Tetragrammaton

Common substitutions in Hebrew are Adonai ("My Lord"), HaShem ("The Name") and hakadosh baruch hu ("The Holy One, Blessed Be He"). In the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Hebrew and Aramaic texts the Tetragrammaton and some other names of God in Judaism (such as El or Elohim) were sometimes written in paleo-Hebrew script, showing that they were treated specially.

The name of God most often used in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton (YHWH ).

They connect it to Exodus 3:14, where the divinity who spoke with Moses responds to a question about his name by declaring: אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (Ehyeh asher ehyeh), "I am that I am" or "I will be what I will be" (in Biblical Hebrew the form of the verb here is not associated with any particular English tense).

There, on Mount Horeb, God appeared to Moses as a burning bush, revealed to Moses his name YHWH (probably pronounced Yahweh) and commanded him to return to Egypt and bring his chosen people (Israel) out of bondage and into the Promised Land (Canaan).

They connect it to Exodus 3:14, where the divinity who spoke with Moses responds to a question about his name by declaring: אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (Ehyeh asher ehyeh), "I am that I am" or "I will be what I will be" (in Biblical Hebrew the form of the verb here is not associated with any particular English tense).

Its context is the encounter of the burning bush : Moses asks what he is to say to the Israelites when they ask what God ['Elohiym] has sent him to them, and YHWH replies, "I am who I am", adding, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I am has sent me to you. ’Ehyeh is the first person form of hayah, "to be", and owing to the peculiarities of Hebrew grammar means "I am", "I was", and "I will be". The meaning of the longer phrase ’ehyeh ’ăšer ’ehyeh is debated, and might be seen as a promise ("I will be with you") or as statement of incomparability ("I am without equal").

Observant Jews and those who follow Talmudic Jewish traditions do not pronounce nor do they read aloud proposed transcription forms such as Yahweh or Yehovah; instead they replace it with a different term, whether in addressing or referring to the God of Israel.

Jehovah is a Latinization of the Hebrew, one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible and one of the seven names of God in Judaism.

The four letters, read from right to left, are yodh, he, waw and he.

Two Yuds in a row designate the name of God Adonai and in pointed texts are written with the vowels of Adonai; this is done as well with the Tetragrammaton.

The books of the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible (with the exception of Esther, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs) contain this Hebrew name.

One of its most significant verses is, the Shema Yisrael, which has become the definitive statement of Jewish identity: "Hear, O Israel: the [[Tetragrammaton|]] our God, the is one."

The letters, properly read from right to left (in Biblical Hebrew), are:

Some Qumran texts written in the Assyrian script write the tetragrammaton and some other divine names in Paleo-Hebrew, and this practice is also found in several Jewish-Greek biblical translations.

The Tetragrammaton ( or Tetragram, from Greek τετραγράμματον, meaning "[consisting of] four letters"), is the four-letter Hebrew word, the name of the biblical God of Israel.

Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures render both the tetragrammaton and adonai as kyrios, meaning "the Lord".

Short form Jah (digrammaton) "occurs 50 times if the phrase hallellu-Yah is included": 43 times in the Psalms, one in Exodus 15:2; 17:16; Isaiah 12:2; 26:4, and twice in Isaiah 38:11.

Jah or Yah (, Yah) is a short form, the first syllable, of Yahweh (in consonantal spelling YHWH, the four letters that form the tetragrammaton), the proper name of God in the Hebrew Bible.

In places that the consonants of the text to be read (the qere) differed from the consonants of the written text (the ketiv), they wrote the qere in the margin as a note showing what was to be read.

Tetragrammaton).

The oldest complete or nearly complete manuscripts of the Masoretic Text with Tiberian vocalisation, such as the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, both of the 10th or 11th century, mostly write (yhwah), with no pointing on the first h.

Short form Jah (digrammaton) "occurs 50 times if the phrase hallellu-Yah is included": 43 times in the Psalms, one in Exodus 15:2; 17:16; Isaiah 12:2; 26:4, and twice in Isaiah 38:11.

The second part, Yah, is a shortened form of YHWH, the name for the Creator.

The Septuagint typically translates YHWH as kyrios "Lord".

The reasoning here is that at the time that the Septuagint was written, when reading out loud Jews pronounced Adonai, the Hebrew word for "Lord", when they encountered the name of God, "YHWH", which was thus translated into Greek from 3rd century CE onwards in each instance as kyrios and theos.

The most complete copies of the Septuagint (B, א, A), versions from fourth century onwards consistently use Κύριος ("Lord"), or Θεός ("God"), where the Hebrew has YHWH, corresponding to substituting Adonai for YHWH in reading the original, but the oldest fragments have the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew characters, with the exception of P. Ryl. 458 (perhaps the oldest extant Septuagint manuscript) where there are blank spaces, leading some scholars such as Colin Henderson Roberts to believe that it contained letters, and 4Q120 that has ΙΑΩ.

The manuscript has been used in discussions about the Tetragrammaton, especially as there are blank spaces in the places where some scholars, such as C. H. Roberts, believe it contained letters.

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).

A typical example is the name of God in Judaism, written as YHWH but substituted with "the Lord" or "HaShem" (the name) when reading.

The most complete copies of the Septuagint (B, א, A), versions from fourth century onwards consistently use Κύριος ("Lord"), or Θεός ("God"), where the Hebrew has YHWH, corresponding to substituting Adonai for YHWH in reading the original, but the oldest fragments have the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew characters, with the exception of P. Ryl. 458 (perhaps the oldest extant Septuagint manuscript) where there are blank spaces, leading some scholars such as Colin Henderson Roberts to believe that it contained letters, and 4Q120 that has ΙΑΩ. The 4Q120, a Greek fragment of Leviticus (26:2–16) discovered in the Dead Sea scrolls (Qumran) has ιαω ("Iao"), the Greek form of the Hebrew trigrammaton YHW.

Apart from minor variants, the main interest of the text lies in its use of Ιαω to translate the tetragrammaton in Leviticus 3:12 (frg.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Hebrew and Aramaic texts the Tetragrammaton and some other names of God in Judaism (such as El or Elohim) were sometimes written in paleo-Hebrew script, showing that they were treated specially.

In some Qumran documents, YHWH is written in Paleo-Hebrew while the rest of the text is in Aramaic square script.

David Trobisch has noted that, while Christian manuscripts of the Jewish Bible use Kύριος or the nomina sacra and (with a horizontal line above the contracted words) to represent the Tetragrammaton, manuscripts of Greek translations of the Old Testament written by Jewish scribes, such as those found in Qumran, reproduce it within the Greek text in several different ways.

In some Greek Scripture manuscripts the Hebrew tetragrammaton (transliterated as YHWH) is found unabbreviated in the Greek text.

Rabbinic sources suggest that the name of God was pronounced only once a year, by the high priest, on the Day of Atonement.

In most Orthodox and some Conservative synagogues, the entire congregation prostrates themselves at each point in the recitation where the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) would pronounce the Tetragrammaton (God’s holiest name, according to Judaism).

The Masoretes added vowel points (niqqud) and cantillation marks to the manuscripts to indicate vowel usage and for use in ritual chanting of readings from the Bible in Jewish prayer in synagogues.

For example, the words qol qore bamidbar panu derekh YHWH ( Isaiah 40:3) is translated in the Authorised Version as "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD".

Kabbalistic tradition holds that the correct pronunciation is known to a select few people in each generation, it is not generally known what this pronunciation is.

His charisma, mystical teachings that included repeated pronunciations of the holy Tetragrammaton in public, tied to an unstable personality, and with the help of his greatest enthusiast, Nathan of Gaza, convinced the Jewish masses that the Jewish Messiah had finally come.

Origen (Commentary on Psalms 2.2) and Jerome (Prologus Galeatus) said that in their time the best manuscripts gave not the word Κύριος but the Tetragrammaton itself written in an older form of the Hebrew characters, the paleo-Hebrew letters, not the square: "In the more accurate exemplars [of the LXX] the (divine) name is written in Hebrew characters; not, however, in the current script, but in the most ancient. }} No Jewish manuscript of the Septuagint has been found with Κύριος representing the Tetragrammaton, and it has been argued, but not widely accepted, that the use of Κύριος shows that later copies of the Septuagint were of Christian character, and even that the composition of the New Testament preceded the change to Κύριος in the Septuagint. Its consistent use of Κύριος to represent the Tetragrammaton has been called "a distinguishing mark for any Christian LXX manuscript", However, a passage in the Hebrew Tosefta, Shabbat 13:5 (written c. 300 CE), quoting Tarfon (who lived between 70 and 135 CE), says that it was permitted on the Sabbath to burn Christian works − gilyonim (gospels?) and other writings − even if they contained the names of God written in them (without specifying the form or forms in which the names of God were written − as the Aramaic or Paleo-Hebrew Tetragrammaton, as ΙΑΩ or otherwise).

Matthew was, likewise, originally written in Hebrew (Aramaic); many copies must, therefore, have been in circulation, and doubts must naturally have arisen concerning the manner in which they were to be disposed of, since they contained mention of the divine name.

Namely, the upper cusp of the Yod is Arich Anpin and the main body of Yod is and Abba; the first Hei is Imma; the Vav is Ze`ir Anpin and the second Hei is Nukvah.

Its Tetragrammaton is YHVH, the name of God in Judaism.

Clearly Jewish manuscripts of Greek translations of the Old Testament (Septuagint, Proto-Masoretic, kaige, the translations of Aquila of Sinope, Symmachus the Ebionite, Theodotion and the Hexapla) differ from clearly Christian manuscripts in not using Kύριος or the nomina sacra and (with a horizontal line above the contracted words) to represent the Tetragrammaton.