Today, most Jews, Christians, and Muslims simply call their god “God,” but it is fairly common knowledge that the texts of the Hebrew Bible refer to the God of Israel by his proper name, which, in Hebrew, is written as four letters: יהוה (YHWH), known as the tetragrammaton. At the time when the texts of the Hebrew Bible were written, the people of Israel and Judah regularly used this name to refer to their god. By the first century CE, however, a taboo forbade ordinary Jews from saying the proper name of God aloud. Instead, when a Jewish person was reading the Hebrew Bible and came across this name, they would substitute either the word אֲדֹנָי (ăḏonāi), which means “my Lord,” or הַשֵּׁם (ha-shem), which means “the name.” For this reason, English translations of the Hebrew Bible traditionally render the proper name of God as “the LORD.”
At the time of the Hebrew Bible’s composition, the written forms of the Hebrew and Aramaic languages recorded only consonants, not vowels. Much later, between the seventh and tenth centuries CE, the compilers of the standard text of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Masoretic Text, added symbols known as “vowel points” to indicate the vowels of most words, but, when the tetragrammaton occurred in the text, they gave it the vowel points of ăḏonāi, because that was the word a reader was supposed to substitute for it, and did not preserve the vowels of the name itself. For this reason, most Christian seminaries and Jewish rabbinical schools teach that no one today knows how the name of God was pronounced.
This makes for a good story, and it was actually true at one time. For roughly the past century now, though, scholars have actually had compelling evidence that the ancient peoples of Israel and Judah pronounced the proper name of their god Yahweh. There is slight ambiguity about the exact vowel qualities, but not much. In this post, I will explain the ancient evidence supporting this scholarly reconstruction. To do this, I will have to use some linguistics jargon, but I will do my best to explain the meanings of all the terms I use.
The proper name of God
As I discuss in this post I wrote in April 2022, the earliest known attestation of the name יהוה (YHWH) that can be securely dated and that the majority of scholars agree is genuine occurs on the Mesha Stele, which dates to around 840 BCE. The name YHWH also occurs 6,828 times in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, the standard modern critical edition of the Hebrew Bible. It appears in every book of the Hebrew Bible, except for Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, as well as numerous inscriptions dated to the period of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the earliest generally-agreed-on occurrence of the divine name YHWH on the Mesha Stele, dating to around 840 BCE
The ancient Judeans also used a shortened, three-letter form of the divine name: יהו (YHW). This form occurs in many Yahwistic theophoric names in the Hebrew Bible, and it is the regular form of the divine name that is used Aramaic papyri dating to the fifth and fourth centuries BCE from the Judean community on the Nile island of Elephantine in Upper Egypt.
ABOVE: Photo of an Aramaic letter from the Elephantine Papyri dated 407 BCE, written by the priest Yedoniah to Bagoas, the governor of Judah, requesting permission to rebuild the Temple to the god YHW on Elephantine
How the tetragrammaton’s consonants were pronounced
Of the three distinct consonant letters that occur in the divine name, the letters yōd ⟨י⟩ and hē ⟨ה⟩ were pronounced exactly the same in Biblical Hebrew as they are in Modern Hebrew. Yōd ⟨י⟩ represents the voiced palatal approximant /j/, which is represented in English by the consonantal ⟨y⟩ as in the word yellow. Meanwhile, hē ⟨ה⟩ normally represents the voiceless glottal fricative /h/, which is represented in English by the letter ⟨h⟩. It can also, however, serve as a mater lectionis, a consonant that indicates the place of a vowel, which is probably what it is doing in the divine name.
The third letter in the divine name, wāw or vāv ⟨ו⟩, originally represented the voiced labial-velar approximant /w/, which is represented in English by the letter ⟨w⟩ as in the word want. In Modern Hebrew, however, it represents the voiced labiodental fricative /v/, which is represented in English by the letter ⟨v⟩ as in the word vampire.
We know that wāw originally represented the /w/ sound in ancient Hebrew for several reasons. First, /w/ is considered the semivowel equivalent of the close back rounded vowel /u/, and, in Biblical Hebrew, the letter ⟨ו⟩ is frequently used as a mater lectionis for /u/. This makes perfect sense if the consonant it represented in Biblical Hebrew was the semivowel /w/, but it wouldn’t make any sense at all if the consonant it represented were /v/.
Furthermore, in many Biblical Hebrew words where the open front unrounded vowel sound /a/ precedes the letter wāw ⟨ו⟩, the two sounds contract into the single mid back rounded vowel /o/. Once again, this makes perfect sense if wāw ⟨ו⟩ represented the semivowel /w/ in Biblical Hebrew but wouldn’t make sense at all if it represented /v/.
Finally, the Hebrew alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet, and, in all the other alphabets derived from the Phoenician alphabet, the letter equivalent to wāw ⟨ו⟩ represents /w/. Examples of this include the archaic Greek letter digamma ⟨ϝ⟩, the Syriac letter wāw ⟨ܘ⟩, and the Arabic letter wāw ⟨و⟩, all of which are pronounced /w/. In fact, some Jewish communities in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, including Yemenite Jews, have retained the ancient pronunciation of wāw ⟨ו⟩ in Hebrew as /w/ into modern times.
It is extremely easy and common for /w/ to shift over time to become /v/, but the reverse phenomenon is far less common. In Classical Latin, the letter ⟨v⟩ originally represented the /w/ sound, but, in late antiquity, the letter shifted to /v/. Similarly, in Old and Middle High German the letter ⟨w⟩ represented the /w/ sound, but, at some point between Middle and Modern High German, the letter shifted to /v/. The pronunciation of the letter ⟨ו⟩ as /v/ in Modern Hebrew is almost certainly the result of such a shift.
ABOVE: Photograph taken by Ephraim Moses Lilien sometime between c. 1908 and c. 1918 showing Yemenite Jewish elders in Ottoman Palestine studying the Torah
How the tetragrammaton’s vowels were pronounced
Despite the fact that the Masoretic Text does not provide vowel points for the tetragrammaton, scholars still have a fairly good idea of what its original vowels were, because there are surviving ancient transcriptions of the name of the god of Israel into Greek, a language that did consistently indicate vowels, from the time when the divine name was still known and spoken.
The early Christian philosopher and theologian Clement of Alexandria (lived c. 150 – c. 215 CE), relying on older sources, transcribes the divine name into Greek in his Stromateis 5.6.34 as either Ἰαού (Iaoú) or Ἰαοῦε (Iaoûe). In Clement’s time, the latter of these would most likely have been pronounced /ja:u:ɛ/ (Yah-oo-eh), which is really the closest possible transcription a person could make of Yahweh into second- or third-century CE Greek.
(Greek-language authors struggled to render the third consonant of the divine name in their alphabet, since the Greek alphabet by the Hellenistic Period did not have any letter that made the /w/ sound, since the archaic letter digamma ⟨ϝ⟩ had dropped out of use by then.)
Several Christian authors writing in the fifth century CE transcribe the divine name into Greek as Ἰαβε (Iave), which, by that time, most likely would have been pronounced /ja:vɛ/ (Yah-veh). This most likely reflects a late antique pronunciation of the divine name as Yahveh, after the Hebrew letter ⟨ו⟩ had shifted from /w/ to /v/ in the majority of dialects.
The most common ancient Greek-letter transcription of the name of the god of Israel, however, is Ιαω (Iaō), which is most likely based on the shortened form YHW. In Hellenistic or Roman-period Greek, this would have been pronounced /ja:o:/ (Yah-oh). It is likely that an /h/ would have been pronounced between the first and second vowels, but Greek of this period did not have a letter to represent the /h/ sound, so the /h/ is omitted.
The earliest surviving attestation of this transcription is most likely 4Q120 frg. 20, a fragment of a papyrus scroll found at Qumran that dates to the first century BCE and bears the text of the Greek Septuagint translation of the Book of Leviticus 4:26–28. This also happens to be one of the earliest surviving Septuagint manuscripts. At the time the manuscript was copied, some Jews may have actually still been speaking the tetragrammaton out loud during prayer and Torah readings.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing 4Q120 frg. 20, a fragment of the papyrus scroll found at Qumran dating to the first century BCE, bearing the Greek Septuagint translation of Leviticus 4:26–28, with the divine name transcribed into Greek letters as Ιαω
As I mentioned earlier, the Masoretic Text does not provide vowel points for the tetragrammaton when it occurs on its own. It does, however, provide vowel points for the shortened form YHW when it occurs as an element in theophoric names like אֵלִיָּהוּ (ʾĒlīyyāhū) or יִרְמְיָהוּ (Yirmĭyāhū). The vowel points added to these names reflect their pronunciation at the time the Masoretic Text was compiled, which may or may not reflect their pronunciation in earlier, Biblical times.
The discrepancy between the Greek transcription Yaho and the Masoretic Text’s Yahu is very slight, since /o/ and /u/ are both back rounded vowels (i.e., vowels that are pronounced near the back of the vocal tract with rounded lips). The difference between them is that /o/ is a close-mid back rounded vowel, whereas /u/ is a close back rounded vowel, meaning they are both on the closed side of the vowel spectrum, but /u/ is slightly more closed than /o/. It would have been very easy for the pronunciation to have shifted from one to the other.
Conclusion
Based on all this evidence, we can be quite confident that the name YHWH was pronounced /ja:wɛ:/ (Yahweh) in antiquity and its shortened form YHW was pronounced either /ja:ho:/ (Yaho) or /ja:hu:/ (Yahu), depending on whether you take the Greek transcriptions or the Masoretic Text’s vowel points as more authoritative.
Wow! Wonderful! Now if you can explain why those who made the rules decided that pronouncing the name of their god was in some way disrespectful, please let us know. Were they afraid they were going to hurt their god’s feelings if they pronounced it wrong? Were they afraid of “name magic”?
I cherish each of your posts even though I know the going hasn’t been easy for you of late.
Overall, things have actually been going a lot better for me as of late. I’m just really busy with my classes, which is the reason why I haven’t been able to post very frequently. Law school is stressful, but, so far, I’m handling it. We’re about to have our first-semester exams, so I will find out how well I am actually handling it shortly.
To answer your question, the taboo against pronouncing Yahweh’s name aloud gradually developed out of the interpretation of the commandment in Exodus 20:7 and Deuteronomy 5:11, “You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain.” Originally, this commandment was simply understood to prohibit a person from swearing an oath in the name of Yahweh that they knew to be false. Over time, however, Jews came to interpret the commandment more broadly and gradually restricted their use of Yahweh’s proper name to increasingly limited contexts so as to avoid any possibility of accidentally taking it in vain.
First, it became taboo to speak his name aloud except during prayer or reading from scripture. Then, eventually, it became taboo for any Jew to speak the divine name aloud, even during prayer or reading from scripture. The ancient Jewish writer Philon of Alexandria (lived c. 20 BCE – c. 50 CE) states that, by his time in the first century CE, only the high priest was allowed to speak the proper name of God and only at specific, prescribed moments during the ritual for the atonement of the sins of Israel, which took place on Yom Kippur in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. After the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE, the divine name was no longer allowed to be spoken by anyone in any context.
As I’ve noted above, though, there is compelling evidence that the ritual prohibition against speaking the divine name aloud was far from universally observed, and some people certainly continued to pronounce the divine name well into late antiquity. Christian church fathers such as Clement of Alexandria were aware of the name’s pronunciation, and the transcription of the divine name into Greek as “Iao” is absolutely ubiquitous in the Greco-Egyptian magical texts of the first through fifth centuries CE.
I honestly could not stand going to law school though that just might be me uninterested in becoming a lawyer and not liking school.
I suspect that law school would be absolutely unbearable for the majority of people; that’s why most people don’t go to law school. For me, it’s not the most enjoyable thing in the world, but I’m getting through it, and it isn’t that miserable.
Of course, when the Tetragrammaton was pronounced with the vowel points of “Adonai”, we ended up with the hybrid name “Jehovah” – which I suspect would be a historical footnote were it not for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The title of this article almost makes the discovery of the Tetragrammaton’s name sound new, so when I saw it, I thought new discoveries had been made lately since I already knew it was likely pronounced as Yahweh.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are not the only ones who use the name “Jehovah,” although they are the most prominent group today who continue to insist (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that that is the correct rendering of the divine name. The rendering “Jehovah” also appears in the King James Version of the Bible and in the 1989 adventure film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. As you have rightly pointed out, this incorrect transcription of the divine name arose when translators mistakenly used the modern Hebrew values of the consonants combined with the vowel points that occur in the Masoretic Text, which are actually the vowel points of ăḏonāi.
I worded the title of the post in order to give it an immediate grab to get people to read the whole post. As I noted in my introduction, the scholarly consensus that the divine name was most likely pronounced “Yahweh” has steadily grown since the late nineteenth century, and scholars have known most of what I’ve presented here for roughly the past hundred years.
I didn’t say JWs were the only modern users of “Jehovah”, just that, were it not for them, the name wouldn’t be heard quite as often today. And yes, there’s also the Indiana Jones scene (which makes one wonder why there was a J tile at all since other J words would probably also use I in medieval Latin) .
I wasn’t necessarily disagreeing with you, only adding additional context.
Good luck with your exams!
So many of the cultures you have explored here are dedicated to rendering their gods names as often and in as many ways as possible. To choose one god and then to restrict, even suppress, how you address, discuss and worship them is radical. Thanks for summarising how this came about.
Indeed! It is a radical, and fascinating, development in the history of the Abrahamic religions.
Thank you for the wishes of good luck. I truly hope that these exams go well for me.
All very interesting, as always!
I never knew there was a governor of Judah named Bagoas; I always associated the name with the eunuchs famous from the end of the Achaemenid dynasty.
Lest anyone should suppose I have taken my username from Ιαω, I can assure all that it simply is a silly nickname from school — though it is pronounced like the Greek name.
Good luck with your exams, Spencer!
Are the Js pronounced the like the Is in the Greek name?
The first H in YHWH was likely pronounced and not mater lectionis (compare -yahu in names), so probably rather [jahwε:].
Is it weird that I knew it was YAH-WAY/Yahweh before reading the article? I would also say that I know no Hebrew modern or otherwise except Livyatan because it’s a prehistoric whale killing whale named for the mythical sea monster spelled the Hebrew way.
No, it’s not weird at all; I suspect that a lot of people already knew. This post is more of an explanation of the evidence scholars have used to reconstruct the pronunciation of the divine name, rather than a reveal of the name itself.