YahwehWordiQ
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
Missing
image The
Tetragrammaton in Phoenician (1100 BC to 300 CE), Aramaic (10th Century BC to
0) and modern Hebrew scripts. The Tetragrammaton (Greek:
τετραγράμματον
word with four letters) is the Hebrew name for God, which is
spelled (in Hebrew); י (yod) ה (heh)
ו (vav) ה (heh) or יהוה
(YHVH), it is the distinctive personal name of the God of Israel. Of all the names of God in the Old
Testament, that which occurs most frequently is the Tetragrammaton,
appearing 6,823 times according to the JewishEncyclopedia.com (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=52&letter=N).
According to Biblica Hebraica and Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia,
the original texts of the Hebrew Scriptures, written in both Hebrew and Aramaic, contain the Tetragrammaton 6,828 times.
It is evident that the Tetragrammaton was used very extensively in original
language, ancient Hebrew and Aramaic texts. This indicates a much more
personal reference to the special identity of the Almighty (as opposed to
impersonal titles such as "God" or "Lord"), on the part
of the Bible
writers. Many Bible scholars view this as evidence that the Bible writers
(and indeed, likely the ancient Hebrew and Israelite people) viewed the Name
represented by the Tetragrammaton as very important, and commonly used it in
their everyday speech and prayers. And, for those that believe the Bible was
inspired by God, it shows how he felt about his own personal
name. In Judaism,
the Tetragrammaton is the ineffable
name of God, and
is not pronounced. In reading aloud of the scripture or in prayer, it is
replaced with "Adonai" ("my Lord"). Other written forms
such as ד׳ or ה׳ are read as "ha-Shem" (The
Name), for the same reason. One theory regarding the
Tetragammaton is that the Jewish taboo on its
pronunciation was so strong that the original pronunciation may have been
lost somewhere in the first millennium. Since then, many scholars
(particularly Christians) have sought to reconstruct its original
pronunciation. For example, circa 1518 Christian
theologians1 introduced the pronunciation "Yehovah" , which is generally held to be grammatically
implausible based on the written form
יֱהוִֹה that was used to indicate to the
reader of the Bible in Hebrew to pronounce it "Elohim"
(אֱלהִׄם). The Tetragrammaton in the Bible
provides more details on why Hebrew word #3069 [e.g. "Yehovih"] has
precisely the same Hebrew vowel points as "Elohiym" has. According to one Jewish
tradition, the Tetragrammaton is related to the causative form, the imperfect
state, of the Hebrew verb הוה (ha�wah; become); meaning "He will
cause to become" usually understood as "He causes to become".
Compare the many Hebrew and Arabic personal names which are 3rd person
singular imperfective verb forms starting with "y",
e.g. Hebrew Y�s�ph = Arabic Yaz�d = "He [who] adds";
Arabic Yahy� = "He [who] lives". Another tradition regards the
name as coming from three different verb forms sharing the same root YWH, the words HYH haya
[היה]: "He was"; HWH how� [הוה]:
"He is"; and YHYH w'yihiy� [יהיה]: "He will be".
This is supposed to show that God is timeless.
Other interpretations includes the name as meaning
"I am the One Who Is." This can be seen in the traditional Jewish
account of the "burning bush" commanding Moses to tell
the sons of Using
consonants as semi-vowels In Biblical Hebrew many of the
vowels are not written or written ambiguously, and the vowel letters double
as consonants (similar to the Latin use of V to indicate both U and V). See Matres lectionis for details. Therefore it is in
general difficult to deduce how a word is pronounced from its spelling only,
and the Tetragrammaton is a particularly bad example: all its letters are
vowels. Thus, Josephus in Jewish
Wars, chapter V, wrote, "... in which was engraven the sacred
name: it consists of four vowels." For similar reasons, an appearance of
the Tetragrammaton in ancient Egyptian records of the 13th Century BCE
sheds no light on the original pronunciation. 2.
Josephus's teaching that the
sacred name "consists of four vowels" may be valid in a
Hebrew text that has no vowel points, but in a Hebrew Text that has vowel
points [e.g. a Masoretic Text], there are Biblical Hebrew grammar rules that
do not allow an "initial yod" in a Hebrew word to be used as a
vowel letter! The "Yod" in YHWH is an "initial yod". Josephus wrote that the sacred
name consisted of four vowels. Many sacred name ministries
who believe that YHWH consists of four vowels, pronounce these four vowels as
“ee-ah-oo-eh” and believe that that indicates that God’s name was either
“Yahweh” or “Yahuweh”. In an amazing coincidence, it can be demonstrated that
the Greek name “ιαουε” can be pronounced
“ee-ah-oo-eh”, using the same Greek pronunciation rules that James
Strong used. 3
Gerard Gertoux also believes that
YHWH consists of four vowels, and that it must be vocalized either “Yeho-ah”
or “Yehou-ah” [e.g. Yehua”]. 4
To make the reading of Hebrew
easier, marks or points above and below the letters were added to the text by
the Masoretes,
to function as vowels. See Niqqud for details. Several manuscripts from the 7th
century and on contain vowel marks over the Tetragrammaton.
Unfortunately, these do not shed much light on the pronunciation. For example
the Leningrad codex contains no less than 6 different
variations on the vowel marks of the Tetragrammaton. An added problem comes from the
fact that the vowel marks on the Tetragrammaton may have served purpose
different than to indicate the pronunciation. When the term is read out loud
by Jews, the Tetragrammaton is substituted with the word "Adonai"
(my Lord) or "Hashem" (the name). Since someone reading the text
aloud might inadvertently pronounce the name, the vowels of "Adonai"
are normally printed with the Tetragrammaton, to remind the reader to make
the change, so the text contains YHVH interlaced with the vowels of Adonai.
This is the case in modern editions of the Hebrew bible, and also explains a
number of medieval codices. In other words, these marks do not and were never
intended to explain how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton. In particular, this is a
convincing explanation of the vowel marks on the Tetragrammaton in the Ben Chayim codex of 1525 (see its
importance below). An interesting point is that the aleph in Adonai
has a hataf-patah
(pronounce a) while the yod in the tetragrammaton has a shva (pronounce e).
This can be partially explained by rules of Hebrew grammar, which forbid hataf-patah
under Yod. 5
See photos [1] (http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/264290/JehovahSmithsBibleDictionary.jpg)
[2] (http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/264290/Judges1628500pixels.jpg).
The first English transcription
of the Tetragrammaton appeared on the title page of William Tyndale's translation of 1525 as
"IEHOUAH." Subsequent translations into English, including Miles
Coverdale's (1535),
the Great
Bible (1539),
The Geneva Bible (1560), the Bishop's Bible (1568), and the Authorized Version of 1611, also used IEHOUAH
in several places, while most translations substitute the title THE LORD
in place of the Tetragrammaton. Some argue that this practice reflects the
Jewish tradition that it is forbidden to say the name of God. Many modern
Christian translations of the Bible continue to use THE LORD (in small caps); two notable
exceptions are the American Standard Version (1901) which used Jehovah
throughout the text, and The Jerusalem Bible (1966) which used Yahweh
similarly. It is likely that Tyndale's IEHOUAH
comes from an interlace of YHVH and the vowels of Adonai as explained above,
but it is difficult to substantiate this claim since we do not know which
codex he used for his translation. The King James Version's IEHOUAH
was definitely influenced by the Ben Chayim codex, which was the source used
for the translation. The spelling Jehovah appeared first during the 1762-1769 editing of
the King James Bible. Hence there is a certain basis to the claim that the
transcription Jehovah is nothing but a misunderstanding by Christian
translators of Jewish reading traditions. As of
2005, this is still the most common spelling of the Tetragrammaton in
English. In contrast, there are various
arguments why Jehovah actually is the original pronunciation. For example,
other transcribed names in the Bible containing portions of the name such as:
Jeho-ram and Jeho-shaphat give linguistic support of this
transcription. This point of view is occasionally associated with believers
in the "King James Version Only" point of
view. Recently Gerhard Gertoux advanced the pronunciation Yehowah and has
gained a certain following. Transcription
In Other Languages Table of different language
transcriptions of the tetragrammaton. (If the native language uses
non-European characters or pictographic symbols, the table shows the common
English/European translation of the target language script):
|
![[1]](http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/264290/JehovahSmithsBibleDictionary.jpg){kind=link}
![[2]](http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/264290/Judges1628500pixels.jpg){kind=link}