Yahweh
Yahweh, יְהוָֹה, 1 (ya·'we) in the Bible, the God of the people of ancient Israel. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — though 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 normative 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 also been used to justify tribal warfare, the repression of rival religions, the persecution and murder of heretics and "pagans," and even genocide.
"Jehovah" (also spelled Yahovah) is a modern mispronunciation of the Hebrew word, YHWH, resulting from combining the consonants of that name, (formerly transcribed "JHVH") and inserting vowels from the word Adonai.
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 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 sentence three names of God are used: Elohim (God), the Lord (YHWH), and El Shaddai (God Almighty). El Shaddai appears more than 30 times in the Hebrew Bible — Gen. 28:3; 35:11, etc.). Elohim (a plural form 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 between Exodus and Genesis regarding the revelation of Yahweh's name: 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]
A more fundamental question is whether the name Yahweh originated among the Israelites or was adopted by them from some other people and language. 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. A more specific suggestion mentioned by biblical scholar Mark S. Smith in The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, is that Yahweh originated with 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. Egyptologist Donald Redford, in Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, suggests that the Israelites may have been a group of Shasu who migrated northward into Canaan in the 13th century b.c.e.. Archaelologist Israel Finkelstein has shown in The Bible Unearthed that some of the Shasu indeed settled in the Samarian and Judean hills at this time, thus forming one of the proto-Israelite peoples.
A Midianite Diety?
One biblically-derived theory somewhat consistent with the above scenario holds that Yahweh was originally a deity of the Midianites and other 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 this holy mountain.
According to one account, Moses' wife was a daughter of Jethro, a priest of Midian (Ex. 18). When Moses led the Israelites to the 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" and the chief men of the Israelites were guests at his sacrificial feast. Thus, the tribes in the region of Sinai/Horeb may already have been worshippers of Yahweh — although not exclusively — before the time of Moses.
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 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.
Meaning
The symbolic or spiritual meaning of God's name is the subject of several traditions. In one of these, Yahweh is related to the Hebrew verb הוה (ha·wah), "to be, to become"), meaning "He will cause to become." In Arabic Yahyâ means "He [who] lives".
Another related 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 believed to show that God is timeless.
Another interpretation is that the name means "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 also suggest: "I AM the One I AM" אהיה אשר אהיה, or "I AM what I need to become". This may also fit the interpretation of "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".
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 a 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 being a transcendant being abounding in love, could easily been confused with a pagan storm 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)
Assuming that Yahweh was once thought of as a nature god, scholars in the 19th century discussed the question of 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 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. Scholars have also noted that many of these primitive characteristics of Yahweh are also seen in hymns and inscriptions devoted to Baal of the Canaanites and Marduk of Mesopotamia.
Relatationship to Other Dieties
In the "Song of Moses," the great prophet asks:
- "Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you — majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?" (Ex. 15:11)
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 — all forms of El, the chief Canaanite deity. At some point it is probable that the worship of Yahweh merged with that of El and that Elohim came to be used as a generic name for God rather than the specific name of one of the Canaanite gods.
The issue is complicated by the question of whether the Israelites were truly one distinct people descended from Abraham who migrated en masse from Egypt to Canaan, or a confederation of previously unrelated people who came to accept a common nation identity, religious mythology, and origin story. That some of the Israelites once honored a serpent deity is implied in the story of Moses erecting a bronze serpent during the exodus. This same serpent icon — certainly a "graven image" — was reportedly set up in Jerusalem as well, where it was venerated until King Hezekiah had it removed as idolatrous. Serpent deities are known to have been worshipped both in Egypt and Canaan.
(Judges 17-18)
In fact, Archaelogists and language experts indicate that it is difficult to distinguish Israelite and Canaanite culture until the early Early Iron Age, around the time of King David. We can imagine a situation in which some of the proto-Israelites worshipped a variety of god, or worshipped God in a variety of forms using many names. Eventually, the characteristics of Yahweh, El, and Baal merged. El came to be identified with Yahweh, while Baal was denigrated and excluded, just as the serpent icon associated with Moses was eventually declared to be an idol. Jeru-baal (Gideon) — was named for both Yahweh and Baal; while the Judge Shamgar ben Anath was named after the war goddess Anat. An entire Israelite tribe was named Asher. King Saul, anointed by the Yawhist prophet Samuel as Israel's first king, nevertheless named his sons Ish-baal and Meri-baal.
The question then becomes: did Yawhist monotheism evolve out an earlier situation in which Yawheh was known as one god among many? Or did the Israelites sin by acknowledging other gods alongside of Yahweh? An indication that Baal and Yahweh were sometimes identified is evidenced 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) William Dever discusses an intriguing question in his book "Did God Have a Wife?" He presents archaeological evidence suggesting that Ashera was seen as Yahweh's consort in certain times and places, and the Bible is clear that the Queen of Heaven was worshipped by families who also honored Yahweh in Jeremiah's day. He suggests that Ashera worship remained widespread among the common folk, while the elites, centering on the male priesthood, fought to exclude an femine portrayals of God. Eventually, many of the characteristics of Ashera were included in the rabbinic concept of the Shekhinah.
The Bible seems to indicate that 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) 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 tribal 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, although not universally accepted, is instructive as an insight into the transition from the concept of Yahweh as the chief god to that of Yahweh/Elohim as the only true deity, with other gods in the position of either demons or creatures of man's imagination.
The Tetragrammaton
The for consonants of the Hebrew spelling of Yahweh are referred to as theTetragrammaton (Greek: τετραγράμματον; "word with four letters"). It is spelled (in the Hebrew alphabet): י (yodh) ה (heh) ו (vav) ה (heh) or יהוה (YHWH). 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.
In Judaism, pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton is a [[taboo]}Usually, Adonai ("the Lord") is used as a substitute in prayers or readings from the Torah. When used in everyday speaking the Tetragrammaton is often replaced by HaShem ("the Name").
According to rabbinic tradition, the name was pronounced by the high priest on Yom Kippur, 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 C.E., this use also vanished, also explaining the loss of the correct pronunciation.
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).
Beginning in the middle ages, the Tetragrammaton was widely contemplated as a tool in mystical enlightenment, especially in kabbalistic literature, as well is in the use of magical encantations and spells.
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."
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]
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
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
Credits
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:
The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:
Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.
