Text.
It appears 6,823 times in the Jewish Bible, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, and 6,828 times each in the Biblia Hebraica and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia texts of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The vocalizations of יְהֹוָה and אֲדֹנָי are not identical
The
schwa in YHWH (the vowel under the first letter,
) and the
hataf patakh in 'DNY (the vowel under its first letter,
), appear different. One reason suggested is that the spelling
יֲהֹוָה (with the hataf patakh) risks that a reader might start pronouncing "Yah", which is a form of the Name, thus completing the first half of the full Name. Alternatively, the vocalization can be attributed to
Biblical Hebrew phonology, where the hataf patakh is grammatically identical to a schwa, always replacing every
schwa naḥ under a
guttural letter. Since the first letter of
אֲדֹנָי is a guttural letter, while the first letter of
יְהֹוָה is not, the hataf patakh under the (guttural)
aleph reverts to a regular schwa under the (non-guttural)
yodh.
Dead Sea scrolls
The discovery of the
Qumran scrolls has added support to some parts of this position. These scrolls are unvocalized, showing that the position of those who claim that the vowel marks were already written by the original authors of the text is untenable. Many of these scrolls write (only) the tetragrammaton in
paleo-Hebrew script, showing that the Name was treated specially. See
this link.
Josephus's description of vowels
Josephus in
Jewish Wars, chapter V, verse 235, wrote "" ("
...[engraved with] the holy letters; and they are four vowels"), presumably because Hebrew
yod and
waw, even if consonantal, would have to be transcribed into the Greek of the time as vowels.
Conclusions
Various people draw various conclusions from this Greek material.
William Smith writes in his 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible" about the different Hebrew forms supported by these Greek forms:
: ... The votes of others are divided between (yahveh) or (yahaveh), supposed to be represented by the of Epiphanius mentioned above, and (yahvah) or (yahavah), which Fürst holds to be the Ιευώ of Porphyry, or the of Clemens Alexandrinus.
Early Greek and Latin forms
The writings of the
Church Fathers contain several references to forms of the Tetragrammaton in Greek or Latin. It should be noted that the Greek form of the divine name, "Iao", is the equivalent of the Hebrew trigrammaton YHW.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) and B.D. Eerdmans:
Diodorus Siculus writes (Iao);
Irenaeus reports that the Gnostics formed a compound (Iaoth) with the last syllable of Sabaoth. He also reports that the Valentinian heretics use (Iao);
Clement of Alexandria writes (Iaou)—see also below;
Origen of Alexandria, Iao;
Porphyry, (Ieuo);
Epiphanius (d. 404), who was born in Palestine and spent a considerable part of his life there, gives Ia and Iabe (one codex Iaue);
Pseudo-Jerome, tetragrammaton legi potest Iaho;
Theodoret (d. c. 457) writes (Iao); he also reports that the Samaritans say (Iabe), (Iabai), while the Jews say (Aia). (The latter is probably not but Ehyeh = "I am " or "I will be", which the Jews counted among the names of God.)
James of Edessa, Jehjeh;
Jerome speaks of certain ignorant Greek writers who transcribed the Hebrew Divine name as .
Clement's Stromata
Clement of Alexandria writes in
Stromata V, 6:34-35:
: (Reinhold Koltz text)
The translation of Clement's Stromata in Volume II of the classic Ante-Nicene Fathers series renders this as:
: "... Further, the mystic name of four letters which was affixed to those alone to whom the adytum was accessible, is called Jave, which is interpreted, 'Who is and shall be.' The name of God, too [i.e., θεὸς], among the Greeks contains four letters."
Of Clement's Stromata there is only one surviving manuscript, the Codex L (Codex Laurentianus V 3), from the 11th century. Other sources are later copies of that ms. and a few dozen quotations from this work by other authors. For Stromata V,6:34, Codex L has . The critical edition by Otto Stählin (1905) gives the forms
: "Ἰαουέ Didymus Taurinensis de pronunc. divini nominis quatuor literarum (Parmae 1799) p. 32ff, L, Nic., Mon. 9.82 Reg. 1888 Taurin. III 50 (bei Did.), Coisl. Seg. 308 Reg. 1825."
and has in the running text. The Additions and Corrections page gives a reference to an author who rejects the change of into .
Other editors give similar data. A (Latin: chain) referred to by A. le Boulluec ("Coisl. 113 fol. 368v") and by Smith’s 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible" ("a catena to the Pentateuch in a MS. at Turin") is reported to have "".
In ancient Judaism
The oldest complete
Septuagint (
Greek Old Testament) versions, from around the 2nd century CE, consistently use (= "
Lord"), where the Hebrew has YHWH, corresponding to substituting Adonay for YHWH in reading the original; in books written in Greek in this period (e.g., Wisdom, 2 and 3 Maccabees), as in the
New Testament, takes the place of the name of God. However, older fragments contain the name YHWH. In the P. Ryl. 458 (perhaps the oldest extant
Septuagint manuscript) there are blank spaces, leading some scholars to believe that the Tetragrammaton must have been written where these breaks or blank spaces are.
Josephus, who as a priest knew the pronunciation of the name, declares that religion forbids him to divulge it.
with Adonai inscribed]]
Philo calls it ineffable, and says that it is lawful for those only whose ears and tongues are purified by wisdom to hear and utter it in a holy place (that is, for priests in the Temple). In another passage, commenting on Lev. xxiv. 15 seq.: "If any one, I do not say should blaspheme against the Lord of men and gods, but should even dare to utter his name unseasonably, let him expect the penalty of death."
Various motives may have concurred to bring about the suppression of the name:
# An instinctive feeling that a proper name for God implicitly recognizes the existence of other gods may have had some influence; reverence and the fear lest the holy name should be profaned among the heathen.
# Desire to prevent abuse of the name in magic. If so, the secrecy had the opposite effect; the name of the God of the Jews was one of the great names, in magic, heathen as well as Jewish, and miraculous efficacy was attributed to the mere utterance of it.
# Avoiding risk of the Name being used as an angry expletive, as reported in Leviticus 24:11 in the Bible.
In the liturgy of the Temple the name was pronounced in the priestly benediction (Num. vi. 27) after the regular daily sacrifice (in the synagogues a substitute—probably Adonai—was employed); on the Day of Atonement the High Priest uttered the name ten times in his prayers and benediction.
According to the Talmud, in the last generations before the fall of Jerusalem, however, it was pronounced in a low tone so that the sounds were lost in the chant of the priests.
In later Judaism
After the destruction of the Temple (70 CE) the liturgical use of the name ceased, but the tradition was perpetuated in the schools of the
rabbis. It was certainly known in
Babylonia in the latter part of the 4th century. Nor was the knowledge confined to these pious circles; the name continued to be employed by healers,
exorcists and magicians, and has been preserved in many places in magical papyri.
The vehemence with which the utterance of the name is denounced in the Mishna—He who pronounces the Name with its own letters has no part in the world to come!—suggests that this misuse of the name was not uncommon among Jews. Modern observant Jews no longer voice the name aloud. It is believed to be too sacred to be uttered and is often referred to as the 'Ineffable', 'Unutterable' or 'Distinctive Name'.
In Modern Judaism
The new
Jewish Publication Society Tanakh 1985 follows the traditional convention of translating the Divine Name as "the LORD" (in all caps). The
Artscroll Tanakh translates the Divine Name as "HaShem" (literally, "The Name").
When the Divine Name is read during prayer, "Adonai" ("My Lord") is substituted. However, when practicing a prayer or referring to one, Orthodox Jews will say either "HaShem" or "AdoShem" instead of "Adonai". When speaking to another person "HaShem" is used.
Jehovah
Later, Christian Europeans who did not know about the
Q're perpetuum custom took these spellings at face value, producing the form "
Jehovah" and spelling variants of it. The
Catholic Encyclopedia [1913, Vol. VIII, p. 329] states: "Jehovah (Yahweh), the proper name of God in the Old Testament." Had they known about the Q're perpetuum, the term "Jehovah" may have never come in to being.
For more information, see the page Jehovah. Alternatively, most scholars recognise Jehovah to be "grammatically impossible" Jewish Encyclopedia (Vol VII, p. 8).
Delitzsch prefers "" () since he considered the shewa quiescens below ungrammatical. In his 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible", William Smith prefers the form "" (yahaveh). Many other variations have been proposed.
= Yahweh
In the early 19th century Hebrew scholars were still critiquing "Jehovah" [a.k.a. Iehovah and Iehouah] because they believed that the vowel points of
יְהֹוָה were not the actual vowel points of the Tetragrammaton. The Hebrew scholar
Wilhelm Gesenius [1786-1842] had suggested that the Hebrew punctuation , which is transliterated into English as "Yahweh", might more accurately represent the actual pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton than the Biblical Hebrew punctuation "
יְהֹוָה", from which the English name Jehovah has been derived.
Wilhelm Gesenius is one of the greatest Hebrew and biblical scholars . His proposal to read YHWH as "" (see image to the right) was based in large part on various Greek transcriptions, such as ιαβε, dating from the first centuries AD, but also on the forms of theophoric names. In his Hebrew Dictionary Gesenius supports the pronunciation "Yahweh" because of the Samaritan pronunciation reported by Theodoret, and that the theophoric name prefixes YHW [Yeho] and YH [Yo] can be explained from the form "Yahweh". Today many scholars accept Gesenius's proposal to read YHWH as . (Here 'accept' does not necessarily mean that they actually believe that it describes the truth, but rather that among the many vocalizations that have been proposed, none is clearly superior) Gesenius' proposal gradually became accepted as the best scholarly reconstructed vocalized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton.
Among the Samaritans
The
Samaritans, who otherwise shared the scruples of the Jews about the utterance of the name, seem to have used it in judicial oaths to the scandal of the rabbis. (Their priests have preserved a liturgical pronunciation "Yahwe" or "Yahwa" to the present day.) However, the Aramaic "Shema" (שמא) remains the everyday (including liturgical) usage of the name, akin to השם (Hebrew "HaShem").
Later editions of this version replaced "Iahveh" with "Dominus", in keeping with a long-standing Catholic tradition of avoiding direct usage of the Ineffable Name.
On August 8, 2008, Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli, chairman of the American bishops' "Committee on Divine Worship", announced a new directive from the Vatican regarding the use of the name of God in the sacred liturgy. "Specifically, the word 'Yahweh' may no longer be 'used or pronounced' in songs and prayers during liturgical celebrations." In fact, for most of the Church's 2,000-year history use of the name was prohibited in public worship, out of respect for God. After Second Vatican Council (1962–65), some songs and hymns had begun to use the Tetragrammaton, which caused the Vatican to issue a clarification that the Divine Name was not to be used.
Yahu
s in which the
Dead Sea scrolls were found]]
The form Yahu or Yahu is attested not only in composition but also by itself in Aramaic papyri.
This is the form reflected as in Greek magical papyri. (There was no sound in the Greek of the time.)
In its earlier form this opinion rested chiefly on certain misinterpreted testimonies in Greek authors about a god and was conclusively refuted by Baudissin; recent adherents of the theory build more largely on the occurrence in various parts of this territory of proper names of persons and places which they explain as compounds of Yahu or Yah.
The explanation is in most cases simply an assumption of the point at issue; some of the names have been misread; others are undoubtedly the names of Jews.
There remain, however, some cases in which it is highly probable that names of non-Israelites are really compounded with Yahweh. The most conspicuous of these is the king of Hamath who in the inscriptions of Sargon (722-705 BC) is called Yaubi'di and Ilubi'di (compare Jehoiakim-Eliakim). Azriyau, also, in inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III (745-728 BC), who was formerly supposed to be Uzziah of Judah and/or king of Sam'al, was king of an unknown city-state in northern Syria, probably Hatarikka-Luhuti. Also, in Byblos have been found inscriptions telling about the kings named Yehimilk "YH the king" (XI-X BC) and Yehawmilk "YHW the king" (V BC).
Deity named YW is mentioned in the Ugaritic text as one of the many sons of El. KTU 1.1 IV 14 says:
: sm . bny . yw . ilt
"The name of the son of god, YW".
Magic papyri
The spellings of the Tetragrammaton occur among the many combinations and permutations of names of powerful agents that occur in Egyptian magical writings. One of these forms is the heptagram .
In the magical texts, Iave (Jahveh Sebaoth), and , occurs frequently. In an Ethiopic list of magical names of Jesus, purporting to have been taught by him to his disciples, Yawe is found.
Mesopotamian influence
Friedrich Delitzsch brought into notice three tablets, of the age of the first dynasty of Babylon, in which he read the names of
Ya- a'-ve-ilu, Ya-ve-ilu, and Ya-u-um-ilu ("Yahweh is God"), and which he regarded as conclusive proof that Yahweh was known in Babylonia before 2000 BC; he was a god of the
Semitic invaders in the second wave of migration, who were, according to Winckler and Delitzsch, of North Semitic stock (
Canaanites, in the linguistic sense).
We should thus have in the tablets evidence of the worship of Yahweh among the Western Semites at a time long before the rise of Israel. The reading of the names is, however, extremely uncertain, not to say improbable, and the far-reaching inferences drawn from them carry no conviction.
In a tablet attributed to the 14th century BC which Sellin found in the course of his excavations at Tell Ta'annuk (the city Taanach of the O.T.) a name occurs which may be read Ahi-Yawi (equivalent to Hebrew Ahijah); if the reading be correct, this would show that Yahweh was worshipped in Central Palestine before the Israelite conquest. but this deity has since disappeared from the pantheon of Assyriologists. Bottero speculates that the West Semitic Yah/Ia, in fact is a version of the Babylonian God Ea (Enki), a view given support by the earliest finding of this name at Ebla during the reign of Ebrum, at which time the city was under Mesopotamian hegemony of Sargon of Akkad.
Bible translations into English
, France. This example has the vowel points of "
Elohim".]]
The New Jerusalem Bible (1966) uses "Yahweh" exclusively.
The
Bible In Basic English (1949/1964) uses "Yahweh" eight times, including .
The
New English Bible (NT 1961, OT 1970) generally uses the word "LORD" but uses "JEHOVAH" several times. For examples of both forms, see Exodus Chapter 3 and footnote to verse 15.
The
Amplified Bible (1954/1987). At the AB says "but by My name the Lord [Yahweh--the redemptive name of God] I did not make Myself known to them."
The
Living Bible (1971). "Jehovah" or "Lord".
The Young's Literal Translation (Version) - "Jehovah" since Genesis 2:4
The
Holman Christian Standard Bible (1999/2002) uses "Yahweh" over 50 times, including .
The World English Bible (WEB) [a Public Domain work with no copyright] uses "Yahweh" some 6837 times.
The
New Living Translation (1996/2004) uses "Yahweh" eight times, including . The Preface of the New Living Translation: Second Edition says that in a few cases they have used the name Yahweh (for example 3:15; 6:2-3).
Rotherham's Emphasized Bible retains "Yahweh" throughout the Old Testament.
The Anchor Bible retains "Yahweh" throughout the Old Testament.
The
King James Version. Rendered in seven instances as "Jehovah", i.e. four times as the name of God, ;
Psalm 83:18; Isa 12:2; 26:4, and three times where it is included in Hebrew place-names e.g. "Jehovah-jireh" -Gen 22:14. (See also Ex 17:15; Judges 6:24)
* Note: Elsewhere in the KJV, "LORD" is generally used. But in verses such as Gen 15:2; 28:13, Psalm 71:5, Amos 1:8, 9:5 etc. where this practice would result in ‘Lord LORD’ (Hebrew: Adonay YHWH) or ‘LORD Lord’ (YHWH Adonay) the KJV translates the Hebrew text as ‘Lord GOD’ or ‘LORD God’.
The American Standard Version uses "Jehovah".
The New World Translation uses Jehovah over 7,000 times in translations of both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures.
Loss of the Tetragrammaton in the Septuagint
Septuagint study does give some credence to the possibility that the Divine Name appeared in its original texts. Dr
Sidney Jellicoe concluded that "
Kahle is right in holding that LXX [
= Septuagint] texts, written by Jews for Jews, retained the Divine Name in Hebrew Letters (palaeo-Hebrew or Aramaic) or in the Greek-letters imitative form
ΠΙΠΙ, and that its replacement by
Κύριος was a Christian innovation." Jellicoe draws together evidence from a great many scholars (B. J. Roberts, Baudissin, Kahle and C.H Roberts) and various segments of the Septuagint to draw the conclusions that: a) the absence of "Adonai" from the text suggests that the insertion of the term "Kyrios" was a later practice, b) in the Septuagint "Kyrios", or in English "Lord", is used to substitute the Name YHWH, and c) the Tetragrammaton appeared in the original text, but Christian copyists removed it. There is therefore a strong possibility that the Sacred Name was once integrated within the Greek text, but eventually disappeared.
Meyer suggests as one possibility that "as modern Hebrew letters were introduced, the next step was to follow modern Jews and insert 'Kyrios', Lord. This would prove this innovation was of a late date."
Bible scholars and translators as Eusebius and Jerome (translator of the Latin Vulgate) used the Hexapla. Both attest to the importance of the sacred Name and that the most reliable manuscripts contained the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew letters.
Later translations into European languages which descended from the Septuagint tended to follow the Greek and use each language's word for "lord": Latin "Dominus", German "der Herr", Polish "Pan", English "the Lord", French "le Seigneur", etc.
Examining the vowel points of and
Jehovah is favored by
Protestant denominations as the English spelling of the personal name of God.
Most scholars believe "Jehovah" to be a late (ca. 1100 CE) hybrid form derived by combining the Latin letters JHVH with the vowels of Adonai, but there is some evidence that it may already have been in use in Late Antiquity (5th century).
shown in red.]]
In the table below, Yehowah and Adonai are dissected
{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"
!colspan="3"|Hebrew Word #3068YEHOVAHיְהֹוָה
!colspan="3"|Hebrew Word #136ADONAYאֲדֹנָי
|-
| ||Yod||Y|| ||Aleph||glottal stop
|-
| ||Simple Shewa||E|| ||Hatef Patah||A
|-
| ||Heh||H|| ||Daleth||D
|-
| ||Holem||O|| ||Holem||O
|-
| ||Waw||W|| ||Nun||N
|-
| ||Kametz||A|| ||Kametz||A
|-
| ||Heh||H|| ||Yod||Y
|}
Note in the table directly above that the "simple shewa" in Yehowah and the hatef patah in Adonai are not the same vowel. The same information is displayed in the table above and to the right where "YHWH intended to be pronounced as Adonai" and "Adonai, with its slightly different vowel points" are shown to have different vowel points.
In the New Testament
Since the Tetragrammaton does not appear in the Greek manuscripts of the
New Testament, virtually all translations refrain from inserting it into the English. The vast majority of New Testament translations therefore render the Greek
kyrios as "lord" and
theos as "God". Nevertheless, the
Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition inserts the name
Yahweh in the New Testament, while the
New World Translation inserts the name
Jehovah in the New Testament.
Translations of the New Testament into Hebrew
Delitzch's translation of the New Testament into Hebrew (1877) frequently uses the tetragrammaton, i.e. Hebrew (יְהֹוָה), particularly in verses where the New Testament quotes or makes reference to Old Testament texts.
In the Kabbalah and Chassidut
A parallel is often drawn between the four letters of the tetragrammaton and the
Four Worlds, whereas the
י is associated with
Atziluth, the first
ה with
Beri'ah, the
ו with
Yetzirah, and final
ה with
Assiah.
See also
INRI
Jehovah and Jah
Pentagrammaton
Psalm 83
Tetragrammaton in the New Testament
Yahweh and Yah
References
Notes
External links
Category:Names of God
Category:Names of God in Judaism
Category:Yahweh
Category:Greek loanwords
Category:Judaic inscriptions
