Jehovah

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. The Tetragrammaton is considered one of the seven names of God in Judaism and a form of God's name in Christianity.

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. The derived form Iehovah first appeared in the 16th century. The form Jehovah began to printed following a 17th-century development leading J to become a separate letter for printing the consonantal I.

William Tyndale first introduced the vocalization Jehovah for the Tetragrammaton in his translation of Exodus 6:3, and it appears in some other early English translations including the Matthew Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishop's Bible, the Geneva Bible and the King James Version. 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')." 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.

Most scholars believe the name Jehovah (also transliterated as Yehowah) to be a hybrid form derived by combining the Hebrew letters יהוה (YHWH, later rendered in the Latin alphabet as JHVH) with the vowels of Adonai. Some hold that there is evidence that a form of the Tetragrammaton similar to Jehovah may have been in use in Semitic and Greek phonetic texts and artifacts from Late Antiquity. Others say that it is the pronunciation Yahweh that is testified in both Christian and pagan texts of the early Christian era.

Some Karaite Jews, as proponents of the rendering Jehovah, state that although the original pronunciation of יהוה has been obscured by disuse of the spoken name according to oral Rabbinic law, well-established English transliterations of other Hebrew personal names are accepted in normal usage, such as Joshua, Jeremiah, Isaiah or Jesus, for which the original pronunciations may be unknown. They also point out that "the English form Jehovah is an Anglicized form of Y^ehovah," and preserves the four Hebrew consonants "YHVH" (with the introduction of the "J" sound in English). Some argue that Jehovah is preferable to Yahweh, based on their conclusion that the Tetragrammaton was likely tri-syllabic originally, and that modern forms should therefore also have three syllables.

In an article he wrote in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Biblical scholar Francis B. Dennio said: "Jehovah misrepresents Yahweh no more than Jeremiah misrepresents Yirmeyahu. The settled connotations of Isaiah and Jeremiah forbid questioning their right." Dennio argued that the form Jehovah is not a barbarism, but is the best English form available, being that it has for centuries gathered the necessary connotations and associations for valid use in English.

According to a Jewish tradition developed during the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE, the Tetragrammaton is written but not pronounced. When read, substitute terms replace the divine name where יְהֹוָה‎ (Yəhōwā) appears in the text. It is widely assumed, as proposed by the 19th-century Hebrew scholar Wilhelm Gesenius, that the vowels of the substitutes of the name—Adonai (Lord) and Elohim (God)—were inserted by the Masoretes to indicate that these substitutes were to be used. When יהוה precedes or follows Adonai, the Masoretes placed the vowel points of Elohim into the Tetragrammaton, producing a different vocalization of the Tetragrammaton יֱהֹוִה‎ (Yĕhōvī), which was read as Elohim. Based on this reasoning, the form יְהֹוָה‎ (Jehovah) has been characterized by some as a "hybrid form", and even "a philological impossibility".

Early modern translators disregarded the practice of reading Adonai (or its equivalents in Greek and Latin, Κύριος and Dominus) in place of the Tetragrammaton and instead combined the four Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton with the vowel points that, except in synagogue scrolls, accompanied them, resulting in the form Jehovah. This form, which first took effect in works dated 1278 and 1303, was adopted in Tyndale's and some other Protestant translations of the Bible. In the 1560 Geneva Bible, the Tetragrammaton is translated as Jehovah six times, four as the proper name, and two as place-names. In the 1611 King James Version, Jehovah occurred seven times. In the 1885 English Revised Version, the form Jehovah occurs twelve times. In the 1901 American Standard Version the form "Je-ho'vah" became the regular English rendering of the Hebrew יהוה, all throughout, in preference to the previously dominant "the LORD", which is generally used in the King James Version. It is also used in Christian hymns such as the 1771 hymn, "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah".