Yahweh

Yahweh¹ (ya·'we) in the Bible, the God of the people of ancient Israel. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam —though sometimes using different names to describe him — all affirm that Yahweh alone is God. Jews normally do not pronounce this name of God, considering it too holy to verbalize. Instead they refer either to Adonai, Elohim, or Hashem (see below). In Christian Bibles, Yawheh is usually translation as "the Lord," a rough equivalent to the Hebrew Adonai. Muslims refer to God as "Allah," which originates from the same etymological root as "Elohim."

While the original concept of Yahweh may not have been monotheistic — other gods may also have been acknowledged as existing — the Israelite prophets insisted that the people of Israel must worship him alone. Monotheism, centered on Yahweh, eventually became the normitive Jewish religion, and this in turn was inherited by both Christianity and Islam. Yahwist monotheism has also come to inflluence other religions through the centuries, both as the result of missionary activity and interreligious dialogue.

The historical contribution of Yahwism is a mixed one. The prophetic tradition affirmed true belief in Yahweh as an alternative to such evils as human sacrifice, immoral fertility cults, idolatry, priestly corruption, and superstition. On the other hand, Yahwism and its montheistic offspring have sometimes been used to justify tribal warfare, the repression of rival religions, the persecution and murder of heretics and "pagans," and even genocide.

"Jehovah" is a modern mispronunciation of the Hebrew name Yahweh, resulting from combining the consonants of that name, YHWH, (formerly transcribed "JHVH") and using other vowels.

Origins

Biblical Tradition

The Bible presents several stories regarding the revelation of God's true name, Yahweh. The best known is the story of Moses and the burning bush of Exodus 3. Shortly after this, God makes it clear that Moses is the first to know the secret of the divine name:

God reveals himself to Moses

God also said to Moses, "I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. (Ex. 6:2-3)

In this paragraphy three names of God are used: Elohim (God), the Lord (YHWH), and El Shaddai (God Almighty). In Genesis 35:7, God appears to Jacob at "El-Bethel," (Bethel meaning literally the house or place of El), so named because of God's manifesting himself there. El-Shaddai (God Almighty) appears more than 30 times in the Hebrew Bible — Gen. 28:3; 35:11, etc.). Elohim (a plural version of El — Gen. 1:1, etc.) is used many hundreds of times. Outside the Bible, El is known as the chief diety of the Canaanite religion. He was the father of the Canaanite god Baal and the husband of the mother goddess Ashera. (Interestingly, the word "Baal" also means "Lord.")

A problem for biblical scholars is the fact that the Book of Genesis appears to contradict the story in Exodus regarding the first time that humans came to known God's true name. Gen 2:19 says that it was in the days of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. Gen. 12:8 specifies that at Bethel (the "place of El") Abraham called on the name of the Lord some 400 years before Moses. The first woman mentioned as calling on the name of the Lord is Abraham's wife Sarah. (Gen. 16:13)

The Catholic scholar A.J. Maas suggested one way of resolving the seeming contradiction: that people knew at least a syllable of God's true name, and began calling themselves after it, long before the whole name was revealed to Moses:

Among the 163 proper [biblical] names which bear an element of the sacred name in their composition, 48 have yeho or yo at the beginning, and 115 have yahu or yah and the end, while the form Jahveh [Yahweh] never occurs in any such composition. Perhaps it might be assumed that these shortened forms yeho, yo, yahu, yah, represent the Divine name as it existed among the Isralites before the full name Jahveh was revealed on Mt. Horeb. [1]

The Shasu of Yahweh

A more fundamental question is whether the name Yahweh originated among the Israelites or was adopted by them from some other people and speech. A common suggestion, as articulated by biblical scholar Mark S. Smith in The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, is that the Israelite Yahweh was derived from the traditions of the Shasu, Canaanite nomads from southern transjordan. An Egyptian inscription at Karnak from the time of Pharaoh Amenhotep III (1390-1352 B.C.E.) refers to the "Shasu of Yhw," evidence that this god was worshipped among some of the Shasu tribes at this time. Biblical archaeologist Amihai Mazar, in Archaeology of the Land of the Bible Volume I, suggests that the association of Yahweh with the desert may be the product of his origins in the dry lands to the south of Israel. Egyptologist Donald Redford, in Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, suggests that the Israelites themselves may have been a group of Shasu who moved northward into Canaan in the 13th century B.C.E. Archaelologist Israel Finkelstein has shown in The Bible Unearthed that these Shasu settled the Samarian and Judean hills at this time.

A Midianite Diety?

File:Mount-sinai.jpg

Possible location of Sianai/Horeb.

One biblically-derived theory somewhat consistent with the above scenario holds that Yahweh was originally a deity of the Midianites and other non-Hebrew desert tribes. The Exodus story tells us that the Israelites had not been worshippers of Yahweh — at least by that name — before the time of Moses. The revelation of the name to Moses was made at Sinai/Horeb, a mountain sacred to Yahweh, far to the south of Canaan in the territory of other tribes, in a region where the forefathers of the Israelites were never reported to have roamed. Long after the Israelite settlement in Canaan this region continued to be regarded as the abode of Yahweh (Judges 5:4; Deut. 33:3; I Kings 19:8, etc). Moses is closely connected with the tribes in the vicinity of the holy mountain.

According to one account, his wife was a daughter of Jethro, a priest of Midian (Ex. 18). When Moses led the Israelites to this mountain after their deliverance from Egypt, Jethro came to meet him, extolling Yahweh as greater than all other gods. Jethro "brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God" at which the chief men of the Israelites were his guests. Therefore, on the basis of the tradition followed by this particular biblical author, the tribes within whose pasture lands the mountain of God stood might already have been worshippers of Yahweh — although not exclusively — before the time of Moses. Some scholars have surmised that the name Yahweh belonged originally to their speech, rather than to that of Israel.

Another theory which has had considerable currency is that Yahweh, or Yahu, Yaho,³ is the name of a god worshipped throughout a great part of the area occupied by the Western Semites. Adherents of this theory point to the occurrence in various parts of this territory of proper names of persons.² The form Ya ha, or Yaho, occurs not only in composition, but by itself; see Aramaic Papyri discovered at Assaan, B 4,6, ir ; E 14; The divergent Judæan tradition of Genesis, according to which the forefathers had worshipped Yahweh from time immemorial, may indicate that Judah and the kindred clans had in fact been worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses.

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 Va- a-ve-ilu, Va-ve-ilu, and Va-u-urn-un ( Yahweh is God ), and which he regarded as conclusive proof that Yahweh was known in Babylonia before 2000 B.C.E.; 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). The reading is, however, only one of several possibilities.

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 Dehitzsch formerly derived the name from an Akkadian god, I or Ia; or from the Semitic nominative ending, Yau; but this deity has since disappeared from the pantheon of Assyriologists. The combination of Yahweh with Ea, one of the great Babylonian gods, has also been mentioned occasionally. However, scholars are now agreed that, so far as Yahu or Yah occurs in Babylonian texts, it is as the name of a foreign god.

Yahweh's Characteristics

In its mature form, the concept of Yahweh is simply that of Jewish God: the absolute, eternal,unchanging creator of the universe who is also an personal being who cares intensely for mankind as a father does for his child or a husband does for his wife. Among his divine attributes are mercy, wisdom, righteouness, lovingkindness, justice, compassion, patience, and beauty. However he is also a jealous deity. Although he is slow to anger, he will harshly punish those who betray him in order to bring about their eventual repentance and reconciliation.

The classical expression of this theology is found in Exodus 34, in the scene in which God appears to Moses just Moses ascends Sinai to received the Ten Commandments a second time:

Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord [YHWH]. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation." (Ex. 34:

Sections of the Bible thought to be among the earliest, however, also portray Yahweh in a more primitive way. One such example is Psalm 18, in which Yahweh, far from a transcendant being abounding in love, could easily been confused with a pagan storm or earthquake deity:

The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him — the dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced, with hailstones and bolts of lightning. The Lord thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot his arrows and scattered the enemies, great bolts of lightning and routed them. (Psalm 8:7-14)

Relataionship to Other Dieties

A great deal of discussion has been devoted to the relationship of Yahweh to the other deities of the region. We have already mentioned the fact that the Hebrews reportedly worshipped their God as El, El Shaddai, Elohim, etc. At some point it is probable that the worship of Yahweh merged with that of El. The issue is complicated by the question of whether the Israelites were truly one people descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or a confederation of previously unrelated people who came to accept a common nation identity, religious mythology, and origin story. If the latter is true even in part, then we can imagine a situation in which some of the proto-Israelites worshipped El primarily, while others worshipped Yahweh, and the two deities eventually came to be seen as one.

The question then became: what to do with other gods, such as El's wife Ashera, and their son Baal. There is archaeological evidence suggesting that Ashera was seen as Yahweh's consort in certain places, and the Bible is clear that the Queen of Heaven was worshipped by families who also honored Yahweh. Jeru-baal (Gideon) — was named for both Yahweh and Baal; while King Saul, who consulted a medium but was never accused of worhsipping other deities, named his son Ish-baal. An indication that Baal and Yahweh were sometimes identified is evidence in the words of the prophet Hosea, who says: "In that day," declares the Lord, [YHWH] "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master. [Baal] ' (Hosea 2:16)

The Bible itself is clear that at one time, even though the Israelites were forbidden to worship other deities, Yahweh was not considered to be the only god who actually existed. The prophet Micah declared: "All the nations may walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever." (Micah 4:5) Indeed, Yahweh is often referred to in the Bible as "the god of the hebrews" (there being no capitalization in the Hebrew text), thus conceived as one of several national deities rather than as the only God in existence.

Psalm 82, on the other hand, seems to mark a transition point, in which God will no longer accept coexistence with other deities:

God [elohim] standeth in the congregation of God [or the gods: elohim]; He judgeth among the gods [elohim]... They know not, neither do they understand; They walk to and fro in darkness: All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High. Nevertheless ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes. (Psalm 82:1-7 — ASV)

The portrait of God judging in the Assembly of the Gods has obvious parallels in other religious traditions: El is the judge of the divine assembly in Canaanite religion, just as Zeus is the judge of the court at Olympus. Here, however, God has pronounced a sentence of capital punishment on the other gods. This interpretation of Psalm 82, of course, is not universal, but it is accepted by a number of scholars. In any case, it is instructive as an insight into how the transition from the concept of Yahweh as the chief of many gods to that of Yahweh/Elohim as the one and only true deity with other gods in the position of either demons or creatures of man's imagination.

Tetragrammaton

In such cases of substitution the vowels of the word which is to be read are written in the Hebrew text with the consonants of the word which is not to be read (see Q're perpetuum). The consonants of the word to be substituted are ordinarily written in the margin; but inasmuch as Adonai was regularly read instead of the ineffable name YHWH, it was deemed unnecessary to note the fact at every occurrence. When Christian scholars began to study the Old Testament in Hebrew, if they were ignorant of this general rule or regarded the substitution as a piece of Jewish superstition, reading what actually stood in the text, they would inevitably pronounce the name Jehova. It is an unprofitable inquiry who first made this blunder; probably many fell into it independently. The statement still commonly repeated that it originated with Petrus. These details are scarcely the invention of the chronicler; see CHRONICLES, and Expositor, Aug. 1906, p. 191.

¹Though the original pronunciation of the consonantally-written name YHWH is not known with certainty, linguistic scholars generally consider Yahwheh to be most probable, and this form is the one generally used in the separate articles throughout this encyclopedia. (See: Wikisource:Yahweh)

The Tetragrammaton (Greek: τετραγράμματον; "word with four letters") is the usual reference to the Hebrew name for God, which is spelled (in the Hebrew alphabet): י‎ (yodh) ה‎ (heh) ו‎ (vav) ה‎ (heh) or יהוה‎ (YHWH). It is the distinctive personal name of the God of Israel.

Of all the names of God, the one which occurs most frequently in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton, appearing 6,823 times, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia. The Biblia Hebraica and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia texts of the Hebrew Scriptures each contain the Tetragrammaton 6,828 times.

In Judaism, the Tetragrammaton is the ineffable name of God, and is therefore not to be read aloud. In the reading aloud of the scripture or in prayer, it is replaced with Adonai ("My Lords", commonly rendered as "the Lord"). Other written forms such as י‎ (yod) ו‎ (vav) (YW or Yaw); or י‎ (yod) ה‎ (heh) (YH or Yah) are read in the same way.

Outside of direct prayer, the word "’ǎdônây" (אֲדֹנָי‎) is not spoken by some Jews since to do so is considered a violation of the commandment not to use the Lord's name in vain (Exodus 20:7). Therefore, the word is often read as HaShêm (הַשֵּׁם‎) literally, "The Name") or in some cases ’ǎdô-Shêm, a composite of ’ǎdônây and HaShêm. A similar rule applies to the word ’ělôhîym ("God"), which some Jews intentionally mispronounce as ’ělôkîym for the same reason. (In a process analogous to the "euphemism treadmill", a prosaic substitute for the Tetragrammaton during one historical period may acquire sanctity and thus itself be considered too holy for ordinary use in subsequent periods.)

Meaning

According to one Jewish tradition, the Tetragrammaton is related to the causative form, the imperfect state, of the Hebrew verb הוה‎ (ha·wah, "to be, to 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 Yôsêph = Arabic Yazîd = "He [who] adds"; Hebrew Yiḥyeh = Arabic Yahyâ = "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 howê הוה‎: "He is"; and YHYH yihiyê יהיה‎: "He will be". This is supposed to show that God is timeless, as some have translated the name as "The Eternal One". Other interpretations include 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 Israel that "I AM אהיה‎ has sent you." (Exodus 3:13-14) Some suggest: "I AM the One I AM" אהיה אשר אהיה‎, or "I AM whatever I need to become". This may also fit the interpretation as "He Causes to Become." Many scholars believe that the most proper meaning may be "He Brings Into Existence Whatever Exists" or "He who causes to exist".

The name YHWH was not always applied to a monotheistic God: see Asherah and other gods, Elohim (gods) and Yaw (god).

Transcription

Using consonants as semi-vowels

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 B.C.E. sheds no light on the original pronunciation. ². 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. Not surprisingly then, Josephus in Jewish Wars, chapter V, wrote, "…in which was engraven the sacred name: it consists of four vowels". In Greek, they are Ιαου, which comes out to Yau, since iota is used to represent semi-vocalic 'y' (and omicron+ypsilon="oo").

Further, Josephus's four vowels are confirmed by theophoric stems in personal names, always: Yaho/Yahu/Y:ho/Y:hu.[2] These yield in English Yau and Yao, which are pronounced the same. Once again, the heh is not pronounced here in Hebrew, but is used instead as a place holder. Moreover, Gnostic texts, such as those Marcion wrote, discuss the Judaic god extensively, and spell the Tetragrammaton in Greek, Ιαω, that is "Yao." Lastly, Levantine texts (including those from ancient Ugarit) render the Tetragrammaton Yaw, pronounced "Yau."[3]

Jewish use of the word

In Judaism, pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton is a taboo; it is widely considered forbidden to utter it and the pronunciation of the name is generally avoided. Usually, Adonai is used as a substitute in prayers or readings from the Torah. When used in everyday speaking (or according to many) in learning the Tetragrammaton is replaced by HaShem. The difference is marked by the vowelization in printed Bibles—the Tetragrammaton takes on the vowels of the word whose pronunciation it takes. Torah scrolls have no diacritical vowel marks, and therefore the reader must memorize the correct pronunciation for each instance of the Tetragrammaton (as for every word he reads).

According to rabbinic tradition, the name was pronounced by the high priest on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement as well as the only day when the Holy of Holies of the Temple would be entered. With the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70, this use also vanished, also explaining the loss of the correct pronunciation. (In one midrashic tradition, only seven Cohanim, or individuals of priestly lineage, know the true name of God, and it is passed down throughout the generations to be ready for invocation during the building of the Third Jewish Temple.)

The letters of the Tetragrammaton in a tetractys

There is a Jewish tradition that the actual name of God, only known to and stated by the high priest, was actually 72 letters long. The name was written out on a long strip of parchment, then folded and slipped inside the fold of the high priest's bejeweled breastplate. When someone would ask the high priest a question of Torah, or Jewish law, the high priest could invoke the Name, wherein the 12 jewels, representing the 12 tribes of the Israelites, would light up in a certain order whose meaning was, too, only known to the high priest. Through the power of the 72-letter name of God, the high priest communed, as it were, with the Almighty.

Why 72 letters? The answer may be found in the medieval rabbinic use of Gematria, that is assigning a number to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, allowing scholars to attribute numeric sums to words, find equivalencies in certain words, even use sums to try to predict a year and date for the coming of the Messiah. Even today, Jews often attribute mystical significance to the number 18, which has a possible Hebrew letter equivalent in the word "Chai", meaning "Life". Using "Gematria", we find that "Chai" equals 18: it's composed of the letter "chet", which equals 8, and the letter "yod", which equals 10, i.e. 8+10=18; consequently 18x4=72, so, in a sense, each letter of the 4-letter form of the Name represents a metaphoric symbol of the living power of God. Also, when the letters of the Tetragrammaton are arranged in a Kabbalistic tetractys formation, the sum of all the letters is 72 by Gematria (as shown in the diagram). Keeping along these lines, the Tetragrammaton, since it's only an abbreviation of the actual name, is not as powerful by nature (or supernature) as the original full name of God, though it's still not something to use in vain.

When most religious Jews refer to the name of God in conversation or in a non-textual context such as in a book, newspaper or letter, they call the name HaShem, which means "the Name." Similarly, the word Elohim is prononuced "Elokim" outside of certain religious contexts when it refers to God, and likewise for a few other names of God. When any such word is used to refer to anything but God (e.g., HaShem), it is pronounced as normal by even the most traditionalist Jews.

A number of modern translations of the Hebrew Bible and of Jewish liturgy render the Tetragrammaton as "the ETERNAL" (emphasized or all caps), because it is gender-neutral (unlike "The Lord"). The Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton are the only ones required to write the Hebrew sentence "haya, hove, ve-yiheyeh" (He was, He is, and He shall be), hence "Eternal."

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 bawd well accords. 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, the rainbow his bow. The revelation at Sinai is amid the awe-inspiring phenomena of tempests. 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.

References

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See a collection and critical estimate of this evidence by Zimmern, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 465 seq.

1. Babel and Bibel, 1902. The enormous, and for the most part ephemeral, literature provoked by Delitzschs lecture cannot be cited here.

2. Denkschriften d. Wien. Akad., L. iv. p. 115 seq. (1904).

3. Wolagdas Paradies (1881), pp. 158-166.

Footnotes

1. Galatin, Peter - De Arcanis Catholicæ Veritatis, 1518, folio xliii

2. See pages 128 and 236 of the book "Who Were the Early Israelites?" by archeologist William G. Dever, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2003.

3.Wilhelm Gesenius is noted for being one of the greatest Hebrew and biblical scholars.

4. Wilhelm Gesenius' Hebrew Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament was first translated into English in 1824,

5. Smith's "A Dictionary of the Bible"

6. Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910-1911 Page 312

7.Smith's "A Dictionary of the Bible": Clement of Alexandria wrote "Iaou" not "Iaoue" at Stromata Book V.

8. Smith's "A Dictionary of the Bible": Yahweh supposed to have been derived from Samaritan "IaBe"

9. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 under the sub-heading: To take up the ancient writers

10. The online Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906

External links

• Arbel, Ilil. "Yahweh." Encyclopedia Mythica. 2004.
• "Jehovah." Easton's Bible Dictionary (3rd ed.) 1887.
• "Jehovah (Yahweh)." Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8. 1910.
• Jewish Encyclopedia count of number of times the Tetragrammation is used
• Nazarenes and the Name of YHWH, an article by James Trimm
• The Historical Evolution of the Hebrew God
• The Rise of God
• The Sacred Name Yahweh, a publication by Qadesh La Yahweh Press
• Biblaridion magazine: Phanerosis Theology: The Tetragrammaton and God's manifestation.
• HaVaYaH the Tetragrammation in the Jewish Knowledge Base on chabad.org
• Titles of Deity, a Christadelphian view
• YHWH/YHVH — Tetragrammaton

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