Pronouncing the Sacred Name: Yahweh or Yehovah

Tiffany Balow

REL 200 Andrew Potter April 12, 2012

Pronouncing the Sacred Name In the Hebrew Bible, the sacred name of god is written over 6,000 times. Many of the promises that the god of Israel made to the Hebrew people were tied to that sacred name including the promise that the very mention of the name will bring with it blessings.1 However, the exact pronunciation of the name, which will be written herein as YHVH, has been almost forgotten since the time of the Seleucid reign in Israel around 175-164 BCE due to the ban placed on speaking YHVH by Antiochus Epiphanes under penalty of death.2 The scholarly consensus is that YHVH was pronounced Yahweh. However, much evidence points to another pronunciation, Yehovah, the evidence for which is not drawn from Greek textual sources, but Hebrew. The debate over the pronunciation begins at the very fundamental elements of the Hebrew language, the letters. The letters that make up YHVH (Yod-Hey-Vav Hey) can be used as either consonants or vowels.3 The possibility for Yahweh becomes apparent when pronouncing all of the letters as vowels. However, Hebrew names have meanings and essentially Yahweh (all vowels) means nothing in Hebrew.4 Another argument for pronouncing YHVH as Yahweh is that the vowels for Adonai were essentially plugged into YHVH.5 However, this would result in something along the lines of YaHoVai (as in eye). There has never been evidence in any Masoretic text of this. It is important to note that although the Masoretes devised the vowel point system sometime around 700-900

1 2

Exodus 20:21 and Numbers 6:27 Neil Snyder, His Name is Yahweh, 2011 . 3 Robert Ray Ellis, Learning to Read Biblical Hebrew, 2006, p10. 4 James Tabor, Restoring Abrahamic Faith, 2008, p 18-20 5 Interestingly, while many sources point toward this as evidence of the pronunciation Yahweh, Snyder asserts that it points toward the pronunciation Yehovah.

they did not create the vowel sounds but rather a system in which they could preserve the correct pronunciation so that any reader could vocalize the text. Nothing close to Yahweh or YaHoVai is present in any Hebrew text with vowel points.6 In texts written in Greek and Latin, however, something like Yahweh does appear. Theodoret of Cyrus appears to be a primary evidenced source wherein he writes that the Samaritans pronounced the name IABE (or Yabe) which sounds much like Yahweh. While it is true that the Samaritans refer to the god of Israel as Yabe, this is likely a title, not a name. The Samaritans called him the beautiful one which is Yafeh (the f being the letter pe) and the pe, in Samaritan Hebrew, is often replaced by a bet.7 So it is quite possible that in calling him Yafeh it came out as Yabe. In terms of Greek sources, such as Origen of Alexandrias IAO, fundamental problems exist when attempting to translate from Hebrew into Greek. Take for example the difference between IESOUS (the Greek form which the name Jesus is derived from)8 and Yehoshua or even Yeshua (the Hebrew word that IESOUS is derived from). The differences between these two words is obvious, but the problem lies in the fact that there are sounds in Hebrew which the Greek has no equivalent for, sometimes nothing even close to it. Such is the case for YHVH. These letters do not have exact Greek equivalents, especially pertaining to the use of an H in the middle of a word.9 Therefore, it is virtually hopeless to effectively transliterate YHVH into Greek, and any attempt to do so will result in something dissimilar to how the name should actually sound.

6 7

Keith Johnson, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, 2010, p131-135. Keith Johnson, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, 2010, p137. 8 James Strong, Strongs Complete Word Study Concordance, 2004, p2090. 9 Keith Johnson, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, 2010, p141.

Translation and transliteration from Hebrew, to Greek, to English may be a thorn in the side of theologians hopes and dreams when it comes to pronouncing YHVH, but there may be hope for transliterating it directly from the Hebrew into something an English speaker can effectively pronounce and also understand as something more than just sounds. Unlike Yahweh, Yehovah actually holds meaning in the Hebrew language and makes grammatical sense. YHVH is derived from the verb HYH (to be) wherein the Yod can be interchanged with a Vav as in similar conjugations.10 This is evident in the Hebrew word play that takes place in Exodus when Moses asks what name to call the god of Israel. And God said to Moses, eHYeH- AshereHYeH. He continued, Thus shall you say to the Israelites, eH-YeH sent me to you.11 In this verse, YHVH gives Moses the very definition of himself and his name. He says I am that I am or I will be what I will be which heavily uses the verb HYH (to be). He goes on to say that This shall be my name forever. This my appellation for all eternity.12 This tells the reader that his name is connected to the verb to be and therefore would have a usable conjugated form of the verb present in the pronunciation of his name. Yehovah satisfies all of these requirements. Other clues to the accuracy of Yehovah lie in the many names that contain part of this name in them. For example, Yeho-ash, Yeho-yakin, and Yeho-nata all being with Yeho- (YodHey).13 These names connect meaning to the name YHVH such as Yeho-shua which means YHVH saves.14 Other names contain the last part of the name such as Yirmi-yahu (meaning

10 11

James Tabor, Restoring Abrahamic Faith, 2008, p20. Exodus 3:14 12 Exodus 3:15 13 Keith Johnson, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, 2010, p151. 14 Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson, A Pray to Our Father, 2010, p107.

YHVH raises up) where in Yah is the abbreviated form of the name using the first and last letters with the last vowel in Yehovah, similar to Alleilu YAH.15 Finally, what Yehovah has that Yahweh does not is hard textual evidence. Yehovah can be found in the oldest vocalized codex of the Hebrew Bible, the Aleppo Codex. The full and correct vowel points can be found in numerous places especially in Ezekiel 28:22 which says, Thus says Adonai Yehovah.16 Verses like this are logical places to look because the Rabbis taught readers to say Adonai when they came across YHVH in the text, however reading this verse as Thus says Adonai Adonai, wouldnt make much sense and would only be redundant. In some places the scribe would place the final vowel point for elohim to signal the reader to say elohim instead, but it appears as though in some places the scribe simply wrote the vowel points as he knew the word should truly be written.17 Some use the work of Galatinus to disprove the validity of the argument for Yehovah stating that he incorrectly interpreted YHVH as Yehovah, and that this was the first use of the name in this way which appeared in the 1400s.18 However, the Aleppo Codex has been dated to around the 10th century,19 which puts 400-500 years between Galatinus and the writing of the Aleppo. Therefore Galatinus did not interpret YHVH to be Yehovah, he simply wrote it as he must have seen it written. It is important to note that the Masoretes were composed of both Rabbis and Karaites with some who adhered to the ban on speaking YHVH and some that did not. Therefore, it is possible that the full vowel point representations present in the Aleppo Codex were placed there purposely and/or by those that came from groups that never lost the true
15 16

Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson, A Pray to Our Father, 2010, p109. Keith Johnson, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, 2010, p149. 17 Keith Johnson, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, 2010, p149. 18 Neil Snyder, His Name is Yahweh, 2011. 19 Keith Johnson, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, 2010, p148.

pronunciation of YHVH. It is highly illogical, with all of the instances in the Hebrew Bible that state the importance of the sacred name and the anthropomorphic characteristics of the god of Israel, to assume that every Hebrew stopped speaking the name and forgot the true pronunciation.20 There are merits and deficiencies in the arguments for the pronunciations of both Yahweh and Yehovah. Transmission will almost always provide a better preservation of the original pronunciation of a word than transliteration ever could, especially between the Hebrew and the Greek. But although the Masoretic texts are a product of transmission rather than translation, the question of how the pronunciations may have changed during the time between the Seleucid ban on the name and the development of the vowel point system still is a mystery. However, Yehovah is represented in Hebrew manuscripts, which could have come from the hand of those that never lost the true pronunciation of YHVH, whereas nothing even close to Yahweh has been found in any Hebrew vocalized manuscripts. When in doubt, and where none can agree, even to disagree, there will always be common ground found in Alleilu Yah.

20

James Orr, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 1939.

Bibliography Ellis, Robert R. "Lesson 2: Vowels." Learning to Read Biblical Hebrew: An Introductory Grammar. Waco, TX: Baylor UP, 2006. Print. Gordon, Nehemia, and Keith Johnson. A Prayer to Our Father: Hebrew Origins of the Lord's Prayer. Arlington, TX: Hilkiah, 2010. Print. Johnson, Keith E. His Hallowed Name Revealed Again. Minneapolis, MN: Biblical Foundations Academy, 2010. Print. Orr, James. "Names of God." The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1939. N. pag. EPUB file. Snyder, Neil H. His Name Is Yahweh. CreateSpace, 2011. N. pag. EPUB file. Strong, James. Strong's Complete Word Study Concordance. Ed. Warren Baker. Chattanooga, TN: AMG, 2004. Print. Tabor, James D. Restoring Abrahamic Faith. Charlotte, NC: Genesis 2000, 2008. Print.