thematic essay final draft

8/2/2019 Thematic Essay Final Draft

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Pronouncing the Sacred Name:

Yahweh or Yehovah

Tiffany Balow

REL 200

Andrew Potter

April 12, 2012


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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

1Exodus 20:21 and Numbers 6:27

2Neil Snyder, His Name is Yahweh, 2011 .

3Robert Ray Ellis, Learning to Read Biblical Hebrew, 2006, p10.

4James Tabor, Restoring Abrahamic Faith, 2008, p 18-20

5Interestingly, while many sources point toward this as evidence of the pronunciation Yahweh, Snyder asserts that

it points toward the pronunciation Yehovah.


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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 letterpe) and thepe, 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 Greeksources, 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.

6Keith Johnson, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, 2010, p131-135.

7Keith Johnson, His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, 2010, p137.

8James Strong, Strongs Complete Word Study Concordance, 2004, p2090.



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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 Yodcan 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- Asher-

eHYeH. 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- (Yod-

Hey).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

10James Tabor, Restoring Abrahamic Faith, 2008, p20.

11Exodus 3:14

12Exodus 3:15


14Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson, A Pray to Our Father, 2010, p107.


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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 wouldplace 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

15Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson, A Pray to Our Father, 2010, p109.



18Neil Snyder, His Name is Yahweh, 2011.



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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.

20James Orr, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 1939.


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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.

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