Jehovah (/dʒɪˈhoʊvə/) is a Latinization of the Hebrew יְהֹוָה Yəhōwā, one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton יהוה (YHWH), the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament.[2][3][4] The Tetragrammaton is considered one of the seven names of God in Judaism and a form of God's name in Christianity.[5][6][7]
The consensus among scholars is that the historical vocalization of the Tetragrammaton at the time of the redaction of the Torah (6th century BCE) is most likely Yahweh. The historical vocalization was lost because in Second Temple Judaism, during the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE, the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton came to be avoided, being substituted with Adonai ('my Lord'). The Hebrew vowel points of Adonai were added to the Tetragrammaton by the Masoretes, and the resulting form was transliterated around the 12th century CE as Yehowah.[8] The derived forms Iehouah and Jehovah first appeared in the 16th century.
William Tyndale first introduced the vocalization Jehovah for the Tetragrammaton in his translation of Exodus 6:3, and appears in some other early English translations including the Geneva Bible and the King James Version.[9] The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states that to pronounce the Tetragrammaton "it is necessary to introduce vowels that alter the written and spoken forms of the name (i.e. 'Yahweh' or 'Jehovah')."[10] Jehovah appears in the Old Testament of some widely used translations including the American Standard Version (1901) and Young's Literal Translation (1862, 1899); the New World Translation (1961, 2013) uses Jehovah in both the Old and New Testaments. Jehovah does not appear in most mainstream English translations, some of which use Yahweh but most continue to use "Lord" or "LORD" to represent the Tetragrammaton.[11][12]
The Old Testament contains various titles and surrogates for God, such as El Shaddai, El Elyon, Haqqadosh (The Holy One), and Adonai. In chapter three, consideration will be given to names ascribed to God in the patriarchal period. Gerhard von Rad reminds us that these names became secondary after the name YHWH had been known to Israel, for 'these rudimentary names which derive from old traditions, and from the oldest of them, never had the function of extending the name so as to stand alongside the name Jahweh to serve as fuller forms of address; rather, they were occasionally made use of in place of the name Jahweh.' In this respect YHWH stands in contrast to the principal deities of the Babylonians and the Egyptians. 'Jahweh had only one name; Marduk had fifty with which his praises as victor over Tiamat were sung in hymns. Similarly, the Egyptian god Re is the god with many names.'
The psalter in its Episcopal and Lutheran forms uses small capital letters to represent the tetragrammaton YHWH, the personal name of the deity: LORD; it uses 'Lord' as a translation of Adonai.
In the Hebrew Bible, the specific personal name for the God of Israel is given using the four consonants, the 'Tetragrammaton', yhwh, which appears 6007 times.
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