Yahweh

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Yahweh is a proposed English reading of יהוה‎ (the Tetragrammaton), the name of the god of the Jews or the people of Israel, as preserved in the original consonantal Hebrew Bible text. The four Hebrew consonants read JHWH (in German transcription) or YHVH (in English transcription). It is also common to use YHWH.

Jews do not pronounce the name, but use "Adonai" ("My Lord"). Many Jews will not even use "Adonai" except when praying, and substitute other euphemisms, e.g. HaShem ("The Name"), out of fear of the potential misuse of the divine name. When Hebrew no longer was a living language, the Masoretes added vowel points to the consonant text to assist readers. To יהוה‎ they added the vowels for "Adonai" ("Lord"), the word to use when the Bible text is read. Also the Septuagint (Greek translation) and Vulgata (Latin translation) use the word "Lord" (kurios and dominus, respectively).

Because the name was no longer pronounced and the vowels were not written, the exact pronunciation was forgotten. When Christians, unaware of the Jewish tradition, started to read the Hebrew Bible, they read יְהֹוָה‎ with the Masoretic vowels together with the consonants as written, and obtained Iehovah. Today this transcription is generally recognized as mistaken. Many religious groups continue to use the form Jehovah, because it is familiar and because the correct pronunciation of יהוה‎ is unknown.

Various proposals exist for a vocalization of יהוה‎. Current convention is יַהְוֶה‎, that is, Yahweh. The 'Yah' part seems fairly certain, for example from Biblical proper names ending in -ia(h) or -yahu. Early Christian literature written in Greek used spellings like Ιαβε that can be transcribed by 'Yahweh'.

Today many scholars accept this proposal^[1], based on the pronunciation conserved both by the Church Fathers (as noted above) and by the Samaritans^[2]. (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. That is, 'Yahweh' is the scholarly convention, rather than the scholarly consensus.)

Contents 1 The Name 1.1 Ketibh and Qere and Qere perpetuum 1.1.1 Counts 1.1.2 The vocalizations of יְהֹוָה and אֲדֹנָי are not identical 1.1.3 The oldest manuscripts do not have the holem 1.2 Early use of forms similar to "Jehovah" 1.3 Use of "Jehovah" in English 1.4 J/Y 1.5 Controversy in the 16th and 17th century 1.6 Resulting consensus 1.7 "Yahweh" 1.7.1 Genebrardus and Gesenius 1.8 The Greek evidence 1.8.1 Church Fathers 1.8.1.1 Other forms in Clemens' Stromata 1.8.1.2 Magic papyri 1.8.1.3 Pronunciation of modern Samaritan priests 1.8.2 Inferences 1.9 "Yah" 1.10 Theophoric Names 1.10.1 "Jehovah" and Theophoric Names 1.10.2 "Yahweh" and Theophoric Names 2 Usage of YHWH 2.1 In ancient Judaism 2.2 In later Judaism 2.3 Among the Samaritans 3 Derivation 3.1 Putative etymology 3.2 Cultus 3.3 Alternative derivations 3.4 Mesopotamian influence 4 Attributes 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] The Name

[edit] Ketibh 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 to be read (the Qere) differed from the written ones (the Ketibh) they added a marginal note showing what was to be read. In such a case the Ketibh was provided with the vowels of the Qere. For a few very frequent words the marginal note was omitted (Q're perpetuum).

One of these frequent cases was God's name, that should not be pronounced, but read as "adonai" ("Lord"), or, if the preceding or following word already was "adonai", as "elohim" ("God"). In these cases one finds יְהֹוָה‎ and יֱהֹוִה‎, non-words that would spell "yehovah" and "yehovih".

[edit] Counts

According to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon, יְהֹוָה‎ (Qr אֲדֹנָי‎) occurs 6518 times, and יֱהֹוִה‎ (Qr אֱלֹהִים‎) occurs 305 times in the Masoretic Text.

[edit] The vocalizations of יְהֹוָה and אֲדֹנָי are not identical

The "simple shewa" (short e) in Yehovah and the "hatef patah" (short a) in Adonay are not identical.

Sometimes this is explained by suggesting that no short "a" was written to avoid that a reader might start reading "Yah", which in itself is already a form of the Name.

Alternatively, this is explained by suggesting that the two are not really different: both short vowels, shva and hatef-patah, were allophones of the same phoneme used in different situations. The Hebrew word Adonai, grammatically a plural form of the word Adon with the possessive suffix, uses the pattern "shva-holam-kamatz", but, because of the glottal nature of aleph, the shva in Adonai is replaced by hataf-patah. Since yod is not a glottal consonant, it uses the vowel shva required by the pattern.

[edit] The oldest manuscripts do not have the holem

The oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, such as the Aleppo Codex and the Codex Leningradensis do mostly write יְהוָה‎ (yehvah), omitting the o. Possibly because the Qere was '(ha-)Shema', "the Name".

[edit] Early use of forms similar to "Jehovah"

Although the word was not at all in general use, forms similar to "Jehovah" already occurred in the 13th century.

yohoua [with a small initial letter "y"] appears in the work Pugio fidei, which was written by the Spanish monk Raymond Martin (Raymundus Martini).^[3]

Drusius (= Van der Driesche, 1550-1616) noted that reading "Jehovah" is contrary to Jewish tradition. He wrote in 1604: Primus in hunc errorem nos induxit Galatinus ("the first to lead us to this mistake was G.") ascribing the first use of "Jehovah" to a publication^[4] of Pope Leo X's confessor Peter Galatin.^[5]

[edit] Use of "Jehovah" in English

The Wycliffe translation of 1395 followed Jewish tradition and wrote 'Adonai', e.g. in Ex. 6:3.

The first early modern English translators to transcribe God's name into English did not correspond with Jewish scholars, and thus believed that it was not treated in any unusual way, so they transcribed "יְהֹוָה‎" into English just as they thought it was written. It therefore became Iehouah in 1530, Iehovah in 1611, and Jehovah in 1769.^[6]

The transcription Iehouah was used in the 16th century by many authors, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.

Iehouah^[7] is the first English transcription of God's name and first appeared in an English Bible in Tyndale's translation of the Pentateuch (1530). Iehouah is found in all English Protestant versions of the 16th century except that of Coverdale (1535).

IEHOVAH^[8] [in all capital letters] is the English transcription of the Biblical Hebrew name יְהֹוָה‎ in the King James Bible of 1611 A.D., where it occurs as such four times:- Exodus 6:3 Psalm 83:18 Isaiah 12:2 Isaiah 26:4. Elsewhere in the KJV the tetragrammaton is rendered as GOD or LORD, e.g. Genesis 2:4 Psalm 110:1 Psalm 113:1 Proverbs 18:10 etc.

JEHOVAH [in all capital letters] is found four times in an 18th century revision of the King James Bible of 1611 A.D.

[edit] J/Y

When discussing the pronunciation of JHWH (YHVH) the question of interest is that of what vowels to read. However, many are often unclear about the first consonant as well. That first consonant is the Hebrew yodh, transcribed I in Latin, often J since the 16th century. But it is the J (/j/) still found in "hallelujah", not the fricative (/dʒ/). In order to avoid confusion it is easiest to transcribe yodh with Y in English.

[edit] Controversy in the 16th and 17th century

Genebrardus, in his Chronologia (1567) condemns the pronunciation Iehoua as "aliena, irreligiosa, imperita, nova et barbara", rejects the divine origin of vowel points, and proposes "Iahue" as reading of YHWH.

The form Jehovah was used in the 16th century by many authors, both Catholic and Protestant. A publication by Drusius in 1604 was the start of a bitter debate that lasted a century. Fuller, Gataker, Leusden and others defended the form "Jehovah" against the criticisms of Drusius, Cappellus and the elder Buxtorf. Hadrian Reland collected and published^[9] their discourses in 1707.

Against "Jehovah": 1. John Drusius, Tetragrammaton, sive de Nomine Die proprio, quod Tetragrammaton vocant (1604), 2. Sextinus Amama [1593-1659],^[10] De nomine tetragrammato (1628)[2], 3. L. Capellus, De nomine tetragrammato,^[11] 4. John Buxtorff, Dissertatio de nomine JHVH [3], 5. James Alting [1618-1679], Exercitatio grammatica de punctis ac pronunciatione tetragrammati.

In defense of "Jehovah": 1. Nicholas Fuller [1557?-1626], 2. Thomas Gataker, De Nomine Tetragrammato Dissertatio (1645) [4], 3.John Leusden, Dissertationes tres, de vera lectione nominis Jehova.

A strong argument of the opponents is the fact that two different sets of vowel points are applied to the same consonants under certain circumstances. (Namely יְהֹוָה‎ for YHWH, Qr. Adonai, and יֱהֹוִה‎ for YHWH, Qr. Elohim.) And that the forms given for preceding and following words have the phonetic shape that fits "adonai", but not "jehovah".

"the letters מוכלב‎, when prefixed to יהוה‎, take, not the vowels which they would regularly receive were the present pronunciation true, but those with which they would be written if אֲדֹנָי‎, adonai, were the reading;"

"the letters ordinarily taking dagesh lene when following יהוה‎ would, according to the rules of the Hebrew points, be written without dagesh, whereas it is uniformly inserted."

William Smith concludes in his 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible", "Whatever, therefore, be the true pronunciation of the word, there can be little doubt that it is not Jehovah."

On the other hand, the defenders point at theophoric names [e.g. names starting "Jeho-" or "Jo-" such as Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, &c.] that seem to support a name containing the vowel o. (More about this below.)

[edit] Resulting consensus

Reland agreed with the opponents of "Jehovah", and since his days the majority opinion has been roughly what is expressed in the article JEHOVAH of the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906 [5]:

This pronunciation is grammatically impossible; it arose through pronouncing the vowels of the kere אֲדֹנָי‎ = "Adonay" with the consonants of the "ketib" יהוה‎ = "Yhwh" —"Adonay" (the Lord) being substituted with one exception wherever Yhwh occurs in the Biblical and liturgical books.

Sometimes, when the two names ( יהוה‎ ) and ( אדני‎ ) occur together, the former is pointed with "hatef segol" ( ֱ ) under the י‎ — thus, יֱהֹוִה‎ — to indicate that in this combination it is to be pronounced "Elohim" ( אֱלֹהִים‎ ).

These substitutions of "Adonay" and "Elohim" for Yhwh were devised to avoid the profanation of the Ineffable Name ( hence יהוה‎ is also written ’ה‎, or even ’ד‎, and read "ha-Shem" = "the Name").^[12]

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 also [6]

Finally, as already remarked above, the Aleppo and Leningrad codices do not use the holem (o) in their vocalization, or only in very few instances, so that the (systematic) spelling "yehovah" is more recent than 1000 A.D. (or from a different tradition).

[edit] "Yahweh"

The main approaches in modern attempts to determine a pronunciation of YHWH have been study of the Hebrew Bible text, study of theophoric names, and study of early Christian Greek texts that contain reports about the pronunciation. One has also tried to use evidence from semitic philology and archeology.

The result is a "scholarly convention to pronounce YHWH as Yahweh".

[edit] Genebrardus and Gesenius

Genebrardus seems to have been the first to suggest the pronunciation Iahue,^[13] but it was not until the 19th century that it became generally accepted.

Wilhelm Gesenius [1786-1842] is noted for being one of the greatest Hebrew and biblical scholars.^[14] His proposal to read YHWH as "יַהְוֶה‎" (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.

Delitzsch prefers "יַהֲוָה‎" (yahavah) since he considered the shwa quiescens below ה‎ ungrammatical.

In his 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible", William Smith prefers the form "יַהֲוֶה‎" (yahaveh). Many other variations have been proposed.

However, Gesenius' proposal gradually became accepted as the best scholarly reconstructed vocalized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton.

[edit] The Greek evidence

[edit] Church Fathers

The writings of the Church Fathers contain several references to God's name in Greek or Latin. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) and ^[15]:

• Diodorus Siculus^[16] writes Ἰαω (Iao);
• Irenaeus^[17], Ἰαωθ (Iaoth); he also reports^[18] that the Valentinian heretics use Ἰαω (Iao);
• Clement of Alexandria^[19], Ἰαοὺ (Iaou);
• Origen^[20], Iao;
• Porphyry^[21], Ἰευώ (Ieuo);
• Epiphanius (d. 404), who was born in Palestine and spent a considerable part of his life there, gives^[22] Ia and Iabe (one codex Iaue);
• Pseudo-Jerome^[23], tetragrammaton legi potest Jaho;
• Theodoret (d. c. 457) writes Ἰάω (Iao); he also reports^[24] that the Samaritans say Ἰαβὲ (Iabe), Ἰαβαι (Iabai), while the Jews say Ἀια (Aia)^[25] (The latter is probably not Jhvh but Ehyeh (Exod. iii. 14), which the Jews counted among the names of God.)
• James of Edessa (cf. ^[26]), Jehjeh;
• Jerome^[27] speaks of certain ignorant Greek writers who transcribed the Hebrew Divine name ΠΙΠΙ.

In Smith’s 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible", the author displays some of the above forms and concludes:

But even if these writers were entitled to speak with authority, their evidence only tends to show in how many different ways the four letters of the word יהוה‎ could be represented in Greek characters, and throws no light either upon its real pronunciation or its punctuation.

[edit] Other forms in Clemens' Stromata

Apart from the ιαου (iaou) mentioned above, one sometimes also finds the forms ιαουε and ιαουαι (iaouai) ascribed to Clemens. Gesenius does not refer to such forms, but on page 312 of the article JEHOVAH (YAHWEH) in the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911 the editors write:

"The early Christian scholars, who inquired what was the true name of the God of the Old Testament, had therefore no great difficulty in getting the information they sought. Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 212) says that it was pronounced Iαουε"⁵

Footnote #5 reads. "Strom. v. 6. Variants: Iα ουε, Iα ουαι; cod. L. Iαου," pointing up variants found in different editions of Clement's Stromata.

According to Smith’s 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible", the form Ἰαουε is found in a catena to the Pentateuch in a MS. at Turin.

In the translation of Clement's Stromata in Volume II of the classic Ante-Nicene Fathers series, the translator writes:

"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, among the Greeks contains four letters."^[28]

[edit] Magic papyri

The many combinations and permutations of names of powerful agents that occur in Egyptian magical writings are discussed in ^[29]. One of these forms is the heptagram ιαωουηε^[30].

In the magical texts, Iave (Jahveh Sebaoth), as well as Iαβα, occurs frequently.^[31] In an Ethiopic list of magical names of Jesus, purporting to have been taught by him to his disciples, Yawe^[32] is found.

In the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906's Article:Tetragrammaton, under the Article Heading:"Church Fathers and Magic Papyri", the editors write:

It was in connection with magic that the Tetragrammaton was introduced into the magic papyri and, in all probability, into the writings of the Church Fathers, these two sources containing the following forms, written in Greek letters:

1. "Iaoouee," "Iaoue," "Iabe"; 2. "Iao," "Iaho," "Iae"; 3. "Aia"; 4. "Ia."

It is evident that

1. represents יהוה‎, and 2. יהו‎, and 3. אהיה‎, and 4. יה‎.

The three forms quoted under (1) are merely three ways of writing the same word, though "Iabe" is designated as the Samaritan pronunciation. There are external and internal grounds for this assumption; for the very agreement of the Jewish, Christian, heathen, and Gnostic statements proves that they undoubtedly give the actual pronunciation.

[edit] Pronunciation of modern Samaritan priests

There is evidence from more than one source that the modern Samaritan priests pronounce the name Yahweh or Yahwa.^[33]

[edit] Inferences

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 יַהְוֶה‎ (yahveh) or יַהֲוֶה‎ (yahaveh), supposed to be represented by the Ιαβέ of Epiphanius mentioned above, and יַהְוָה‎ (yahvah) or יַהֲוָה‎ (yahavah), which Fürst holds to be the Ιευώ of Porphyry, or the Ιαού of Clemens Alexandrinus.

The editors of The New Bible Dictionary (1962) write:

The pronunciation Yahweh is indicated by transliterations of the name into Greek in early Christian literature, in the form Ιαουε (Clement of Alexandria) or Ιαβε (Theodoret; by this time β had the pronunciation of v).

As already mentioned, Gesenius arrived at his form using the evidence of proper names, and following the Samaritan pronunciation Ιαβε reported by Theodoret.

[edit] "Yah"

In a number of places, such Ex. 15:2, the name YHWH is shortened to יָהּ‎ (Yah). This same syllable is found in Halelu-yah. Here the ה has mappiq, i.e., is consonantal, not a mater lectionis. It is often assumed that this is also the second element -ya of the Aramaic "Marya": the Peshitta Old Testament translates Adonai with "Mar" (Lord), and YHWH with "Marya".

[edit] Theophoric Names

[edit] "Jehovah" and Theophoric Names

The name YHWH enters into the composition of many proper names of persons in the Old Testament, either as the initial element, in the form Jeho- or Jo- (as in Jehoram, Joram), or as the final element, in the form -jahu or -jah (as in Adonijahu, Adonijah).

The e in Jeho- is a shwa, the reduced form of the full vowel, no doubt a, arising because of the shift in stress. So, all these forms have the Jah / Jaho / Jahu element.

George Buchanan explains in Biblical Archaeology Review, "In ancient times, parents often named their children after their deities. That means that they would have pronounced their children’s names the way the deity’s name was pronounced. The Tetragrammaton was used in people’s names, and they always used the middle vowel." Thus the names of Biblical figures — the correct pronunciation of which were never lost — provides tangible evidence to the ancient pronunciation of God’s name.

Buchanan argues:

In the dozens of Biblical names that incorporate the divine name, this middle vowel sound appears in both the original and the shortened forms, such as in Jehonathan and Jonathan. “In no case is the vowel oo or oh omitted. The word was sometimes abbreviated as ‘Ya,’ but never as ‘Ya-weh.’ ... When the Tetragrammaton was pronounced in one syllable it was ‘Yah’ or ‘Yo.’ When it was pronounced in three syllables it would have been ‘Yahowah’ or ‘Yahoowah.’ If it was ever abbreviated to two syllables it would have been ‘Yaho.’”^[34]

A two-syllable pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton as “Yahweh” would not allow for the o vowel sound to exist.

In a post made on 08/22/03 at 12:36 am Buchanan says:

Gesenius in his Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon of the Old Testament Scriptures agrees saying:

"Those who consider that YHWH [Yehowah] was the actual pronunciation are not altogether without ground on which to defend their opinion. In this way can the abbreviated syllables YHW [Yeho] and YH [Yo], with which many proper names begin, be more satisfactorily explained."

However, in his Hebrew Dictionary Gesenius says "One should probably pronounce it יַהְוֶה‎, because Theodoret reports the Samaritan pronunciation Ιαβε, and because this provides an explanation for the contracted forms at the end or the beginning of proper names."

The Analytical Hebrew & Chaldee Lexicon (1848)^[35] says in the article הוה:

The punctuators seem to intimate the originality of the vowels of יְהֹוָה‎ by not pointing Yod with Hhateph-Pattah יֲהֹוָה‎ to indicate the reading of אֲדֹנָי‎ just as they point it with Hhateph-Segol to indicate the reading of אֱלֹהִים‎. We could, moreover, not account for the abbreviated forms יוֹ‎, יְהוֹ‎ prefixed to so many proper names unless we consider the vowels of יְהֹוָה‎ original.

[edit] "Yahweh" and Theophoric Names

In the above discussion of the Greek evidence it was shown that it was considered compatible with various choices for the Hebrew form. William Smith continues the above quoted discussion:

Caspari (Micha, p. 5, &c.) decides in favour of the former [that is, vav-segol] on the ground that this form only would give rise to the contraction יָהוּ‎ (yahu) in proper names. ... Gesenius punctuates the word יַהְוֶה‎ (yahveh), from which, or from יַהֲוֶה‎ (yahaveh), are derived the abbreviated form יָהּ‎ (yah), used in poetry, and the form יְהוֹ‎ (yeho) = יְהַו‎ (yehav) = יַהְוְ‎ (yahv) (so יַהְיְ‎ becomes יְהִי‎), which occurs at the beginning of compound proper names.

Thus, in the end, Yahweh (or possibly Yahaweh) is found considering the shortened forms occurring in proper names.

The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906 in the Article:Names Of God has a very similar discussion, and also gives the form Jo or Yo (יוֹ‎) contracted from Jeho or Yeho (יְהוֹ‎).

In the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition (New York: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1910-11, vol. 15, pp. 312, in the Article “JEHOVAH”) the editors state:

The name Jhvh enters into the composition of many names of persons in the Old Testament, either as the initial element, in the form Jeho- or Jo- (as in Jehoram, Joram), or as the final element in the form -jahu or -jah (as in Adonijahu, Adonijah). These various forms are perfectly regular if the divine name was Yahweh, and, taken altogether, they cannot be explained on any other hypothesis.

In Chapter 1 of The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures, under the heading: THE PRONUNCIATION OF GOD'S NAME the editors state:

The issue of pronunciation of God's name may best be summarized by a statement 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 Psalm 89:8 and in the expression Halelu-Yah (meaning "Praise Yah, you people!").

(Ps 104:35; 150:1,6)

Also, the forms Yehoh', Yoh, Yah, and Ya'hu, found in the Hebrew spelling of the names of Jehoshaphat, Joshaphat, Shephatiah, and others, can all be derived from Yahweh...

Still, there is by no means unanimity among scholars on the subject, some favoring yet other pronunciations, such as "Yahuwa", "Yahuah", or "Yehuah".

[edit] Usage of YHWH

[edit] In ancient Judaism

Several centuries before the Christian era the name YHWH had ceased to be commonly used by the Jews. Some of the later writers in the Old Testament employ the appellative Elohim, God, prevailingly or exclusively: a collection of Psalms (Ps. xlii.-lxxxiii.) was revised by an editor who changed the Yhwh of the authors into Elohim (see e.g. xlv. 7; xlviii. 10; l. 7; li. 14); observe also the frequency of the Most High, the God of Heaven, King of Heaven, in Daniel, and of Heaven in First Maccabees.

The oldest complete Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) versions, from around the second century A.D., consistently use Kyrie, Lord, where the Hebrew has YHWH, corresponding to the substitution of 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, Kyrie takes the place of the name of God. However, older fragments do contain the name YHWH.^[36] It should also be noted though that 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.^[37]

Josephus, who as a priest knew the pronunciation of the name, declares that religion forbids him to divulge it; 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); and 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."^[38]

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 were potent reasons; but probably the most cogent motive was the desire to prevent the 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.

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);^[39] on the Day of Atonement the High Priest uttered the name ten times in his prayers and benediction.

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.^[40]

[edit] In later Judaism

After the destruction of the Temple (A.D. 70) the liturgical use of the name ceased, but the tradition was perpetuated in the schools of the rabbis.^[41] It was certainly known in Babylonia in the latter part of the 4th century,^[42] and not improbably much later. 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!.^[43] —suggests that this misuse of the name was not uncommon among Jews.

[edit] 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.^[44]

[edit] Derivation

[edit] Putative etymology

Jahveh or Yahweh is apparently an example of a common type of Hebrew proper names which have the form of the 3rd pers. sing. of the verb. e.g. Jabneh (name of a city), Jabin, Jamlek, Jiptal (Jephthah), &c. Most of these really are verbs, the suppressed or implicit subject being 'el, "numen, god", or the name of a god; cf. Jabneh and Jabne-el, Jiptah and Jiptah-el.

The ancient explanations of the name proceed from Exod. iii. 14, 15, where "Yahweh^[45] hath sent me" in v 15 corresponds to "Ehyeh hath sent me" in v. 14, thus seeming to connect the name Yahweh with the Hebrew verb hayah, "to become, to be". The Palestinian interpreters found in this the promise that God would be with his people (cf. v. 12) in future oppressions as he was in the present distress, or the assertion of his eternity, or eternal constancy; the Alexandrian translation 'Eγω ειμι ο ων . . . ' O ων απεσταλκεν με προς νμας understands it in the more metaphysical sense of God's absolute being. Both interpretations, "He (who) is (always the same);" and , "He (who) is (absolutely the truly existent);" import into the name all that they profess to find in it; the one, the religious faith in God's unchanging fidelity to his people, the other, a philosophical conception of absolute being which is foreign both to the meaning of the Hebrew verb and to the force of the tense employed.

Modern scholars have sometimes found in the name the expression of the aseity^[46] of God; sometimes of his reality in contrast to the imaginary gods of the heathen.

Another explanation, which appears first in Jewish authors of the middle ages and has found wide acceptance in recent times, derives the name from the causative of the verb; He (who) causes things to be, gives them being; or calls events into existence, brings them to pass; with many individual modifications of interpretation—creator, life giver, fullfiller of promises. A serious objection to this theory in every form is that the verb hayah, "to be" has no causative stem in Hebrew; to express the ideas which these scholars find in the name Yahweh the language employs altogether different verbs.

Spinoza, in his Theologico-Political Treatise (Chap.2) asserts the derivation of "Jahweh" from "Being", writing that, "Moses conceived the Deity as a Being Who has always existed, does exist, and always will exist, and for this cause he calls Him by the name Jehovah, which in Hebrew signifies these three phases of existence." Following Spinoza, Constantin Brunner translates the Shema (Deut. 2-4) as, "Hear, O Israel, Being is our God, Being is One."

This assumption that Yahweh is derived from the verb "to be", as seems to be implied in Exod. iii. 14 seq., is not, however, free from difficulty. "To be" in the Hebrew of the Old Testament is not hawah, as the derivation would require, but hayah; and we are thus driven to the further assumption that hawah belongs to an earlier stage of the language, or to some older speech of the forefathers of the Israelites.

This hypothesis is not intrinsically improbable— and in Aramaic, a language closely related to Hebrew, "to be" actually is hawa—in adopting it we admit that, using the name Hebrew in the historical sense, Yahweh is not a Hebrew name. And, inasmuch as nowhere in the Old Testament, outside of Exod. iii., is there the slightest indication that the Israelites connected the name of their God with the idea of "being" in any sense, it may fairly be questioned whether, if the author of Exod. 14 seq., intended to give an etymological interpretation of the name Yahweh,^[47] his etymology is any better than many other paronomastic explanations of proper names in the Old Testament, or than, say, the connection of the name 'Aπολλων with απολουων, απολυων in Plato's Cratylus, or popular derivations from απολλυμι.

A root hawah is represented in Hebrew by the nouns howah (Ezek., Isa. xlvii. II) and hawwah (Ps., Prov., Job) "disaster, calamity, ruin."^[48] The primary meaning is probably "sink down, fall," in which sense—common in Arabic—the verb appears in Job xxxvii. 6 (of snow falling to earth).

A Catholic commentator of the 16th century, Hieronymus ab Oleastro, seems to have been the first to connect the name "Jehova" with "howah" interpreting it contritio sive pernicies (destruction of the Egyptians and Canaanites); Daumer, adopting the same etymology, took it in a more general sense: Yahweh, as well as Shaddai, meant Destroyer, and fitly expressed the nature of the terrible god whom he identified with Moloch.

The derivation of Yahweh from hawah is formally unimpeachable, and is adopted by many recent scholars, who proceed, however, from the primary sense of the root rather than from the specific meaning of the nouns. The name is accordingly interpreted, He (who) falls (baetyl, βαιτυλος, meteorite); or causes (rain or lightning) to fall (storm god); or casts down (his foes, by his thunderbolts). It is obvious that if the derivation be correct, the significance of the name, which in itself denotes only "He falls" or "He fells", must be learned, if at all, from early Israelitish conceptions of the nature of Yahweh rather than from etymology.

[edit] Cultus

A more fundamental question is whether the name Yahweh originated among the Israelites or was adopted by them from some other people and speech.^[49]

The biblical author of the history of the sacred institutions (P) expressly declares that the name Yahweh was unknown to the patriarchs (Exod. vi. 3), and the much older Israelite historian (E) records the first revelation of the name to Moses (Exod. iii. 13-15), apparently following a tradition according to which the Israelites had not been worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses, or, as he conceived it, had not worshipped the god of their fathers under that name.

The revelation of the name to Moses was made at a mountain sacred to Yahweh, (the mountain of God) far to the south of Canaan, in a region where the forefathers of the Israelites had never roamed, and in the territory of other tribes; and long after the settlement in Canaan this region continued to be regarded as the abode of Yahweh (Judg. v. 4; Deut. xxxiii. 2 sqq.; I Kings xix. 8 sqq. &c).

Moses is closely connected with the tribes in the vicinity of the holy mountain; according to one account, he married a daughter of the priest of Midian (Exod. ii. 16 sqq.; iii. 1); to this mountain he led the Israelites after their deliverance from Egypt; there his father-in-law met him, and extolling Yahweh as greater than all the gods, offered (in his capacity as priest of the place?) sacrifices, at which the chief men of the Israelites were his guests; there the religion of Yahweh was revealed through Moses, and the Israelites pledged themselves to serve God according to its prescriptions.

It appears, therefore, that in the tradition followed by the Israelite historian the tribes within whose pasture lands the mountain of God stood were worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses; and the surmise that the name Yahweh belongs to their speech, rather than to that of Israel, has considerable probability.

One of these tribes was Midian, in whose land the mountain of God lay. The Kenites also, with whom another tradition connects Moses, seem to have been worshippers of Yahweh.

It is probable that Yahweh was at one time worshipped by various tribes south of Palestine, and that several places in that wide territory (Horeb, Sinai, Kadesh, &c.) were sacred to him; the oldest and most famous of these, the mountain of God, seems to have lain in Arabia, east of the Red Sea. From some of these peoples and at one of these holy places, a group of Israelite tribes adopted the religion of Yahweh, the God who, by the hand of Moses, had delivered them from Egypt.^[50]

The tribes of this region probably belonged to some branch of the great Arab stock, and the name Yahweh has, accordingly, been connected with the Arabic hawa, the void (between heaven and earth), "the atmosphere, or with the verb hawa, cognate with Heb. hawah,"sink, glide down" (through space); hawwa blow (wind). "He rides through the air, He blows" (Wellhausen), would be a fit name for a god of wind and storm. There is, however, no certain evidence that the Israelites in historical times had any consciousness of the primitive significance of the name.

[edit] Alternative derivations

The attempts to connect the name Yahweh with that of an Indo-European deity (Jehovah-Jove, &c.), or to derive it from Egyptian or Chinese, may be passed over.

But one theory which has had considerable currency requires notice, namely, that Yahweh, or Yahu, Yaho,^[51] is the name of a god worshipped throughout the whole, or a great part, of the area occupied by the Western Semites.

In its earlier form this opinion rested chiefly on certain misinterpreted testimonies in Greek authors about a god 'Iαω 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.^[52]

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 B.C.) is called Yaubi'di and Ilubi'di (compare Jehoiakim-Eliakim). Azriyau of Jaudi, also, in inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser (745-728 B.C.), who was formerly supposed to be Azariah (Uzziah) of Judah, is probably a king of the country in northern Syria known to us from the Zenjirli inscriptions as Ja'di.

[edit] 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 B.C.; 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).^[53]

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 B.C. which Sellin found in the course of his excavations at Tell Ta'annuk (the Taanach of the O.T.) a name occurs which may be read Ahi-Yawi (equivalent to Hebrew Ahijah);^[54] if the reading be correct, this would show that Yahweh was worshipped in Central Palestine before the Israelite conquest.

The reading is, however, only one of several possibilities. The fact that the full form Yahweh appears, whereas in Hebrew proper names only the shorter Yahu and Yah occur, weighs somewhat against the interpretation, as it does against Delitzsch's reading of his tablets.

It would not be at all surprising if, in the great movements of populations and shifting of ascendancy which lie beyond our historical horizon, the worship of Yahweh should have been established in regions remote from those which it occupied in historical times; but nothing which we now know warrants the opinion that his worship was ever general among the Western Semites.

Many attempts have been made to trace the West Semitic Yahu back to Babylonia. Thus Delitzsch formerly derived the name from an Akkadian god, I or Ia; or from the Semitic nominative ending, Yau;^[55] 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, 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.

[edit] Attributes

Assuming that Yahweh was primitively a nature god, scholars in the 19th century discussed the question over what sphere of nature he originally presided. According to some, he was the god of consuming fire; others saw in him the bright sky, or the heaven; still others recognized in him a storm god, a theory with which the derivation of the name from Hebrew hawah or Arabic hawa well accords (see also Job chapters 37-38). The association of Yahweh with storm and fire is frequent in the Old Testament. The thunder is the voice of Yahweh, the lightning his arrows, and the rainbow his bow. The revelation at Sinai is amid the awe-inspiring phenomena of tempest. Yahweh leads Israel through the desert in a pillar of cloud and fire. He kindles Elijah's altar by lightning, and translates the prophet in a chariot of fire. See also Judg. v. 4 seq.. In this way, he seems to have usurped the attributes of the Canaanite god Baal Hadad. In Ugarit, the struggle between Baal and Yam, suggests that Baal's brother Ya'a was a water divinity - the god of Rivers (Nahar) and of the Sea (Yam).

Many religions today do not use the name Jehovah as much as they used to use it. The original Hebrew name יהוה‎ appeared almost 7,000 times in the Old Testament, but is often replaced with "LORD" or "GOD" in popular Bibles. The Christian denomination to most commonly use the name "Jehovah" is that of the Jehovah's Witnesses. They believe that God's personal name should not be over-shadowed by the above titles and often refer to Psalms 83:18 as a common place in most translations to find the name Jehovah still used in place of "LORD" and find justification for its use in Joel 2:32.

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] See also

• Names of God in Judaism
• Jehova in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• The tetragrammaton in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• The tetragrammaton
• Theophoric names

[edit] External links

• A Discussion of the pronunciation of YHWH, including a new theory that explains all theophoric elements
• Catholic Encyclopedia
• The Divine Name in Norway
• Pronunciation (Audio) of Yahweh
• Opinions about the Name
• Discovery and use of the Divine Name since the early 1960's in South Africa.