It has become popularly accepted, but trust, it wasn't intended by the Hebrew writers to ever be seen as a name for God.
It's interesting enough to me, so now, if you're gonna read this whole post, you'll have to learn some Hebrew as well. Let's Begin.
Hebrew originally started with no vowels. The entire language was made written in only consonants, though vowels were passed down through oral tradition. Thus a Hebrew word would look like the picture below.
This is actually the name of God, pronounced "Yahweh" but represented here only as "y" "h" "v/w" and "h" read right to left. No vowels present. These consonants never changed. In the 10th century or so, the Masorites decided it would be helpful to add vowels and accent marks and grammatical cues to the written text, so as to not rely solely on oral tradition. Thus they developed markings that get added into, above and below consonants to better preserve proper pronunciation. A word with these markings appears below.
This is the Hebrew representation of the word "adonai" which means "Lord." The first consonant is a silent letter, the two markings below symbol a quick breath (the colon thing) and a short "a" vowel. The next consonant is a "d" with the dot above it representing the following "o" vowel. The next consonant "n" with the (T) below it representing another "a" vowel (this time long), but part of a dip thong (the last consonant functions with the vowel)(like au, ai) which makes it they "ai" representation and pronunciation like the word "aye." Again, this is the word "adonai" with the vowels all being represented above and below the consonants.
Moving on... The Masorites held a very sacred view of the original (without vowel) text and would not take any liberties to clarify it through editing (unlike the Greek text). When they would find errors, the would place a small circle above the word, and write whatever correction they found more helpful in the margins. In doing so, they would take the vowel structure of the correct word (at least the one they are suggesting) and place it around the original consonants. Again, they wouldn't change any consonants, and would notify all words they found to be incorrect.
The Masorites also held other sacred Hebrew traditions to be worth passing down. One of these relates to the pronunciation of God's name. At that time, there was a great fear in mispronouncing, or misusing (as commanded not to take in vain) the name of God. Thus, "Yahweh" wasn't pronounced. Like most current Bibles still, the word "LORD" is substituted where the name of God should be. This is because of the Masoritic texts. They treated God's name (grammar wise anyway) like an error. They wanted to cue people not to pronounce that name, but to instead pronounce LORD (in Hebrew, adonai). They began with the same notation of using a different consonant structure, thus the original consonants (YHVH or YHWH) were kept the same, while the vowels from the word "adonai" were placed around those consonants so as to remember you aren't to pronounce the name of God. It would look like below.
The resulting pronunciation of this text (which was never meant to be read as a word anyway, it is two words combined) would be "Yehovah". It is a "Y" consonant and with the short breath and "a" vowel from adonai the "Ye" becomes more pronounced than a "Ya" though in English the distinction would be hard to make. Next comes the "H" from God's name, and the "o" from adonai's vowel structure. Then the "V/W" from God's name and the "A" vowel from adonai (without its dip thong) and the final "H" from God's name. The final product being Yehovah.
There still is no "J" in Hebrew. King James is to blame for the J replacing the "Y" in many Hebrew words. When the King James Bible was printed, Jehovah became a common way of translating the word shown above (which is actually the name of God with markers to remind you to say "Lord" instead of said name).
Jehovah never was written as a name for God. It is through this tract of history that it became known, and has become commonly accepted (so much that the "Jehovah's Witnesses" base their religion around this name as being "most aligned with the original text").
As far as I've been able to tell, Oral tradition is the only way that we get the "a" and "e" vowels that go into Yahweh as I've not found or heard of any Hebrew text which actually show these vowels. It is the most commonly passed down (and still used in modern Hebrew) name of God. It however, isn't written. Before the Masorites, the name was written without its vowels, and upon the vowels being added, the Masorites cued you to the commonly said word, not the commonly understood vowel structure. The Masorites were far more concerned that they not be people causing others to take God's name in vain, than they were concerned that their vowel markings properly showed how God's name was commonly pronounced.
That's enough of a Hebrew lesson for today. If you made it this far, and understood, I'm impressed. If you have questions, feel free to ask.
1 comments:
I think I need to "hear" it again instead of just reading it. Be prepared to talk me through it.
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