Jehovah

Lore & Background

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. 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. 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.

Reader's Guide

The form Jehovah has been a subject of scholarly debate. Most scholars believe it 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. Biblical scholar Francis B. 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. However, other scholars such as Emil G. Hirsch and Marvin Pope have characterized the spelling as 'grammatically impossible' and 'a morphological monstrosity with no claim to legitimacy except the several centuries of misguided usage.'

Did You Know?

• The form Jehovah began to be 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.
• 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").'