Pronouncing Yahweh

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This article tries to solve the problem of pronouncing the name of Yahweh. Other useful articles are Criticism and theories on Yahweh and The Names of God.

Contents 1 Pronunciation of the Name 1.1 Puzzle of pronunciation 2 Evidence from theophoric names 2.1 Using consonants as semi-vowels (v/w) 2.2 Y or J? 2.3 Kethib and Qere and Qere perpetuum 2.4 Jehovah 2.5 Frequency of use in scripture 2.6 The vocalizations of יְהֹוָה and אֲדֹנָי are not identical 2.7 Evidence from very old scrolls 2.8 Original pronunciation 2.9 Early Greek and Latin forms 2.9.1 Josephus 2.9.2 Clement of Alexandria 2.10 Gesenius proposes that YHWH should be punctuated as יַהְוֶה = Yahweh 2.11 Inferences 3 References

Pronunciation of the Name

The main religious groups holding to the principle of using the Name of the Almighty are the Jehovah Witnesses (Jehovah) and the Assemblies of Yahweh (Yahweh). Besides these two main groups, there also exists the Sacred Name Movement in which most other groups fall. The Sacred Name movement consists of small and diverse religious groups, not united other than using the Name in worship and somewhat different from the two former groups mentioned. Although the Catholic Church recognizes the Divine Name as "YHWH" in the Catechism of the Church, it nevertheless has traditionally used the term "Lord" in its stead. This was recently re-affirmed in a Vatican statement, saying any usage of the Divine Name should be prohibited in public worship.

Although the term "Jehovah" was widely known for approximately four centuries, the term originated from a corruption of foreign vowels points which were attached to the Tetragrammaton by scribes. The vowel points were selected from the word "Adonai". J.B. Rotherham, in the Emphasized Bible, said: "From this we may gather that the Jewish scribes are not responsible for this 'hybrid' combination. They intentionally wrote alien vowels – not for combination with the sacred consonants, but for the purpose of cautioning the Jewish reader to enunciate a totally different word, viz., some other familiar name of the Most High"^[1]

Various proposals exist for what the vowels of יהוה were. Current convention is יַהְוֶה, that is, "Yahweh" (IPA: [jahˈweh]). Evidence is:

• Some Biblical theophoric names end in -ia(h) or -yahu as shortened forms of YHWH: that points to the first vowel being "a".
• Various Early Christian Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name seem to point to "Yahwe^h" or similar.
• Samaritan priests had preserved a liturgical pronunciation of "Yahwe" or "Yahwa" (the last vowel is ambiguous) at least until 1820.^[2]

Today many scholars accept this proposal as the most accurate transliteration,^[3] based on the pronunciation preserved both by the Church Fathers and by the Samaritans.^[4]

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Criticisms and theories on Yahweh Yahweh and Allah

Puzzle of pronunciation

This raises a question: as the name was never pronounced aloud for about two millennia now, what is the correct pronunciation? In the Jewish Bible, vowel marks (nikkud) suggest a spelling "Jahovah" (this was picked up by translators in the Middle Ages, who have introduced this form into English usage). However, the nikkud system was invented only around the middle of the first millennium A.D. - almost 500 years after the name was pronounced for the last time! Moreover, the vowel marks of "Jahovah" are those of the word "Adonai" - implying, that they replace the original vowels, which were made a secret (or left forgotten) in order to prevent blasphemy, even by accident.

In addition, in recent years there has been a large debate over the meaning of this name. It seems related to the Hebrew root H-Y/V-Y/H (Yod י, He ה, and Waw ו are interchangeable in some cases), which is used to describe various aspects of being. Therefore, many scholars have decided that it means something like "I am the One Who Is". Appropriate reference points in the Old Testament to start an investigation into this name include: Genesis 2:4, Exodus 3:15 (others?). Nevertheless, the most accurate meaning of God's name seems to be "He causes to become" (based upon the causal &#1492), that is, everything that He wishes to happen is because of his will and becomes a reality (Isaiah 55:10,11), there is nothing God cannot accomplish nor do, except lying (Titus 1:2).

From the point of view of history of religion, the God of the Tanakh whether referred to as Yahweh or Jehovah or by some other name, is the same God worshipped by Muslims, Christians, and Jews, and is sometimes thus referred to as the Judeo-Christian God. However it is important to understand that there are major differences between the religions, so far as theology is concerned. Thus, for example, Christendom followers believe in the Holy Trinity, while Jewish theologians find that this sort of materialization (and division) of the deity is incompatible with the Jewish religion.

It is most interesting that the name also occurs at 21 places in the Rigveda as an epithet for the fire-god Agni. This fact may be a consequence of the early connections between the Veda worshiping Hindu Mitanni and the early Hebrews.

Note: In Hebrew YHWH reads like this: יהוה. It consists of the letters Yod י He ה Waw ו He ה. Hebrew reads from right to left, most newer web browsers such as Mozilla and Microsoft Internet Explorer of version 4 and above would display these four letters correctly in bi-directional manner, but some older web browsers may display the text in the wrong direction. The letters J and Y are interchangeable in the transliteration of the Hebrew letter Yod. For the transliteration of Waw, the letters V and W are interchangeable.

Evidence from theophoric names

Yahū" or "Y^ehū" is a common short form for "Yahweh" in Hebrew theophoric names; as a prefix it sometimes appears as "Y^ehō-". This has caused two opinions:

1. In former times (at least from c.1650 AD), that it was abbreviated from the supposed pronunciation "Yehowah", rather than "Yahweh" which contains no 'o'- or 'u'-type vowel sound in the middle.
2. [2] Recently, that, as "Yahweh" is likely an imperfective verb form, "Yahu" is its corresponding preterite or jussive short form: compare yiŝt^ahawe^h (imperfective), yiŝtáhû (preterit or jussive short form) = "do obeisance".

---

Those who argue for (1) 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)^[5] in its article הוה

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 Jo or Yo (יוֹ) contracted from Jeho or Yeho (יְהוֹ). The Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition (New York: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1910-11, vol. 15, pp. 312, in its article "JEHOVAH", also says that "Jeho-" or "Jo" can be explained from "Yahweh", and that the suffix "-jah" can be explained from "Yahweh" better than from "Yehowah".

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 Psalm 89:8 and in the expression Hallelu-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".

Using consonants as semi-vowels (v/w)

In ancient Hebrew, the letter ו, known to modern Hebrew speakers as vav, was a semivowel /w/ (as in English, not as in German) rather than a /v/.^[6] 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 יהוה as YHWH rather than YHVH.

In 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.^[7] 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 e.g. Modern Greek Χάρρι = "Harry".

Y or J?

The English practice of transliterating the Biblical Hebrew Yodh as "j" and pronouncing it "dzh" (/dʒ/) started when, in late Latin, the pronunciation of consonantal "i" changed from "y" to "dzh" but continued to be spelled "i", bringing along with it Latin transcriptions and spoken renderings of biblical and other foreign words and names.

A direct rendering of the Hebrew yod would be "y" in English. However, most transliterations of the biblical Hebrew texts represent the Hebrew 'yod' by using the English letter 'J'. This letter, and the accompanying 'J' sound/pronunciation is clearly evident in anglicized versions of Hebrew proper nouns, i.e. names such as Jesus*, Jeremiah, Joshua**, Judah, Job, Jerusalem, Jehoshaphat, and Jehovah. Although it can be argued that the 'Y' form is more correct i.e. more like the Jewish/Hebrew pronunciations, in the English-speaking world, this 'J' form for such Bible names is now the norm and has been so for centuries.

The letters "J""V" and “I” “U” relates back to 1565 wherein a Parisien printer (Gille Beyes) changed 'J' and ‘V’ from indistinct vowels into consonants. In the Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, we find that the J sound as we now know it has only been in the English language since the 1700s, prior to this, the J was a capital I. Some centre column references in the Bible affirm this.

[* **] - In Hebrew, both these names can be pronounced as “Yahshua” according to Solomon Zeitlin.^[8] Some Sacred Name groups use the form Yahshua, instead of the Greek transliteration Ιησούς, translated into English as "Jesus". Some of these groups have tried to tie the Greek transliteration Ιησούς to the name of Zeus Ζεύς, but there is no such connection in the Greek language. The three Greek tenses^[9] of Iesou, Iesous and Iesoun are the proper Greek Transliterations of יהושע.

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 God's name, that should not be pronounced, but read as "Adonai" ("My Lord [plural of majesty]"), or, if the previous or next word already was "Adonai", or "Adoni" ("My Lord"), as "Elohim" ("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 יְהוָה (yehvah), with no pointing on the first H; this points to its Qere being 'Sh^ema', which is Aramaic for "the Name".

Gerard 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.^[10]

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^[11]. For more information, see the page Jehovah. Alternatively, most scholars recognise Jehovah to be “grammatically impossible” Jewish Encyclopedia (Vol VII, p. 8).

Frequency of use in scripture

According to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon, יְהֹוָה (Qr אֲדֹנָי) occurs 6518 times, and יֱהֹוִה (Qr אֱלֹהִים) occurs 305 times in the Masoretic Text. Since the scribes admit removing it at least 134 different times and inserting Adonai, we may conclude that the four letter Name יהוה appeared about 7,000 times.

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 "simple shewa" (the 'e') in Yehovah (that is, the schwa vowel, otherwise written as an upside-down 'e') and the "hatef patah" (short a) in Adonay are not identical. Two reasons have been suggested for this:

• A spelling "Y^ahova^h" causes a risk that a reader might start reading "Yah", which is a form of the Name, and the first half of the full Name.
• The two are not really different: both short vowels, shva and hatef-patah, were allophones of the same phoneme used in different situations. Adonai uses the "hatef patah" because of the glottal nature of its first consonant aleph (the glottal stop), but the first consonant of YHWH is yodh, which is not glottal, and so uses the vowel shva.

Evidence from very old 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.

As said 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 about 1000 A.D. or from a different tradition.
From the article: "Most scholars acknowledge that the Tetragrammaton was probably pronounced as Yahweh."

Original pronunciation

The main approaches in modern attempts to determine a pronunciation of יהוה 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. Evidence from Semitic philology and archeology has been tried, resulting in a "scholarly convention to pronounce יהוה as Yahweh".

The text in the Codex Leningrad B 19^A, 1008 A.D, shows יהוה with various different vowel points, indicating that the name was to be read as Yehwah', Yehwih, and a number of times as Yehowah, as in Genesis 3:15

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

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

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

Early Greek and Latin forms

The writings of the Church Fathers contain several references to God's name in Greek or Latin. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907)] and B.D. Eerdmans: ^[12]

• Diodorus Siculus^[13] writes Ἰαῶ (Iao);
• Irenaeus reports^[14] that the Gnostics formed a compound Ἰαωθ (Iaoth) with the last syllable of Sabaoth. He also reports^[15] that the Valentinian heretics use Ἰαῶ (Iao);
• Clement of Alexandria^[16] writes Ἰαοὺ (Iaou) - see also below;
• Origen of Alexandria,^[17] Iao;
• Porphyry,^[18] Ἰευώ (Ieuo);
• Epiphanius (d. 404), who was born in Palestine and spent a considerable part of his life there, gives^[19] Ia and Iabe (one codex Iaue);
• Pseudo-Jerome,^[20] tetragrammaton legi potest Iaho;
• Theodoret (d. c. 457) writes Ἰάω (Iao); he also reports^[21] that the Samaritans say Ἰαβέ (Iabe), Ἰαβαι (Iabai), while the Jews say Ἀϊά (Aia).^[22] (The latter is probably not יהוה but אהיה Ehyeh = "I am" (Exod. iii. 14), which the Jews counted among the names of God.)
• James of Edessa (cf.^[23]), Jehjeh;
• Jerome^[24] speaks of certain ignorant Greek writers who transcribed the Hebrew Divine name יהוה as 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.

On the other hand however, is the common belief that the true name was never lost, the Encyclopedia Judaica concludes:
"The true pronunciation of the name YHWH was never lost. Several early Greek writers of the Christian church testify that the name was pronounced Yahweh."

Josephus

Josephus in Jewish Wars, chapter V, verse 235, wrote "τὰ ἱερὰ γράμματα· ταῦτα δ' ἐστὶ φωνήεντα τέσσαρα" ("...[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.

Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria writes in Stromata V,6:34-35

"Πάλιν τὸ παραπέτασμα τῆς εἰς τὰ ἅγια τῶν ἁγίων παρόδου, κίονες τέτταρες αὐτόθι, ἁγίας μήνυμα τετράδος διαθηκῶν παλαιῶν, ἀτὰρ καὶ τὸ τετράγραμμον ὄνομα τὸ μυστικόν, ὃ περιέκειντο οἷς μόνοις τὸ ἄδυτον βάσιμον ἦν· λέγεται δὲ Ἰαουε, ὃ μεθερμηνεύεται ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἐσόμενος. Καὶ μὴν καὶ καθʼ Ἕλληνας θεὸς τὸ ὄνομα τετράδα περιέχει γραμμάτων."

The translation[3] 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."^[25]

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 ἰαοὺ. The critical edition by Otto Stählin (1905) gives the forms

"ἰαουέ Didymus Taurinensis de pronunc. divini nominis quatuor literarum (Parmae 1799) p. 32ff, ἰαοὺ L, ἰὰ οὐαὶ Nic., ἰὰ οὐὲ Mon. 9.82 Reg. 1888 Taurin. III 50 (bei Did.), ἰαοῦε Coisl. Seg. 308 Reg. 1825."

and has Ἰαουε in the running text. The Additions and Corrections page gives a reference to an author who rejects the change of ἰαοὺ into Ἰαουε.^[26]

Other editors give similar data. A catena (Latin: chain) referred to by A. le Boulluec ^[27] ("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 "ια ουε".

The New Catholic Encyclopedia of 1967 lists the form Ἰαουαι as evidence that YHWH is pronounced "Yahweh".

Gesenius proposes that YHWH should be punctuated as יַהְוֶה = 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 God's name. The Hebrew scholar Wilhelm Gesenius [1786-1842] had suggested that the Hebrew punctuation יַהְוֶה, which is transliterated into English as "Yahweh", might more accurately represent the actual pronunciation of God's name than the Biblical Hebrew punctuation "יְהֹוָה", from which the English name Jehovah has been derived.

Wilhelm Gesenius is noted for being one of the greatest Hebrew and biblical scholars [4]. 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.

In his Hebrew Dictionary Gesenius (see image of German text) supports the pronunciation "Yahweh" because of the Samaritan pronunciation Ιαβε 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 יַהְוֶה.

(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.)

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 (yah^aveh), supposed to be represented by the Ιαβέ of Epiphanius mentioned above, and יַהְוָה (yahvah) or יַהֲוָה (yah^avah), which Fürst holds to be the Ιευώ of Porphyry, or the Ιαού of Clemens Alexandrinus.

The editors of 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.

References

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