Yahweh

Yahweh is the most common way to transliterate one of the many names of God, the tetragrammaton (q.v.), in the Tanakh (or Old Testament). Up through the beginning of the twentieth century, it was more often found written Jehovah. According to one variant of Jewish tradition, it is the causative form, the imperfect state, of the Heb. verb haÃÂÃÂ·wahÃÂÃÂ´ (become); meaning “He Causes to Become”. This particular name for God is rendered as THE LORD (in small caps) in most modern translations of the Bible. Most scholars believe "Yahweh" to be nearest the original pronunciation. In strict Jewish tradition, Yahweh is a taboo word, and it is blasphemy to utter it. Thus, except for some ulltra-orthodox Jewish sects, no one claims with certainty just how it was pronounced, only that the h 's in Yahweh are silent.

In recent years there has been a large debate over the derivation and meaning of this name. It is identified with Yaw or Yam of Ugaritic texts and with Yao of Gnostic scriptures. It seems related to the Hebrew root H-Y/V-Y/H (Yod י, He ה, and Waw ו are interchangeable in some cases), which ican be used for various aspects of being. Therefore, according to one Jewish tradition, it means something like "I am the One Who Is". One meaning of Yahweh might be "He Causes to Become" (based upon the causal ה)).

"Yahweh" is now the familiar rendering in English of the original Hebrew. The first English transliteration of it appeared in William Tyndale's translation of 1525 as 'IEHOUAH.' Subsequent translations in English, including Miles Coverdale's (1535), Mathews' Bible (1537), the Great Bible (1539), The Geneva Bible (1560), the Bishop's Bible (1568) and the Authorized Version of 1611 or "King James Version" each translate the original language as The Lord. This is a practice that reflects the oldest Jewish tradition, which rendered the word in Aramaic texts with later Hebrew characters and pronounced it "The Lord." Blasphemy was to utter this name of God. The four-letter abbreviation later led to some confusion among Anglo-Saxon scholars. Since in Jewish tradition, the divine name Adonai meant "Lord," the vowels in Adonai were used between the Hebrew consonants represented in English at the time by JHWH (J, I, and Y were interchangeable). Hence was Jehovah.

The American Standard Version (1901), reflected a growing interest in the tetragrammaton, and "Jehovah" appears for the first time in a major English translation in place of The Lord. Further scholarship proved that "Jehovah" was a completely erroneous rendition of the word, so scholars favored the more accurate Yahweh. Moreover, scholarship also reaffirmed the oldest Jewish tradition which pronounced this taboo word as The Lord. Thus, the Revised Standard Version of 1952, continued the practice of the Authorized Version which it replaced, and rendered '"YHWH" as THE LORD, in small caps. Subsequent versions have varied in their translation practice, most observing Jewish tradition. The New Jerusalem Bible of 1966 uses Yahweh throughout the OT for the tetragrammaton.

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1 See also:
2 Further reading
3 External links