Yahweh

Yahweh and Jehovah are two different English transcriptions of i.e. the non vocalized Tetragrammaton , which is accepted by both Jews and Christians as being God's Hebrew name, as it was preserved in the original consonantal Hebrew text.

Jehovah is an English transcription of , a specific vocalized spelling of which is found in the Masoretic Text.

Under the heading " _{c. 6823}" the editors of the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon write that: occurs 6518 times in the Masoretic Text, however in 1863, and quite possibly even earlier, scholars had rejected this Hebrew spelling , believing that the Masoretes had not pointed with the actual vowel points of God's name. In the latter half of the 19th century, Hebrew scholars were proposing various punctuations of , which they each believed were more likely than to accurately result in the correct pronunciation of God's Hebrew name.The editor of Smith's 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible writes that after the punctuation Jehovah was rejected, other punctuations were proposed.

Yahweh is believed modern scholars to be the likely original pronunciation of .

Beside the heading " _{c. 6823}" (mentioned above),

the editors of the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon write:

"i.e. n.pr.dei Yahweh, the proper name of the God of Israel."

The heading " _{c. 6823}", indicates that " ( e.g. the Tetragrammaton without any wowel points), occurs approximately 6823 times in the original consonantal Hebrew Text.

is a Hebrew spelling of proposed by Gesenius The editor of Smith's 1863 "A Dictionary of the Bible notes that Gesenius proposed that might best represent the correct punctuation of . in the early 19th century.

While is found in no extant Masoretic Text, in the early 20th century many scholars began to believe that might accurately represent the original pronunciation of .

Modern scholarship

In the BibleWiki article: JEHOVAH (Jewish Encyclopedia) The editors of the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906 write:

A mispronunciation (introduced by Christian theologians, but almost entirely disregarded by the Jews) of the Hebrew "Yhwh," the (ineffable) name of God (the Tetragrammaton or "Shem ha-Meforash").

This pronunciation is grammatically impossible; it arose through pronouncing the vowels of the kere"

(marginal reading of the Masorites: = "Adonay")

with the consonants of the "ketib"

(text-reading: = "Yhwh")

—"Adonay" (the Lord) being substituted with one exception wherever Yhwh occurs in the Biblical and liturgical books.

"Adonay" presents the vowels "shewa"

(the composite ( ֲ ) under the guttural becomes simple ( ְ ) under the ),

"holem,"

and "kamez,"

and these give the reading ( ) (= "Jehovah").

Sometimes, when the two names ( ) and ( ) occur together,

the former is pointed with "hatef segol" ( ֱ ) under the

— thus, (="Jehovah")

—to indicate that in this combination it is to be pronounced "Elohim" ( ).

These substitutions of "Adonay"and "Elohim" for Yhwh were devised to avoid the profanation of the Ineffable Name ( hence is also written ’, or even ’, and read "ha-Shem" = "the Name ").

Most modern scholars agree with the editors of Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906 that when the Masoretes added vowel points to the consonantal Hebrew text, they had not placed the correct vowel points of God's name above and below the consonants of YHWH. Instead modern scholars believe that the Masoretes had placed a modified version of the vowel points of ’ǎdônây above and below the consonants of YHWH to indicate to the Jewish reader that he was to substitute ’ǎdônây for the proper name in reading the scriptures (see Q're Perpetuum).

In the table below, Yehovah and Adonay are dissected

..Hatef Patah..A

.......Daleth........D ........Holem........O .........Nun..........N

......Qamets......A

........Yod.........Y

Hebrew Word #3068	Hebrew Word #136
YEHOVAH	ADONAY

..........Yod..........Y	......Aleph...Silent
...Simple Shewa..E
...........Heh..........H
..........Holem..........O
...........Vav............V
........Qamets.........A
..........Heh..........H

Note in the table directly above that the "simple shewa" in Yehovah and the "hatef patah" in Adonay are not the exact same vowel points.

The Masoretes did not point YHWH with the exact same vowel points as "Adonay"!

The same information is displayed in the table above and to the right where "YHWH intended to be pronounced as Adonai" and "Adonai, with its slightly different vowels points" are shown to have different vowel points.

The Masoretes did not point YHWH with the exact same vowel points as "Adonay"!

The diffrerence between the exact vowel points of ’ǎdônây and YHWH is explained by the rules of Hebrew morphology and phonetics.

Both short vowels, shva and hataf-patah, were allophones of the same phoneme used in different situations.

The Hebrew word Adonai, grammatically a plural form of the word Adon with the possessive suffix, uses the pattern "shva-holam-kamatz", but, because of glottal nature of aleph, the shva in Adonai is replaced by hataf-patah.

Since yod is not a glottal consonant, it uses the vowel shva required by the pattern.

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. 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 Jehovah. It is an unprofitable inquiry to try to determine the specific translator who first made this mistake; probably many fell into it independently. The statement still commonly repeated that it originated with Petrus Galatinus (1518) is erroneous; Jehova occurs in manuscripts at least as early as the 14th century.

Thus many if not most modern scholars believe that "Jehovah" is an erroneous English transcription of God's Hebrew name, resulting from combining the anglicized consonants of God's name, Jhvh, with the modified version of the vowels of the word adonai, "Lord", which scholars believe the Masoretes had placed above and below the consonants of God's name, to indicate to the Jewish reader that he was to substitute ’ǎdônây for the proper name in reading the scriptures.

Usage of Jehovah among the Reformers

The form Jehovah was used in the 16th century by many authors, both Catholic and Protestant, and in the 17th was zealously defended by Fuller, Gataker, Leusden and others, against the criticisms of such scholars as Drusius, Cappellus and the elder Buxtorf. It appeared in the English Bible in Tyndale's translation of the Pentateuch (1530), and is found in all English Protestant versions of the 16th century except that of Coverdale (535). In the Authorized Version of 1611 it occurs in Exod. vi. 3; Ps. lxxxiii; Isa. Xii. xxvi. 4, beside the compound names Jehovah-jireh, Jehovah-nissi, Jehovah-shalom; elsewhere, in accordance with the usage of the ancient versions, Yhwh is represented by LORD (distinguished by capitals from the title Lord. Heb. adonai). In the Revised Version of 1885 Jehovah is retained in the places in which it stood in the A. V., and is introduced also in Exod. vi. 2, 6, 7, 8; Ps. lxviii. 20; Isa. xlix. 14; Jer. XVI. 21; Hab. iii. 19. The American committee which cooperated in the revision desired to employ the name Jehovah wherever Yhwh occurs in the original, and editions embodying their preferences are printed accordingly.

Usage of YHWH

In ancient Judaism

Several centuries before the Christian era the name YHWH had ceased to be commonly used by the Jews. Some of the later writers in the Old Testament employ the appellative Elohim, God, prevailingly or exclusively: a collection of Psalms (Ps. xlii. lxxxiii.) was revised by an editor who changed the Yhwh of the authors into Elohim (see e.g. xlv. 7; xlviii. 10; 1. 7; ii. 14); observe also the frequency of the Most High, the God of Heaven, King of Heaven, in Daniel, and of Heaven in First Maccabees.

The oldest complete Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) versions, from around the second century A.D., consistently use Kyrie, Lord, where the Hebrew has YHWH, corresponding to the substitution of Adonay for YHWH in reading the original; in books written in Greek in this period (e.g. Wisdom, 2 and 3 Maccabees), as in the New Testament, Kyrie takes the place of the name of God. However, older fragments do contain the name YHWH. The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology Volume 2, page 512 It should also be noted though that in the P. Ryl. 458 (perhaps the oldest extant Septuagint manuscript) there are blank spaces leading some scholars to believe that the Tetragrammaton must have been written where these breaks or blank spaces are. Paul Kahle, The Cairo Geniza (Oxford:Basil Blackwell,1959) p. 222

Josephus, who as a priest knew the pronunciation of the name, declares that religion forbids him to divulge it; Philo calls it ineffable, and says that it is lawful for those only whose ears and tongues are purified by wisdom to hear and utter it in a holy place (that is, for priests in the Temple); and in another passage, commenting on Lev. xxiv. 55 seq.: "If any one, I do not say should blaspheme against the Lord of men and gods, but should even dare to utter his name unseasonably, let him expect the penalty of death."Footnote #3 from page 311 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "See Josephus, Ant. ii. 12, 4; Philo, Vita Mosis, iii. II (ii. 114, ed. Cohn and Wendland); ib. iii. 27 (ii. 206). The Palestinian authorities more correctly interpreted Lev. xxiv. 15 seq., not of the mere utterance of the name, but of the use of the name of God in blaspheming God."

Various motives may have concurred to bring about the suppression of the name. An instinctive feeling that a proper name for God implicitly recognizes the existence of other gods may have had some influence; reverence and the fear lest the holy name should be profaned among the heathen were potent reasons; but probably the most cogent motive was the desire to prevent the abuse of the name in magic. If so, the secrecy had the opposite effect; the name of the god of the Jews was one of the great names, in magic, heathen as well as Jewish, and miraculous efficacy was attributed to the mere utterance of it.

In the liturgy of the Temple the name was pronounced in the priestly benediction (Num. vi. 27) after the regular daily sacrifice (in the synagogues a substitute— probably Adonai— was employed);Footnote #4 from page 311 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "Siphre, Num. f 39, 43; M. Sotak, iii. 7; Sotah, 38a. The tradition that the utterance of the name in the daily benedictions ceased with the death of Simeon the Just, two centuries or more before the Christian era, perhaps arose from a misunderstanding of Menahoth, 109b; in any case it cannot stand against the testimony of older and more authoritative texts.on the Day of Atonement the High Priest uttered the name ten times in his prayers and benediction.

In the last generations before the fall of Jerusalem, however, it was pronounced in a low tone so that the sounds were lost in the chant of the priests.Footnote #5 from page 311 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "Yoma, 39b; Jer. Yoma, iii. 7; Kiddushin, 71a."

In later Judaism

After the destruction of the Temple (A.D. 70) the liturgical use of the name ceased, but the tradition was perpetuated in the schools of the rabbis.Footnote #1 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads:"R. Johannan (second half of the 3rd century), Kiddushin, 71a." It was certainly known in Babylonia in the latter part of the 4th century,Footnote #2 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads:"Kiddushin, l.c. = Pesahim, 50a" and not improbably much later. Nor was the knowledge confined to these pious circles; the name continued to be employed by healers, exorcists and magicians, and has been preserved in many places in magical papyri.

The vehemence with which the utterance of the name is denounced in the Mishna—He who pronounces the Name with its own letters has no part in the world to come!".Footnote #3 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "M. Sanhedrin'', x.I; Abba Saul, end of 2nd century." —suggests that this misuse of the name was not uncommon among Jews.

Among the Samaritans

The Samaritans, who otherwise shared the scruples of the Jews about the utterance of the name, seem to have used it in judicial oaths to the scandal of the rabbis.Footnote #4 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads:Jer. Sanhedrin, x.I; R. Mana, 4th century.

Church Fathers and Magic Papyri

In the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906‘s Article:Tetragrammaton, under the Article Heading:"Church Fathers and Magic Papyri", the editors write:

It was in connection with magic that the Tetragrammaton was introduced into the magic papyri and, in all probability, into the writings of the Church Fathers, these two sources containing the following forms, written in Greek letters:

"Iaoouee," "Iaoue," "Iabe,";
"Iao," "Iaho," "Iae";
"Aia";
"Ia."

It is evident that

represents

The three forms quoted under (1) are merely three ways of writing the same word, though "Iabe" is designated as the Samaritan pronunciation. There are external and internal grounds for this assumption; for the very agreement of the Jewish, Christian, heathen, and Gnostic statements proves that they undoubtedly give the actual pronunciation

Among early Christian writers

The early Christian scholars, who inquired what was the true name of the God of the Old Testament, had therefore no great difficulty in getting the information they sought.

Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 212) says that it was pronounced Iαουε.Footnote #5 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads:

"Strom. v. 6. Variants: Iα ουε, Iα ουαι; cod. L. Iαου."

Epiphanius

Epiphanius (d. 404), who was born in Palestine and spent a considerable part of his life there, gives IαΒε (one cod. Iανε ).Footnote #6 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "Panarion, Haer. 40, 5; cf. Lagarde, Psalter juxia Hebraeos, 154."

Theodoret

Theodoret (d. c. 457),Footnote #7 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads:" Quaest. 15 in Exod.; Fab. haeret. compend. v. 3, sub fin." born in Antioch, writes that the Samaritans pronounced the name IαΒε (in another passage, Iαβαι), the Jews Aια.Footnote #8 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "Aïα occurs also in the great magical papyrus of Paris, 1. 3020 (Wessely, Denkschrift. Wien. Akad., Phil. Hist. Kl., XXXVI. p. 120) and in the Leiden Papyrus, Xvii. 31." The latter is probably not Jhvh but Ehyeh (Exod. iii. 14), which the Jews counted among the names of God; there is no reason whatever to imagine that the Samaritans pronounced the name Jhvh differently from the Jews.

In the The Magical Texts

This direct testimony is supplemented by that of the magical texts, in which Iave (Jahveh Sebaoth), as well as IαΒα, occurs frequently.Footnote #9 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "See Deissmann, Bibelstudien, 13 sqq." In an Ethiopic list of magical names of Jesus, purporting to have been taught by him to his disciples, YaweFootnote #10 from Page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "See Driver, ''Studia Biblica, I. 20."is found.

Among modern Samaritan priests

Finally, there is evidence from more than one source that the modern Samaritan priests pronounce the name Yahweh or Yahwa.Footnote #11 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads:" See Montgomery, Journal of Biblical Literature, xxv. (1906), 49-51." There is no reason to impugn the soundness of this substantially consentient testimony to the pronunciation Yahweh or Jahveh, coming as it does through several independent channels. It is confirmed by grammatical considerations.

In Theophoric Names

The name JHVH enters into the composition of many proper names of persons in the Old Testament, either as the initial element, in the form Jeho- or Jo- (as in Jehoram, Joram), or as the final element, in the form -jahu or -jah (as in Adonijahu, Adonijah). George Buchanan explains in Biblical Archaeology Review: “In ancient times, parents often named their children after their deities. That means that they would have pronounced their children’s names the way the deity’s name was pronounced. The Tetragrammaton was used in people’s names, and they always used the middle vowel.” Thus the names of Biblical figures—the correct pronunciation of which was never lost—provides tangible evidence to the ancient pronunciation of God’s name.

In the dozens of Biblical names that incorporate the divine name, this middle vowel sound appears in both the original and the shortened forms, such as in Jehonathan and Jonathan. Therefore, Professor Buchanan says regarding the divine name: “In no case is the vowel oo or oh omitted. The word was sometimes abbreviated as ‘Ya,’ but never as ‘Ya-weh.’ . . . When the Tetragrammaton was pronounced in one syllable it was ‘Yah’ or ‘Yo.’ When it was pronounced in three syllables it would have been ‘Yahowah’ or ‘Yahoowah.’ If it was ever abbreviated to two syllables it would have been ‘Yaho.’” BAR 21.2 (March-April 1995),31 George W. Buchanan, “How God’s Name Was Pronounced” Therefore a two-syllable pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton as “Yahweh” would not allow for the o vowel sound to exist.

Therefore as Everett Fox in his introduction to his translation of The Five Books of Moses, stated “Both old and new attempts to recover the ‘correct’ pronunciation of the Hebrew name God have not succeeded; neither the sometimes-heard ‘Jehovah’ nor the standard scholarly ‘Yahweh’ can be conclusively proven.”

In the writings of Genebrardus

Genebrardus seems to have been the first to suggest the pronunciation Iahue, Footnote #12 from Page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "''Chronographia, Paris, 1567 (ed. Paris, 1600. p. 79 seq.)" but it was not until the 19th century that it became generally accepted.

Derivation

Putative etymology

Jahveh or Yahweh is apparently an example of a common type of Hebrew proper names which have the form of the 3rd pers. sing. of the verb. e.g. Jabneh (name of a city), Jabin, Jamlek, Jiptal (Jephthah), &c. Most of these really are verbs, the suppressed or implicit subject being 'el, "numen, god", or the name of a god; cf. Jabneh and Jabne-el, Jiptah and Jiptah-el.

The ancient explanations of the name proceed from Exod. iii. 14, 15, where "Yahweh Footnote #13 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "This transcription will be used henceforth." hath sent me" in v 15 corresponds to "Ehyeh hath sent me" in v. 14, thus seeming to connect the name Yahweh with the Hebrew verb hayah, "to become, to be". The Palestinian interpreters found in this the promise that God would be with his people (cf. v. 12) in future oppressions as he was in the present distress, or the assertion of his eternity, or eternal constancy; the Alexandrian translation 'Eγω ειμι ο ων . . . ' O ων απεσταλκεν με προς νμας understands it in the more metaphysical sense of God's absolute being. Both interpretations, "He (who) is (always the same};" and , "He (who) is (absolutely the truly existent);"import into the name all that they profess to find in it; the one, the religious faith in God's unchanging fidelity to his people, the other, a philosophical conception of absolute being which is foreign both to the meaning of the Hebrew verb and to the force of the tense employed.

Modern scholars have sometimes found in the name the expression of the aseityFootnote #14 from Page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "A-se-itas, a scholastic Latin expression for the quality of existing by oneself.of God; sometimes of his reality in contrast to the imaginary gods of the heathen.

Another explanation, which appears first in Jewish authors of the middle ages and has found wide acceptance in recent times, derives the name from the causative of the verb; He (who) causes things to be, gives them being; or calls events into existence, brings them to pass; with many individual modifications of interpretation—creator, life giver, fullfiller of promises. A serious objection to this theory in every form is that the verb hayah, "to be" has no causative stem in Hebrew; to express the ideas which these scholars find in the name Yahweh the language employs altogether different verbs.

This assumption that Yahweh is derived from the verb "to be", as seems to be implied in Exod. iii. 14 seq., is not, however, free from difficulty. "To be" in the Hebrew of the Old Testament is not hawah, as the derivation would require, but hayah; and we are thus driven to the further assumption that hawah belongs to an earlier stage of the language, or to some older speech of the forefathers of the Israelites.

This hypothesis is not intrinsically improbable— and in Aramaic, a language closely related to Hebrew, "to be" actually is hawa—it should be noted that in adopting it we admit that, using the name Hebrew in the historical sense, Yahweh is not a Hebrew name. And, inasmuch as nowhere in the Old Testament, outside of Exod. iii., is there the slightest indication that the Israelites connected the name of their God with the idea of "being" in any sense, it may fairly be questioned whether, if the author of Exod. 14 seq., intended to give an etymological interpretation of the name Yahweh,Footnote #15 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "The critical difficulties of these verses need not be discussed here. See W.R. Arnold, "The Divine Name in Exodus iii. 14," Journal of Biblical Literature, XXIV. (1905), 107-165." his etymology is any better than many other paronomastic explanations of proper names in the Old Testament, or than, say, the connection of the name 'Aπολλων with απολονων, απολνων in Plato's Cratylus, or popular derivations from απολλνμι.

A root hawah is represented in Hebrew by the nouns howah (Ezek., Isa. xlvii. II) and hawwah (Ps., Prov., Job) "disaster, calamity, ruin."Footnote #16 from page 312 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "Cf. also hawwah, "desire", Mic. vii. 3; Prov. x. 3."The primary meaning is probably "sink down, fall," in which sense—common in Arabic—the verb appears in Job xxxvii. 6 (of snow falling to earth).

A Catholic commentator of the 16th century, Hieronymus ab Oleastro, seems to have been the first to connect the name "Jehova" with "howah" interpreting it contritio sive pernicies (destruction of the Egyptians and Canaanites); Daumer, adopting the same etymology, took it in a more general sense: Yahweh, as well as Shaddai, meant Destroyer, and fitly expressed the nature of the terrible god whom he identified with Moloch.

The derivation of Yahweh from hawah is formally unimpeachable, and is adopted by many recent scholars, who proceed, however, from the primary sense of the root rather than from the specific meaning of the nouns. The name is accordingly interpreted, He (who) falls (baetyl, βαιτυλος, meteorite); or causes (rain or lightning) to fall (storm god); or casts down (his foes, by his thunderbolts). It is obvious that if the derivation be correct, the significance of the name, which in itself denotes only "He falls" or "He fells", must be learned, if at all, from early Israelitish conceptions of the nature of Yahweh rather than from etymology.

Cultus

A more fundamental question is whether the name Yahweh originated among the Israelites or was adopted by them from some other people and speech.Footnote #1 from Page 313 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "See HEBREW RELIGION"

The biblical author of the history of the sacred institutions (P) expressly declares that the name Yahweh was unknown to the patriarchs (Exod. vi. 3), and the much older Israelite historian (E) records the first revelation of the name to Moses (Exod. iii. 1315), apparently following a tradition according to which the Israelites had not been worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses, or, as he conceived it, had not worshipped the god of their fathers under that name.

The revelation of the name to Moses was made at a mountain sacred to Yahweh, (the mountain of God) far to the south of Palestine, in a region where the forefathers of the Israelites had never roamed, and in the territory of other tribes; and long after the settlement in Canaan this region continued to be regarded as the abode of Yahweh (Judg. v. 4; Deut. xxxiii. 2 sqq.; I Kings xix. 8 sqq. &c).

Moses is closely connected with the tribes in the vicinity of the holy mountain; according to one account, he married a daughter of the priest of Midian (Exod. ii. 16 sqq.; iii. I); to this mountain he led the Israelites after their deliverance from Egypt; there his father-in-law met him, and extolling Yahweh as greater than all the gods, offered (in his capacity as priest of the place?) sacrifices, at which the chief men of the Israelites were his guests; there the religion of Yahweh was revealed through Moses, and the Israelites pledged themselves to serve God according to its prescriptions.

It appears, therefore, that in the tradition followed by the Israelite historian the tribes within whose pasture lands the mountain of God stood were worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses; and the surmise that the name Yahweh belongs to their speech, rather than to that of Israel, has considerable probability.

One of these tribes was Midian, in whose land the mountain of God lay. The Kenites also, with whom another tradition connects Moses, seem to have been worshippers of Yahweh.

It is probable that Yahweh was at one time worshipped by various tribes south of Palestine, and that several places in that wide territory (Horeb, Sinai, Kadesh, &c.) were sacred to him; the oldest and most famous of these, the mountain of God, seems to have lain in Arabia, east of the Red Sea. From some of these peoples and at one of these holy places, a group of Israelite tribes adopted the religion of Yahweh, the God who, by the hand of Moses, had delivered them from Egypt.Footnote #2 from Page 313 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "The divergent Judaean tradition, 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."

The tribes of this region probably belonged to some branch of the great Arab stock, and the name Yahweh has, accordingly, been connected with the Arabic hawa, the void (between heaven and earth), "the atmosphere, or with the verb hawa, cognate with Heb. hawah,"sink, glide down" (through space); hawwa blow (wind). "He rides through the air, He blows" (Wellhausen), would be a fit name for a god of wind and storm. There is, however, no certain evidence that the Israelites in historical times had any consciousness of the primitive significance of the name.

Alternative derivations

The attempts to connect the name Yahweh with that of an Indo-European deity (Jehovah-Jove, &c.), or to derive it from Egyptian or Chinese, may be passed over.

But one theory which has had considerable currency requires notice, namely, that Yahweh, or Yahu, Yaho,Footnote #3 from Page 313 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "The form Yahu, or Yaho, occurs not only in composition, but by itself; see Aramaic Papyri discovered at Assaan, B 4,6,II; E 14; J 6. This doubtless is the original of 'Iαω, frequently found in Greek authors and in magical texts as the name of the God of the Jews."is the name of a god worshipped throughout the whole, or a great part, of the area occupied by the Western Semites.

In its earlier form this opinion rested chiefly on certain misinterpreted testimonies in Greek authors about a god 'Iαω and was conclusively refuted by Baudissin; recent adherents of the theory build more largely on the occurrence in various parts of this territory of proper names of persons and places which they explain as compounds of Yahu or Yah.Footnote #4 from Page 313 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "See a collection and critical estimate of this evidence by Zimmern, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 465 sqq."

The explanation is in most cases simply an assumption of the point at issue; some of the names have been misread; others are undoubtedly the names of Jews.

There remain, however, some cases in which it is highly probable that names of non-Israelites are really compounded with Yahweh. The most conspicuous of these is the king of Hamath who in the inscriptions of Sargon (722-705 B.C.) is called Yaubi'di and Ilubi'di (compare Jehoiakim-Eliakim). Azriyau of Jaudi, also, in inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser (745-728 B.C.), who was formerly supposed to be Azariah (Uzziah) of Judah, is probably a king of the country in northern Syria known to us from the Zenjirli inscriptions as Ja'di.

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 Ya- a'-ve-ilu, Ya-ve-ilu, and Ya-u-um-ilu( "Yahweh is God" ), and which he regarded as conclusive proof that Yahweh was known in Babylonia before 2000 B.C.; 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).Footnote #5 from Page 313 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "Babel und Bibel, 1902. The enormous, and for the most part ephemeral, literature provoked by Delitzsch's lecture cannot be cited here.

We should thus have in the tablets evidence of the worship of Yahweh among the Western Semites at a time long before the rise of Israel. The reading of the names is, however, extremely uncertain, not to say improbable, and the far-reaching inferences drawn from them carry no conviction.

In a tablet attributed to the I4th century B.C. which Sellin found in the course of his excavations at Tell Ta'annuk (the Taanach of the O.T.) a name occurs which may be read Ahi-Yawi (equivalent to Hebrew Ahijah);Footnote #6 from Page 313 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "Denkschriften d. Wien. Akad., L. iv. p. 115 seq. (1904)." if the reading be correct, this would show that Yahweh was worshipped in Central Palestine before the Israelite conquest.

The reading is, however, only one of several possibilities. The fact that the full form Yahweh appears, whereas in Hebrew proper names only the shorter Yahu and Yah occur, weighs somewhat against the interpretation, as it does against Delitzsch's reading of his tablets.

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;Footnote #7 from Page 313 of the 1911 E.B. reads: "Wo lag das Paradies? (1881), pp. 158-166."but this deity has since disappeared from the pantheon of Assyriologists.

The combination of Yah with Ea, one of the great Babylonian gods, seems to have a peculiar fascination for amateurs, by whom it is periodically "discovered". Scholars are now agreed that, so far as Yahu or Yah occurs in Babylonian texts, it is as the name of a foreign god.

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 Heb. hawah or Arab. hawa 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 tempest. 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.;

Many religions today do not use the term Jehovah as much as they maybe used to do. In fact, the original term "Jehovah" appeared over 7000 times in the old and new testament, but has now been replaced with "LORD". The religion to most commonly use the name "Jehovah" is that of Jehovah's Witnesses, who realise God's name found at PSALMS 83:18

References 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica Footnotes

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