Talk:Tetragrammaton/Archive 3

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To merge or not to merge?[edit]

Do Not Merge. I would suggest that Tetragrammaton is a more technical term than the possible transcription Yahweh. If someone suggests a merge, then it should be that Yahweh be subsumed under the title Tetragrammaton, since Yahweh (either as [jɑ-wɛ'] or [jɑ-vɛ']) is only one of several transliterations of יהוה‎. Yonah mishael 20:13, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They should not be merged at all. They are different Translations. Catholic's choose to use Yahweh instead of Jehovah. (SRP) -- 21:21, 13 February 2007 User:Steverpayne
The Jerusalem Bible prominently uses Yahweh, but there's no particular Catholic/Protestant divide on this issue... AnonMoos 23:42, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

IPA Pronunciation[edit]

This article could use some IPA transcriptions of the various pronunciations discussed within. Agateller 20:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree with this statement. The IPA would clarify a lot of what's going on here. It would also simplify the transliterations, since the diacritics are specific to certain translit schemes. Yonah mishael 20:13, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Did you see section #Request for IPA pronunciation below? AnonMoos 03:08, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I did not see it before I wrote the above. Fact is, this discussion page is entirely too long with points that are completely off-topic in some cases. It should be cleaned up so that we can continue to have useful debate on the content of this article. Who has the authority to clean up this discussion by deleting some of the older comments? -- Yonah mishael

Wikipedia classification[edit]

The word "Jehovah" is found in many English Dictionaries, reference books and literary works, and has been part of the English language for many centuries. May I therefore suggest that it should similarly be duly listed and defined/explained on its own Wikipedia page. The subject of the derivation of the word is another matter, and a hyperlink to "tetragrammaton" should be included in the main article. I note that the word "Jesus" has its own page (at the moment!) and that that article contains many useful cross-referencing hyperlinks. However, are we to expect that soon the "Jesus" article will similarly be converted to an automatic fork to a lengthy discussion page about whether or not the current western/English pronunciation and spelling is actually 'correct'?--62.7.144.46 00:25, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Interestingly, the See also section of this article contains a link to Jehovah which currently redirects back to the same article. Obviously redundent. That link should be removed until such time as a seperate article on Jehovah is created. TRiG 03:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Discussions from July 2002-July 2004 are archived here. Compare to e.g. the page as it was in April 2004. Topics covered include merge with Yahweh, see the last version of Yahweh before the merge, the Jehovah Witnesses (of course!), and an edit war over Jehovah vs. Yahweh in May 2004. The talk seems to indicate that the page was protected for a while, but I could find no mention in the relevant protection log archive. Summarized and archived by Gadykozma 06:14, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

A discussion from September 2004 is archived here (I left a number of minor discussions from the same period on the main page). Lots of information about the Tetragrammaton with Niqqud in medieval texts was presented, and some of it made it way to the page, which was refactored as a result. Compare the page before and after. Summarized and archived by Gadykozma 15:30, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Transcribing YHWH" is now "Tetragrammaton content fork"[edit]

The previous Wikipedia Article:Transcribing YHWH has been changed to the Wikipedia Article:Tetragrammaton content fork During this major change, once again, the Wikipedia Article: Jehovah was deleted.

Seeker02421 11:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Neutral point of view[edit]

NPOV is one of tone. The policy is also quite clear that all articles must be WP:V verifiable. Policy specifically states that Wikipedia must follow scholarly convention. Those views that differ from the scholarly consensus are not NPOV, but may be WP:OR and unverifiable.

Views of important organizations that differ from the scholarly consensus if that organization is identified. For example: "Organization Abc believes, however, that Yahweh is not the correct rendition of the ancient word." It is important to write "organization Abc believes..."

It is not a question of the views of one against the most "popular", but the views of one against consensus, of one against Wikipedia policy (WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:OR).

In that regard, I have reverted to the edits of Castanea dentata, since one sub-topic — Transcribing the tetragrammaton — was several screens long and dominated the entire article. She was right to summarize the section and place it with a link to its own article. The reason this is correct is that Wikiepedia guidelines spell out quite clearly that there should not be duplicate articles and sections. When there are, it is called WP:POVFORK.

This includes not only duplicate articles but also duplicate sections of different articles. Castanea dentata was careful to follow Wikipedia guidelines for formatting articles with a section summary and link per Wikipedia:Section#.22Main_article.22_summary_section.

Editors who dislike these policies and guidelines may edit at Wikinfo, which allows forking into POV articles.Wyeson 21:38, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


At the above link is found the text below:

The neutral point of view
The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these are fairly presented, but not asserted.
All significant points of view are presented, not just the most popular one. It is not asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions.
As the name suggests the neutral point of view is a point of view. It is a point of view that is neutral - that is neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject.
Debates are described, represented, and characterized, but not engaged in. Background is provided on who believes what and why, and which view is more popular.
Detailed articles might also contain the mutual evaluations of each viewpoint, but studiously refrain from stating which is better. One can think of unbiased writing as the cold, fair, analytical description of debates.
When bias towards one particular point of view can be detected the article needs to be fixed.

Seeker02421 14:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Explanation of the move of Wikipedia:"Jehovah" to "Transcribing YHWH"[edit]

Apparently no "Speedy Deletion" of the Article Jehovah took place.

On 29 March 2006 at 15:10 Wighson moved the article "Jehovah" to the apparently newly created article :Transcribing YHWH. The move was defined as a "minor" (m) edit.

No, Moves are never marked as "minor" Wikipedia. Content forking indeed violates Wikipedia's guidelines. Wyeson 21:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
15:10, 29 March 2006 Wighson m (moved Jehovah to Transcribing YHWH: "Jehovah" by definition is a content fork of Tetragrammaton. Wikpedia does not allow duplicate articles or articles that make a point of view more forcefully.)

The following information appears when you click on [MOVE]

Move page
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Using the form below will rename a page, moving all of its history to the new name. The old title will become a redirect page to the new title. Links to the old page title will not be changed; be sure to check for double-redirects (using "What links here") after the move. You are responsible for making sure that links continue to point where they are supposed to go.
Note that the page will not be moved if there is already a page at the new title, unless it is a redirect to the old title and has no past edit history. This means that you can rename a page back to where it was just renamed from if you make a mistake, and you cannot overwrite an existing page.
WARNING! This can be a drastic and unexpected change for a popular page;
please be sure you understand the consequences of this before proceeding.
Please read meta:Help:Renaming (moving) a page for more detailed instructions.

I think that it is safe to say that:

This can be a drastic and unexpected change for a popular page;
please be sure you understand the consequences of this before proceeding.

Apparently this Wikipedia Article:Jehovah once again exists, as a separate article, and can presently be safely edited.

Seeker02421 23:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does a Wikipedia "Speedy Deletion" normally take place without any warning?[edit]

Does Wikipedia's "Speedy Deletion" policy, allow an Article like Wikipedia:Jehovah to be deleted without warning??????
Was a warning label ever placed on the Wikipedia Article:Jehovah before the deletion took place??????
Seeker02421 21:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Transcribing YHWH[edit]

The Wikipedia Article:Transcribing YHWH now exists. It is found at the Address below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcribing_YHWH

The Wikipedia Article:Transcribing YHWH replaces The Wikipedia Article:Jehovah which apparently was deleted by a process explained at: Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion


  • Castanea dentata did major changes without discussion. Does everyone feel comfortable about this? A new page was started, "Transcribing YHWH " which is scholarly dealt with here, Or should I say was scholarly dealt with here. He has now removed much information here. It also appears he only transferred what was in favor of his agenda. How does everyone feel about these acts?

Besides this page now seems to contradict what was said before, that the true pronunciation of YHWH is lost. eg."this pronunciation of the tetragrammaton was never really lost."

Restored page due to vandalism by Castanea dentata. This page has been restored enough for a day. 65.111.220.37 02:24, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Misc[edit]

Removed Jehovah's Witnesses's massive re-editing which forced a reader to conclude that their "Jehovah" is the only reasonable pronunciation of YHWH. 17:00 3 Dec 2005

Readers will be aware that the lead article states that the tetragrammaton consists of four Hebrew vowels, whereas other references within the entry indicate or state that the four characters are consonants. Perhaps someone should clarify this and ensure that there is some unity of definition, if one exists.--213.120.56.33 23:06, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The text clearly explains this issue with the Hebrew language. Please read the article again. --Zappaz 05:39, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. I think I see what you mean..."vowels used as semi-consonants" etc. In my ignorance I have been confused by the frequent references (to the four characters of the tetragrammaton) as 'consonants' in other sources. So, really I should think of the four 'letters' as perhaps neither consonants nor vowels, but as simply as 'characters'. Thanks Zappaz. (If I've got it clear now, I'll delete my query in due course. Shall I delete your answer at the same time?)--212.140.159.206 16:56, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Poll: nominate?[edit]

I wonder if we should nominate this page for show on the Wp main page? I think it is excellent! Clear concise and understandable even if you know little about Hebrew, even ancient hebrew. Not too technical. Etc, etc... Am I jumping the gun? george 23:30, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This may have been the case in Feb of 2005, but now it's a garbled pile of confusion. It needs to be redone completely -- like so many articles on the current topic. - Yonah

Jehovah[edit]

I want to question the sentence: "It is thought by some, and disputed by others, that the pronunciation "Jehovah" is a combination of the consonants of the tetragrammaton with the vowels of Adonai, and historically recent." - I would like to see a relevant scholarly source that questions this. It is a fact. Hatef patah [a] under ' (aleph) turns into shewa [e] under yod. I suggest rephrasing. -- 213.81.195.98 18:06, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

213.81.195.98

The new Wikipedia Article the Tetragrammaton in the Bible deals with this issue in a little more detail.

Seeker02421 11:50, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As of 11 Oct 2006 there is no such article in the Wikipedia system. It is true that only gutturals (א, ה, ח, ע‎) can hold a composite sheva. On all other letters, the composite sheva becomes a simple vocal sheva. So, the half syllable אֲ‎ must drop the composite sheva when it is placed on the י‎, thus: יְ‎. The vowels of אֲדֹנָי‎ were placed on יהוה‎ becoming the theoretical *יֲהֹוָה‎ without the composite sheva: יְהֹוָה‎. The purpose of this, as is known to anyone with any knowledge of the system of כְּתִיב‎ and קְרִי‎, is to mark the word as to always be read as if the letters were אדני‎. -- Yonah
Yonah
The editors of the Brown Driver Briggs Lexicon state that יֱהוִֹה‎ occurs 305 times in the M.T. [e.g. The Ben Chayyim Hebrew Text of 1525].
Since the Masoretes placed a composite sheva under the yod in the Tetragrammaton, when the Tetragrammaton immediate followed Adonay or immediately preceded Adonay, it seems that they saw no problem in placing a composite sheva under the non guttural yod in the Tetragrammaton. [At least not in the above mentioned circumstances.]
It appears to be an untrue statement that:
"On all other letters, the composite sheva becomes a simple vocal sheva. So, the half syllable אֲ must drop the composite sheva when it is placed on the י, thus: יְ."
Maybe there is some other reason that the Masoretes did not place a hatef-patah under the yod in the Tetragrammaton, when the Tetragrammaton stood alone in the Masoretic Text.


Seeker02421 12:06, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]


There is at least one verse in the BHS text in which the Masoretes placed the composite sheva, hatef patah under a yod.
שֶׁיֲהוָה‎ can be found at Psalm 144:15 in the BHS text.


Seeker02421 12:41, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hebrew Grammar[edit]

I changed the text "He Causes to Become" at one place to "He will cause to become", since if you indeed think of it as the verb [הוה] in the 3rd building [פיעל], it is a future form. Should I fix it in other places or explain that it is customary to consider this as present even though grammatically it is future? Also this text: Yahweh-Asher-Yahweh is obviously wrong, but I am not sure how to correct it. Was the Hebrew original present [יהוה אשר הוה] or future [יהוה אשר יהיה]? Can someone who knows his way around fix it?

There was no answer (the question is here since September 16) so I just deleted this. Gadykozma 01:29, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Regarding the tense, tense is often very confused in Biblical Hebrew. The first thing that comes to mind is the Song of the Sea: "אז ישיר משה" (literally "Then Moses will sing"), when it should reasonably be "אז שר משה" ("Then Moses sang") in context. This happens often in Biblical Hebrew.

As to the second, I know of one place that mentions anything like it: Exodus 3:14. As you can see, there it's pronounced "eyeh asher eyeh", but it's also in the first person rather than the third and in the basic (פָּעַל) rather than the intensive (פִּעֵל) construction. —Simetrical (talk) 23:48, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In Modern Hebrew, we would say that the prefix-tense is "future" or "potential," and that is indeed how it is used. However, in Classical Hebrew, tense was not the focus. The focus was more on the verbal Aspekt (to use the German term that is generally employed in this discussion). It is not a future action, but an ever incomplete action that is in view. Thus "he causes to be" is as valid as "he will cause to become" in this case. - Yonah mishael 13:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Tetragrammaton.((Yod-he-waw-he))Can we Change the Name of GOD to anything but Jehovah in English"[edit]

This is the whole crux of the matter...again, "Changing" the Bible, when the Revelation clearly states that to add or subtract anything from the Scriptures is a sin surely to get one the loss of any form of Everlasting Life" that we have been promised by the Son of God, Jesus Christ"Rev,:22: Vss.18-19, and I'll qoute it for you so that there is NO MISUNDERSTANDING:

"Vs.18:"I am bearing witness to everyone that hears the words of the prophecy of THIS scroll.If "ANYONE" makes an addition to these things, GOD will add to him the plaques that are written in this scroll"vs.19:and , if "anyone" takes away from the words of the scroll of this prophecy,GOD will take his portion from the trees of life and out of the HOLY CITY, things which are written about in this scroll".

So, what do we start talking about the second there is a fair consensus about the NAME of the Sovereign LORD JEHOVAHin the English speaking world? and the English Transliteration is Jehovah's Himself of the Most Holy Name which noone has given Jehovah except Himself, and we are going to change it!

To What??? And, are we going to change the thousands of other Hebrew, Jewish and Yiddish names?Or Just the Most Holy Jehovah's alone?

Will the name of "MOSES become the Egyptian form of the Hebrew word for his name , for his could really be a great mix, living all of his life as a Hebrew in Egypt!More strikingly, what would it be? Oh, we could add a vowel here , or two consanants there and we might get "Dudley"!(As "Dudley Moore"played "Moses" in his movie about him being the hearer of the "I am that I am"phrase that helps with all of the confusion that the King James Bible declared in the 16th century? We can all vote and we shall call "MOSES" Motley Crue, as we don't really know the VERY EXACT Pronunciation of the name MOSES!or for any Hebrew, Jew or new Yiddish person in the Israeli Plains...we can have birthdays for all every day and stuff ourselves with cake and ice cream.

after all, it won't matter anyway according to Jesus Christ who came to bears witness about the TRUTH and the Name of God, as we shall all be dust as Jehovah, who told Moses that the transliteration of the tetragrammaton was HIS name as a memorial FOREVER. Ex.20:7 says that "YOU MUST NOT TAKE UP THE NAME OF JEHOVAH IN A WORTHLESS WAY!"and is this less important than the rest of the ten words or the 600 commandments?...By a show of hands:Which commandment is the MOST IMPORTANT?..WHO gets the first vote?...I abstain as I know it already and I am NOT changing anything again!NO, NOT ME!Thanks!
Thank you for your time again,and who WAS is it that WAS concerned about the tense?.Oh, yes:"Yonah mishael"....Catch you later,Mish!-!

Richard Lauzon71.51.170.34 15:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your contribution above seems to have no knowledge of, or relevance to, linguistics or textual history. The issue is that many of those who are most highly-informed in the Hebrew language and the textual history of the Bible would insist that what is found in Hebrew cannot be most accurately transcribed into English as "Jehovah"[sic]. AnonMoos 23:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Richard,
I never thought I would be the direct recipient of a writing sample that would fall into the same category as Larkin's Rightly Dividing the Word or Hislop's The Two Babylons. This style of writing, notorious among the KJV Only camp and Dispensationalists, does not generally encourage exchange or scholarship. It is sloppy and unintelligible for the most part, though I must say that I am honored to be the party addressed in your confusion. May you either learn silence (for the sake of your reputation) or find a teacher who can direct you onto firmer paths. As it is, your writing speaks for itself. Have a nice day.
Yonah

Relevance of Link to Melchizedek[edit]

I wish to thank whoever deleted my previous link to the Melchizedek article. I share your concern to keep articles on track and to eliminate extraneous material that overburdens them. I am also aware of the hoary dispute over relative primacy between archaeologists and philologists. It was not my intention to violate the former nor to re-open the latter. Devers is an archaeologist with, I feel, an outstanding reputation. The late Ephraim Speiser was a scholar of Semitic languages and professor and chairman of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; he translated Genesis for the Anchor Bible series. I simply thought readers might be interested in the appearance of the word “Yahweh” in a non-Hebrew Old Testament context, according to Speiser, dating to perhaps 200 hundred years earlier than the one mentioned in the text of the original article. This would push the “origin” of “Ya” (the presumed original form of “Yahweh”)back even further than supposed. I thought the link fit in better here than under the Meaning or Transcription sections. My current rephrasing the link should be acceptable. 217.230.181.218 13:01, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)Eypper217.230.181.218 13:01, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC) Incidentally, the Melchizedek article does indeed mention Yahweh, and more importantly cites Speiser's translation and commentary on Genesis, where the full details can be found. 217.230.181.218 13:17, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)Eypper217.230.181.218 13:17, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The link does not mention any specific non-Hebrew texts, but merely assumes that parts of the Hebrew Bible originally came from non-Hebrew texts. Jayjg 14:57, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Eypper, just referring to the Melchizedek isn't clear enough. I went to that article and couldn't see how it's relevant. If you have relevant information, just add it directly (you may refer to the Melchizedek article in addition). Do not assume Jayjg removed your comment since he disagreed with you. 90% of the deletes are due to style, not disagreement.
Incidently, if you want to know who edited your text, hit the history button on the top of the page. Gadykozma 20:39, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

JW position on origin of "Jehovah"[edit]

The article states that "On their own official website under the heading "How Is God's Name Pronounced?", the Watchtower Society acknowledges that Jehovah does not have the correct vowels."

It goes beyond this: "When it came to God's name, instead of putting the proper vowel signs around it, in most cases they put other vowel signs to remind the reader that he should say 'Adho·nai'. From this came the spelling Iehouah, and, eventually, Jehovah became the accepted pronunciation of the divine name in English. This retains the essential elements of God's name from the Hebrew original."

So the Watchtower Society acknowledges that the vowels from Jehova come from the vowels of Adhonai. So I doubt the following sentence from the Wikipedia article "However, some Jehovah's Witnesses emphatically deny this explanation for the origin of the reading, which they consider to be correct. " And even if this might be the case for some JW who are not well aware of their own publications, I would at least like to see the following sentence "On their own official website under the heading "How Is God's Name Pronounced?", the Watchtower Society acknowledges that Jehovah does not have the correct vowels." changed to "On their official website ... under the heading "How Is God's Name Pronounced?" acknowledges this fact" or "agrees with this explanation"

Heiko Evermann 18:52, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

that doesn't make much sense to me, please can you give the source to thw watchtower official website as a direct link [the suffix to www.watchtower.org is desired]


On the Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site,Under the heading:God's Name—Its Meaning and Pronunciationand under the sub-heading: "How is the name pronounced", the following text is found:
"When it came to God's name, instead of putting the proper vowel signs around it, in most cases they put other vowel signs to remind the reader that he should say 'Adho·nai'.
From this came the spelling Iehouah, and, eventually, Jehovah became the accepted pronunciation of the divine name in English.
This retains the essential elements of God's name from the Hebrew original."
Seeker02421 23:32, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Editors for Wikipedia Article on "Iaoue" Article wanted[edit]

This newly created Wikipedia Article on "Iaoue" needs to be edited. Are there any volunteers here, who would edit this Wikipedia Article on "Iaoue" which supports the pronunciation "Yahweh"?

Seeker02421 09:12, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I edited this pretty heavily. Some of the discussion was just summarized in the text of the article, since this is an Encyclopedia, not a research journal. Question about Hebrew: I thought that I had the niqqud for "Yahweh" correct in my Unicode character map, but the combining characters don't seem to be combining in Mozilla -- is that a Mozilla font problem, or have I made an error in the Unicode? Mpolo 09:37, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
There is no way to get niqqud working properly in even a reasonable subset of browsers. If you must demonstrate niqqud, add a picture. Gadykozma 13:31, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
O.K. I put an image there instead. I was so excited when I figured out how to put the niqqud on the letters, too. Ah well. (This is really tempting me to actually get around to learning Hebrew, you know. Curse you, Wikipedia! First you eat all my free time in editing, then you make me want to learn another language "for fun"!) Mpolo 14:10, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
If you check some of the really addicted guys' pages, you'll notice they put their "Wikiholic score" on it. This is a list of questions each one giving you a certain number of points to your score. One the questions is "Have you ever learned a new language for the primary purpose of editing that version of Wikipedia (17 points)?" Gadykozma 14:30, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mpolo.

I was not able to view "יַהְוֶה" well, but יַהְוֶה, printed out fine.

It prints out much clearer, than what I see on my computer screen.

Can you provide me a link where I can get more Hebrew unicodes than what you provided in your early edits of "Iaoue" [e.g. יַהְוֶה]

Seeker02421 14:51, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This is the problem that Gadykozma mentioned above -- most browsers don't display combining Unicode characters very well. Here's some info, though: [1]. (I used "Character Map" in Gnome to produce them.) Mpolo 15:05, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

The Iaoue thing[edit]

Seeker inserted some stuff about a Gerard Gertoux, who has certain views on how the Tetragrammaton should be pronounced. Unless he provides a reference, this will not stand - I have certainly never heard of Gerard, nor does his viewpoint sound plausible. The only reason the Tetragrammaton is printed without vowels is to prevent people from trying to pronounce it. Moreover, all ancient Hebrew texts were unvowelised.

I also doubt why we need a seperate Iaoue article, while this is essentially about the same thing. JFW | T@lk 11:31, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

JFW, you are an incorrigible mergionist. The iaoue page is a really nice expansion of a specific aspect. The information on that page is too specific to be merged into this page. I really can't see why you would want to remove it. Gadykozma 06:20, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Gerard Gertoux is a scholar who possibly knows more details about the "Jehovah/Yahweh" controversy, than any other person on the planet earth.

Gerard Gertoux entered the "Jehovah"/ "Yahweh" controversy in 2002, when he wrote a 328 page book titled:

THE NAME OF GOD

Y.EH.OW.AH

WHICH IS PRONOUNCED

AS IT IS WRITTEN

I_EH_OU_AH

Gerard Gertoux wrote his book to demonstrate that "Yehowah" and not "Yahweh" was more likely to be God's name.

Many Jehovah's Witnesses though that he might aid their cause greatly, but Gerard Gertoux's conclusion was that "YHWH [without vowel points] is spelled "Iehoua" and pronounced "Yehua"

I personally believe that the article on Iaoue is importent, because it plays such a large part in showing where the name "Yahweh" has come from. The information found in Iaoue would not be allowed to be posted on Tetragrammaton because of the space it takes up.

I personally believe that any article on the Tetragrammaton, that says nothing about "Iaoue" is not a NPOV article.

Gerard Gertoux is important because he along with Sacred name ministries believe that it is possible to pronounce YHWH [even when it has no vowel points]

Sacred name ministries are on the "Yahweh" side of the "Jehovah/Yahweh" controversy.

Gerard Gertoux strongly opposes the name "Yahweh"

There is balance in covering both Gerard Gertoux and Sacred name ministries.

In my opinion, in a NPOV article on the Tetragrammaton, the view that it is possible to spell YHWH [without vowel points], and to pronounce YHWH [without vowel points] deserves a hearing, however this could be discussed in a separate article linked to Tetragrammaton.

Seeker02421 12:46, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

More edits[edit]

Well, I edited it again... I left out a few pieces, here is why:

Before the ninth century B.C., Hebrew was written with no vowels.

It seemed irrelevant: we don't have any text containing the Tetragrammaton that old, right?

If the tetragrammaton was used in combination with Adonai, the vowels of Elohim (God) are used instead of those of Adonai, to remind the reader to say "Adonai Elohim", rather than "Adonai Adonai".

I think that the only importance of this fact is to substantiate the explanation of the Ben Chayim codex niqqud (it does a very good job at that, I must say). However, in order for it to do that one has to know Hebrew and see the precise niqqud, the hataf-segol under the yod etc. So, for the casual reader, this text is meaningless, while for the advanced reader, it is too short and uninformative. I think that in this page it is enough to state that the explanation is convincing, without actually showing why.

The Greek form here represents four vowel sounds -- ου is a diphthong in Greek. However, already in the New Testament, ι had taken on a consonantal usage like English y, and a consonantal pronunciation of ου like English w is not unreasonable. Thus, combining Clement's vowels with the consonants of the Tetragrammaton, the pronunciation/transcription Yahweh was produced.

The problem here is similar. This needs to be discussed in greater length, or none at all. I actually cannot understand it. Probably the best would be to do it in the iaoue page.

Hundreds of years before vowel points were invented, the Hebrew spelling of David’s name had been changed from דוד (daleth-waw-daleth) to דויד(daleth-waw-yod-daleth). [Note "b-hebrew Transcription Guidelines"][2] In the later spelling, the consonant “yod” had been added to indicate the vowel “i” in David’s name. Thus while it is true that between the ninth century B.C., and the time period when the Masoretes invented vowel points, the Hebrew text had no true vowels, certain Hebrew consonants were being used to indicate vowels.

I didn't see how this is relevant

Finally, I reinstated the "partially" in the text

This can be partially explained by rules of Hebrew grammar, which forbid hataf-patah under Yod.

Please don't remove it. This explanation is bad because if we agree that this is Adonai vowels interlaced with יהוה then the rules of grammer are irrelevant. Worse, the interlacing with the vowels of Elohim puts a hataf-segol under the yod! So this really explains very little. I was actually tempted to write "a lame excuse is derived from the rules of Hebrew grammer"... Gadykozma 05:38, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yehowah not Yehowah[edit]

On July 7, 2004 someone with the name "JW BERT" discussed why the actual vowels of aDoNaY were not placed above and below YHWH in the Masoretic Text.1

On July 7, 2004 Gerard Gertoux explains to JW BERT why JHW-H (sic) must be vocalized "Yeho-ah" or "Yehou-ah". 2

Footnotes[edit]

1 JW BERT discusses why YHWH is spelled "Yehowah not Yahowah"

2. Gerard Gertoux explains to JW BERT why JHW-H (sic) must be vocalized Yeho-ah or Yehou-ah.


Seeker02421 22:22, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Material from Reconstructing...[edit]

I removed the text (see below), which was imported from Reconstructing the vowelized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton for the following reasons:

  • It is an incoherent collection of facts. It is probably POV, trying to belittle the Yahweh pronunciation, but it is too unclear to do that.
  • It is too specialized to go into the Tetragrammaton page. Is the general reader really interested in Wilhelm Gesenius? A clear separation needs to be done between general pages and academically oriented pages.
  • It makes the "pronunciation" section, which is already too long, the bulk of the page. With this text we might as well rename the page Pronouncing the Tetragrammaton. I do wish someone would expand the cultural or the ineffability part (Monty Python, duh?)

I guess this text could be useful for a specialized page on the Tetragrammaton, but I'm not sure Wikipedia is sufficiently staffed to write a page which is both scientific and POV-problematic on this topic. Gady 16:44, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Gady: It is a pity to lose that text... why don't you move it to Tetragrammaton? Believe me when I say that many controversial articles with conflicting POVs can be resolved and becaome great articles. Time and patience... --Zappaz 16:05, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Begin removed text

=== Scholarly Sources in which "יַהְוֶה" is found === The vowelized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton shown below: "יַהְוֶה" started to appear in scholarly sources in the 19th century, or possibly earlier: "יַהְוֶה" was not the only vowelized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton that appeared in scholarly sources in the 19th century, but gradually it became accepted as the best reconstruction of the vowelized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton. Smith's " A Dictionary of the Bible" [[#Footnotes|<sup>3</sup>]] [published in 1863] notes that Wilhelm Gesenius, who is noted for being one of the greatest Hebrew and biblical scholars, [[#Footnotes|<sup>4</sup>]] punctuated YHWH as "יַהְוֶה". Wilhelm Gesenius wrote a Hebrew Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament which was first translated into English in 1824. [[#Footnotes|<sup>5</sup>]]. In 1863, Smith's "A Dictionary of the Bible" does not consider "יַהְוֶה" to be the best vowelised Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton, of which it is aware of. The Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Francis Brown and S.R. Driver and C.A. Briggs shows "יַהְוֶה" under the heading "יהוה" "יַהְוֶה" is found in the online Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906, under the article: "NAMES OF GOD" and under the article sub heading: "YHWH".[[#Footnotes|<sup>6</sup>]] The Jewish Encylopedia recognizes that "יַהְוֶה" is spelled "Yahweh" in English, but "יַהְוֶה" is only one of two vowelized Hebrew spellings, that they believe might have been the original pronunciation of YHWH. * [http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-7/264290/YahwehfromSmithsBibleDictionarylowres.JPG Smith's "A Dictionary of the Bible"] * [http://www.bartleby.com/65/ge/Gesenius.html Wilhelm Gesenius is noted for being one of the greatest Hebrew and biblical scholars.] * [http://www.greaterthings.com/Bibliography.htm Wilhelm Gesenius' Hebrew Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament was first translated into English in 1824,] * [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=52&letter=N The online Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906]

end removed text

Josephus & vowels of יהוה[edit]

On the main page, it says "Josephus wrote that the sacred name consisted of four vowels"

Where did he write this?--Josiah 03:20, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Hi Yoshiah ap,

In The Works of Josephus

Antiquities of the Jews and a History of the Jewish Wars etc.

In Chapter V [Wars of the Jews]:

"...A mitre also of fine linen encompassed his head, which was tied by a blue riband, about which there was anther golden crown, in which was engraved the sacred name [of God]:it consisted of four vowels..."

Seeker02421 11:08, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is Book V, Chapter V, 235 of De bello Judaico: tên de kephalên bussinê men eskepen tiara, katestepto d' huakinthôi, peri hên chrusous allos ên stephanos ektupa pherôn ta hiera grammata: tauta d' esti phônêenta tessara.
The word in question is phônêenta, which Liddel and Scott defines as: "vowels". It litterally means "sounding [letters]".

This text יְהֺוָה is not showing correctly. Can you check that the gplyphs are correct? --Zappaz 16:02, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

George m: Thanks for these fixes! --Zappaz 23:22, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hi Zappaz, so the greek could just be saying that there are 4 letters (yud, heh, vav, and heh) in the name, right?--Josiah 00:36, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Hello Josiah. What do you mean? --Zappaz 03:34, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC) yep: Got it and edited it. --03:36, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

V or W?[edit]

I noticed that the tetragrammaton is spelt inconsistantly throughout the article. What should it be? A V or a W? Benji man

Tough choice. The pronunciation in modern Hebrew is "V", but linguists generally believe the ancient pronunction was "W". Jayjg (talk) 21:50, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
We need to chose one or the two transliterations for consistency throughout the article. I would suggest we use YHWH . --Zappaz 22:10, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK, I changed all "YHVH"s to "YHWH". While I was at it, I replaced "vav" with "waw", and "ha-Shem" with "Hashem", since the latter spelling occured more often than the former one. Benji man 11:56, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've added a short paragraph to address the 'V' transliteration of vav ( ו‎ ) (YHVH), so it doesn't seem that Wikipedia is making an arbitrary choice or ignoring that spelling. Otherwise readers familiar with modern Hebrew would probably expect to see vav represented as "v". (I also made an edit in the introduction where jumping to YHWH seemed particularly jarring.) Anyway, I've linked to other Wikipedia pages, e.g., Biblical Hebrew; can anyone provide good external citations for the pronunciation of vav/waw ( ו‎ ) as "w" rather than "v" and for the use of YHWH instead of YHVH? --David Cohen 08:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Miscellaneous Thoughts[edit]

Excuse me for interrupting, but isn't the language of the second tetragrammaton in the picture paleohebraic and not Aramaic? Modern Hebrew today uses the square letters, correctly noted, that came from Aramaic, not early Hebrew. Early Hebrew's alphabet was similar to Hebrew, so the pictures actually represent PaleoHebraic and Square characters, not Phonoecian, Aramaic, and Modern Hebrew. Please make the appropriate changes as I do not see how to. Thank you. Chris Weimer 22:18, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I created that picture based on my references. The square Hebrew glyphs were derived from Phoenician around 10 BC, and by 3 BC an Aramaic-derived script was used, culminating in the modern Hebrew script. Both Phoenician and Aramaic are considered proto-sinaitic. Check AncientScripts.com[[3] and [4]. Do you have other references that differ with this? That would be very interesting indeed. Note that I am referring to the early Aramaic, or proto-Hebrew. Many scripts eveolved from this early Aramaic, including the Kharosthi alphabet[5]. --Zappaz 03:51, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Strong's Hebrew Word #3069[edit]

Actually Strong’s Hebrew word #3069 [e.g. Yehovih] does not have precisely the same Hebrew vowel points as "Elohiym" has.

James Strong’s spelling of Hebrew word #3069 [e.g. Yehovih] is "יְהֺוִה"

The spelling of "Yehovih" that is thought to be found in the underlying Hebrew of the King James Bible is "יֱהֺוִה" It is this spelling of "Yehovih" [e.g. "יֱהֺוִה"] that that has precisely the same vowel points as "Elohiym" [e.g. "אֱלֺהִים"] has.

Seeker02421 20:31, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Merge with Names of God in Judaism[edit]

Should this article be merged with the Names of God in Judaism? Pinnecco 10:00, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but with care. Users might search for "tetragrammaton" and not know to look for "names of God," so at the least it needs a redirect. Also, I think the Pop Culture stuff needs to be kept, but maybe that could be added down at the bottom with any pop culture references to other Names of God on that page? Zabieru 20:20, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No. That article is already long enough, and we shouldn't ditch the info in this one. We should have a brief summary of the main points in Names of God in Judaism, with a link here. This is the format used for all sorts of things—to pick an example, see United States#History. It has two paragraphs, and a link to a much longer article. —Simetrical (talk) 02:58, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Disagree to Strongly disagree. The topics are both quite long on their own, combining them might make them overwhelming and difficult to read/edit. Also, Tetragrammaton has information special to it that doesn't have to do with Names of God in Judaism. 66.229.160.94 02:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly Oppose Traditional Jewish editors and readers need a way to refer to information about the Tetragrammaton, such as for example in an article on Yom Kippur, without risking actually pronouncing the name. Accordingly, Tetragrammaton needs to be usable as a direct link. --Shirahadasha 02:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Name in Italian[edit]

As far as I know, in Italy the Name is written 'Iavè', or 'Iahvè', or 'Jahvè' (with 'J' pronounced like English 'Y') or 'Yahweh' (with 'w' pronoun like 'v'); however, it is rarely used by catholics, apart during the mass while reading the Scriptures excerpts where it is mentioned. In any case, 'Geova' is definitely used only by 'Testimoni di Geova' (the Italian branch of 'Witnesses of Jehovah'), and maybe by other protestant creeds, then for sure this info must be corrected. Very good article... I hope I'll understand it, at last :-) --MOnSTEr 18:08, 9 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I see the name in Italian is again 'Geova'. It seems to me that, if such part of the article has to stay there, it must be correct; so the 'name in Italian' should be 'Jahve' (pronounced 'Iavè'), given the fact that in Italy this is the current translitteration of the tetragrammaton: apart of the numeric minority of Witnesses of Jehova, no one uses 'Geova' for this purpose. 'Iahve' is used in the Bible as translated by the CEI (the Italian Episcopal Conference), and therefore, if not the most correct (questionable, and questioned just here), for sure is the most spread translitteration in Italy. --MOnSTEr 20:07, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

About Yahu[edit]

It was also Martin Buber's opinion, save that Yahu simply means "O,Him" 139.165.96.129Inyan

Events Leading up to the Jews avoiding pronouncing YHWH[edit]

Added an important aspect and can be found from the scriptures themselves as to why the 'fear/reverance' increased after the destruction of the First Temple. The main topic of Jeremiah and Ezekiel plus the latter end of 2nd Kings and 2nd Chronicles is how YHWH tries to turn Judah from their idolatry and sinful deeds so that they may know that "ANI YHWH" (I-am YHWH).

Did not add how the 'reverance' increased even more after the destruction of the temple by Antiocus prophecied through Daniel; and the last destruction by Titus in AD70 which also was prophecied through Daniel, Messiah, and the sent-ones (apostles). I also did not add the German Holocost which is prophecied in in Ezekiel plus their return to the land in 1948. All these events drive home that YHWH is a living and active God which causes his word to be.

You would reverance His name if it was your family and your neighbors who were ridiculed, tortured, killed, taken away as captives according to the recorded words of the God of your fathers.

--dmonty 03:22, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE:

The addition was removed because it is considered POV. The primary sources used for the events leading up to when the name stopped being pronounced is the Encyclopaedia Judaica plus bible context from: Deuteronomy, Leviticus, 2 Chronicles, 2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. I hope someone might one day include this from the Encyclopaedia Judaica.

Explanation of YHWH from Context of Exodus[edit]

Added further explanation of the meaning of the name with 1st person 3nd person examples from context.

--dmonty 03:23, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE:

Removed because it is considered POV. Primary source "The Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Francis Brown and S.R. Driver and C.A. Briggs". Someone should add the explanation EHYEH(1st person) and YWHW(3rd person) from how it is used in the context of Exodus 3 see the above mentioned Lexicon. Also include the notes on HIPHIL and QAL verb found in this Lexicon.

Under MEANING, added the explanation of the name by poetic parallel that the bible provides, as surely no contemplation of the actual meaning of the name can be serious without what the authors of Exodus, themselves have given.Jiohdi 21:20, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yahweh redirect[edit]

It seems to me that it is inappropriate to have Yahweh redirect here. There is a place on wikipedia for a discussion of the God of the Israelites, specifically, and what scholars believe about his origins and so forth. This article is (appropriately) largely focused on YHWH as a name, and the history of it as a name. But I think there's a place for a discussion of the Hebrew God as a concept. That place is neither here nor at God, which wisely focuses on the idea of God more generally. The appropriate place for this, then, would seem to be at Yahweh, which is generally considered by scholars as the best rendering of YHWH. What do people think? john k 02:24, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds reasonable to me. I can understand not wanting a different article each for Yahveh, Yahvah, etc., but Yahweh kind of stands on its own as the main transliteration. Yahnatan 03:55, 9 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Migne P.G. quotes Clement of Alexandria as saying that the Tetragrammaton is pronounced "Iaou" not "Iaoue".

What evidence is there that Clement of Alexandria ever wrote that the Tetragrammaton was pronounced "Iaoue"?

Seeker02421 10:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia article Iaoue, a work in progress, mentions that the variants "Iaou" and "Iaoue" and "Iaouai" are found in various editions of Clement of Alexandria's Stromata Book V. Chapter 6:34, where Clement explains how the Tetragrammaton is pronounced.

Seeker02421 10:28, 9 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect of IHVH[edit]

I redirected a new short article titled IHVH here; there was nothing in the article not covered here. Basically it was just the alternate roman-character spelling, plus the theory mentioned here about a god named "Yah" or "Yaw" or possible "Jah". If the author of IHVH would like to disagree, this section is a good place. MCB 08:33, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The removal of the Footnote #5 link in the "Vowel Marks" section[edit]

Under the "Vowel marks" section in Wikipedia:Tetragrammaton it says:

>>>
This can be explained by rules of Hebrew grammar, which forbid a sheva under an aleph, although this explanation is not entirely satisfactory.5
>>>

I am about to remove Footnote # 5 because the Hebrew Grammar Rule it points to has been proven to be incorrect, on b-Hebrew.

Footnote # 5 points to the link below:

http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_Two/A-Type_Vowels/a-type_vowels.html

At the above link is states:

>>>
The Chateph Patach is sometimes called a “half vowel” and is the shortest of all vowels: it can only appear under the guttural letters (and is usually part of the following syllable).
>>>

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2005-September/025807.html

At the above link Peter Kirk lists the following verses where a hataf-patah [e.g. Chateph Patach] is found under a non-guttural letter in the Leningrad Codex

With hataf patah: GEN 2:12; 3:17; 10:3; 12:3; 18:21; 22:18; 24:60; 25:22; 26:4,12; 27:19,27,27,29,31,33,34,38,41; 28:6,14; 30:27,38; 38:12; 48:9,20; 49:23; EXO 8:5; LEV 6:11,19; 9:23; NUM 5:18,19,24,24,27; 6:23,27; 10:9; 16:32; 18:10,13; 23:18,25; 24:9; 33:55; DEU 5:27; 8:2,15; 15:20,22; 24:13; JOS 11:2; 22:7,33; JDG 5:2,9,12; 7:6,7; 1SA 13:10; 24:11; 2SA 8:10; 13:25; 19:40; 1KI 8:66; 14:21; 2KI 19:16; 1CH 1:6; 4:10; 18:10; 26:5; 29:20; 2CH 5:12,13; 12:13; 20:21,26; 23:13; 30:27; 31:8; 35:15; EZR 8:26; NEH 2:6; 3:13; 7:67,67; 9:5; 11:2; 12:29; JOB 1:5,11; 2:5; 29:25; 31:20,37; 33:25; 34:10; PSA 12:7; 31:12; 34:1,2; 55:19,22; 64:9; 68:7; 72:15; 73:28; 74:5; 76:12; 83:13; 96:2; 100:4; 103:1,2,20,21,22,22; 104:1,35; 107:38; 134:1,2; 135:19,19,20,20; 140:4; 143:12; 144:15; 145:1,2,10; PRO 30:17; ECC 6:2; 9:7; SNG 3:6; 8:2; ISA 19:25; 31:8; 48:14,17; JER 22:28; 31:33; 32:9; EZK 4:9,10,10,12; 7:15; 9:8; 35:6,6; DAN 2:19,35; 4:9,18; 6:23; 7:19; 9:18,19; 12:10; JOL 3:3; MIC 3:9; ZEC 4:12

Seeker02421 20:06, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. That is quite a list. Peter is a good scholar. He and I have disagreed about some things in the past (even recently) on B-Hebrew, but I respect the man a lot. Thanks for providing his list of exceptions here.

I looked up the first two really quickly, and I saw that the normal form זְהַב is written זֲהַב in Gen 2:12. I do not know the reason for this, but it would seem to be by analogy to the following patach. Gen 3:17 has the verb תֹּאכֲלֶנָּה‎ (you will eat it). Without the object suffix, it is written תֹּאכַל‎ (you shall eat). The suffix apparently changes the length of the vowel but not the quality. From what I see in The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary (Davidson) on page 744, this happens when you add object pronoun suffixes to the qal second-person singular imperfect form of this verb. On the same page of this dictionary, the form תְּאַלֲצֵהוּ‎ has the same oddity. My assumption regarding the purpose of this vowelization was to avoid ambiguity and to ensure proper reading by demonstrating clearly that this was a pronounced vowel rather than a silent sheva. I can't be sure, and this isn't the place for such a debate. Although there are so many appearances of a composite sheva with non-guttural letters throughout the Tanakh, this is still not a regular occurrence. It does happen as an exception to the rule, but all rules are able to be bent or broken without upsetting their usefulness for the general case. The general rule (with its exceptions) is that a composite sheva does not appear with a non-guttural letter of the alphabet.

This could be compared to the fact that Resh ר‎ does not tend to accept a dagesh, but there are places in the Tanakh where רּ‎ appears (cf. B-Hebrew Archives, below). This does not keep grammarians from explaining compensatory lengthening in terms of the Resh (and other gutturals) not accepting dagesh. - Yonah

Reference: B-Hebrew Archives, 10 Feb 2000 Topic: Psalm 52:5. Author: Henry Churchyard. URL: [6]

Merging Yehuah[edit]

Both Tetragrammaton and Yehuah are about the same divine being. I say we merge them. --SoothingR 11:13, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I actually think we should delete the Yehoua article altogether, as it is both reduntant and biased (it takes the Bible as divinely-inspired truth without a second thought).--Rob117 23:09, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Transcription in other languages[edit]

My first impulse was similar on seeing the addition of Russian, but it should also be noted that the Serbian someone added (and for which we could use a version in Cyrillic) isn't alphabetal either. I think a contributor can be excused for not doing this, as it ought to be acknowledged that adding an entry or two into the middle of this table is an enormous PIA, and that an editor with useful information to add to it might not feel up to the task of rearranging the whole table to accomodate it. I didn't fix it myself for the same reason. In any event, I can't see cutting information solely on formatting grounds. TCC (talk) (contribs) 02:06, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

IP 172.208.29.110 /172.129.132.131 / 172.156.242.240[edit]

Dear IP 172.208.29.110 / 172.129.132.131 / 172.156.242.240 -- the changes which you're so insistent on don't really add anything to this article. Please discuss them on this page, if you feel that they have any validity, instead of just adding them in again. AnonMoos 19:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Transcription in other langages[edit]

An anon editor has added a comment to the head of this table wondering why it's in the article. That's a good question. Is it of any particular use in a general-interest article like this one? TCC (talk) (contribs) 00:32, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

HaShem and other matters[edit]

I have modified all occurrences of "Hashem", "hashem" to "HaShem". "Ha" in Hebrew is an article but not ordinarily written as a seperate word. In order to distinguish it from the noun that follows in Latin transliteration either a hyphen or CamelCase is employed. The latter seems to be more common, so that's the one I used. Ditto for the single occurence of "Hameforash" and for the same reason.

I cut the "Other uses of the word" section since it was in the wrong place and its only content, the well-known huckster Prophet Yahweh, isn't terribly relevant here and has his own article. I suppose he can go on a dab page if someone wants to make one. TCC (talk) (contribs)

HaShem vs. Adonai[edit]

Pronouncing YHWH as "HaShem" was not practiced during Masoretic times, and has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the Masoretic pointing of the Tetragammaton, so please stop changing Adonai or Elohim to "HaShem" in the context of the discussion of Niqqud. AnonMoos 19:29, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Request for IPA pronunciation[edit]

Would an editor familiar with both Hebrew vowel points and IPA please insert the IPA equivalents at the appropriate places so that those not familiar with Hebrew can see how this word has been or is pronounced? I realize that it is not spoken in Judaism, but that has not stopped folks from trying, as is evident from the article. --Blainster 17:35, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really know that using IPA symbols would give you any more real information than a simple alphabetic transcription such as "Yahweh" does... AnonMoos 18:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Although the second "h" in Yahweh would not actually be pronounced, while the first "h" would be. AnonMoos 18:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
While not being a perfect system (especially in the hands of a novice like myself), the IPA gives a much more distinct set of possibilities for pronunciation. For example, the letter c can represent sounds such as the /k/ in "catch" [kætʃ] or the /s/ in "presence" ['prɛzəns]. In German it often represents the /ts/ sound in hits [hɪts]; for example, December [dɛ'tsɛmbɒ]. In Italian, it can represent the /tʃ/ in ciao [tʃaʊ].

In this instance, does the w stand for the English w /w/ or the German w /v/? Are the h’s somehow aspirated or harsh-sounding? All of this can be clarified by using IPA transcription. You can specify whether you mean Yahweh to be understood as [jɑ'wɛ] or [jɑ'vɛ], thus demonstrating that the h’s are silent and that the w’s should be pronounced either as a /w/ or as a /v/.

- Yonah mishael 07:36, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]


http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

At the link above is found:
"The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet"
My guess would be "ja:hwe"
[Note: the final "h" is silent]
[IPA]
[ j ]------[yes, yellow]
[ a:]------[arm, father]
[ h ]------[how, hello]
[ w ]------[wet, window]
[ e ]------[met, bed]

Seeker02421 15:54, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Yes, except that the "a" vowel in Hebrew would not be long, and so would not be transcribed with the IPA length mark [:] AnonMoos 19:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the responses. I will add this to the article (Reconstructed pronunciation). The link to the key you used works for your example, but I suggest we stick to the Wiki version I gave above at IPA. If the "h" above is silent, I think it should be left out— my read is that the hw combination is used when one would have a "wh" sound like in "which" (where "h" modifies) as opposed to "witch". And the "e" as in "bed" sound is OK for Australian but is given as "ɛ" for Received or American English. The "e" symbol is not used in Received but in American it means "ay" as in "bayed" so that symbol could confuse some folks. So even IPA seems to have variations according to the language used. --Blainster 18:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

[h]+[w] most certainly did NOT form any kind of "hw" phoneme or regular sound combination in ancient Hebrew, and as for the exact quality of the "e" vowel, it's really anyone's guess -- which is one reason why IPA is not necessarily the preferred tool for this particular job. AnonMoos 02:36, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Silent letters are NEVER represented in IPA transcription. IPA is designed to represent what a word sounds like, and silent letters do not represent sounds. The transcription in IPA symbols of יַהְוָה‎ (Yahweh) would either be [jɑ'wɛ], [jɑ'vɛ], [jɑ'we] or [jɑ've], depending on how one considers the Hebrew ו‎ (Vav) to have been pronounced at the time and how the  ֶ‎ (Segol) is pronounced — with a longer or shorter quality. I think that both [jɑ'wɛ] and [jɑ'vɛ] are represented in the Greek transliterations by Ἰαουέ (as opposed to Ἰαουή [jɑ'we]) and Ἰαβέ (as opposed to Ἰαβή [jɑ've]), respectively. - Yonah mishael 04:41, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seeker02421[edit]

Seeker02421 -- You developed most of that material at great length in article Iaoue, so why are you now adding it here also? It's not really appropriate to include basically the same material here, also at Iaoue, also at KJV-Only Movement, etc. etc. Try to decide what's the best location for it, and only include abbreviated references at other locations. AnonMoos 19:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Duplication of material[edit]

Seeker02421, please don't unnecessarily duplicate material between here and Iaoue - AnonMoos 17:01, 24 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

AnonMoos, Is there some Wikipedia rule involved in your request? Does Wikipedia have some rule in which information found in one article, should not be posted in a different article? Seeker02421 11:35, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know, and I'm not sure I particularly care. It comes from common sense -- this article (Tetragrammaton) is starting to push length limits, and if there's a whole lengthy discussion of a sub-topic on separate page (Iaoue), then it's best to mainly defer discussion to that page (with an appropriate cross-reference link), rather than develop ANOTHER whole lengthy discussion of the sub-topic on this main page. AnonMoos 18:31, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Response[edit]

Section 2 [The Scholarly Reconstructed pronunciation "יַהְוֶה" ( i.e. Yahweh )]

and

Sub-section 2.1 [Scholarly sources in which "יַהְוֶה" is found] now work together as a team to present evidence that"Yahweh" has been derived from "Iaoue" , however it was only on November 12, 2004 that IZAK [who works for Wikipedia] first imported most of the text that is now in [Scholarly sources in which "יַהְוֶה" is found] into the Wikipedia Article:Tetragrammaton.

IZAK imported it from Wikipedia "Limbo" where some unwanted Wikipedia Articles end up.

The following day November 13, 2004, Gadykozma [a Wikipedia moderator] moved the above mentioned text from the Wikipedia Article:Tetragrammaton into Talk:Tetragrammaton.

16:44, 13 November 2004 Gadykozma (Material from Reconstructing...) Gadykozma moved the text below into Talk:Tetragrammaton.

>>>

Scholarly Sources in which "יַהְוֶה" is found

The vowelized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton shown below:

"יַהְוֶה" started to appear in scholarly sources in the 19th century, or possibly earlier:

"יַהְוֶה" was not the only vowelized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton that appeared in scholarly sources in the 19th century, but gradually it became accepted as the best reconstruction of the vowelized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton.

Smith's " A Dictionary of the Bible" 3 [published in 1863] notes that Wilhelm Gesenius, who is noted for being one of the greatest Hebrew and biblical scholars, 4 punctuated YHWH as "יַהְוֶה". Wilhelm Gesenius wrote a Hebrew Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament which was first translated into English in 1824. 5. In 1863, Smith's "A Dictionary of the Bible" does not consider "יַהְוֶה" to be the best vowelised Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton, of which it is aware of.

The Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Francis Brown and S.R. Driver and C.A. Briggs shows "יַהְוֶה" under the heading "יהוה"

"יַהְוֶה" is found in the online Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906, under the article: "NAMES OF GOD" and under the article sub heading: "YHWH".6 The Jewish Encylopedia recognizes that "יַהְוֶה" is spelled "Yahweh" in English, but "יַהְוֶה" is only one of two vowelized Hebrew spellings, that they believe might have been the original pronunciation of YHWH.

</nowiki>

end removed text

>>>

On November 13, 2004 , after moving the text, Gadykozma wrote in Talk: Tetragrammaton:

>>>

Material from Reconstructing...

I removed the text (see below), which was imported from Reconstructing the vowelized Hebrew spelling of the Tetragrammaton for the following reasons:

  • It is an incoherent collection of facts. It is probably POV, trying to belittle the Yahweh pronunciation, but it is too unclear to do that.
  • It is too specialized to go into the Tetragrammaton page. Is the general reader really interested in Wilhelm Gesenius? A clear separation needs to be done between general pages and academically oriented pages.
  • It makes the "pronunciation" section, which is already too long, the bulk of the page. With this text we might as well rename the page Pronouncing the Tetragrammaton. I do wish someone would expand the cultural or the ineffability part (Monty Python, duh?)

I guess this text could be useful for a specialized page on the Tetragrammaton, but I'm not sure Wikipedia is sufficiently staffed to write a page which is both scientific and POV-problematic on this topic. Gady 16:44, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

>>>

On December 11, 2004 Zappaz [possibly a Wikipedia moderator ???] recommended this same text be moved back to the Wikipedia Article:Tetragrammaton

>>>

Gady: It is a pity to lose that text... why don't you move it to Tetragrammaton? Believe me when I say that many controversial articles with conflicting POVs can be resolved and becaome great articles. Time and patience... --Zappaz 16:05, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

>>>

On December 11, 2004 Zappaz moved the text back into the Wikipedia Article:Tetragrammaon where it has remained.

16:13, 11 December 2004 Zappaz (→Alternative names - moved text from Names of God in Judaism)

While the present section #2 was not effected by what occurred in November and December of 2004, yet is part of a larger issue that Wikipedia has previously had with a large amount of information being added to the Wikipedia Article:Tetragrammaton, to deal with the "Iaoue/Yahweh" issue.

In as much as on December 11, 2004 Wikipedia previously allowed this large amount of new information to be added to the Wikipedia Article: Tetragrammaton [to deal with the "Iaoue/Yahweh" issue], it is my opinion that my latest edits to Section 2 of the Wikipedia Article:Tetragrammaton should remain where they are.

Seeker02421 00:39, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I really can't very easily follow what you've written above, but I do know that if you try to edit the Tetragrammaton article you get a message "This page is 42 kilobytes long. This may be longer than is preferable; see article size." -- and that detailed inforation about Iaoue belongs at article Iaoue, not here. AnonMoos 20:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I added further information to the Hebrew Tetragrammaton spelling image, and increased its size. AnonMoos 20:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Alleged acronym[edit]

Why it does not have the meaning of "Yeshua Hanatzri Vemelech Hayehudim" mentioned? Was this article written by Jehova people? - unsigned comment by IP 84.240.42.28

Maybe this was not mentioned because no serious scholar thinks it is the origin of YHWH. Furthermore, it's really a rather stupid way of forming an acronym, since the little clitic words ha ("the") and we ("and") are used for the initials in three out of four words. Some people would transcribe the phrase Yeshua` ha-Notsri we-Melekh ha-Yehudim to make clear the clitics, as opposed to the stems. AnonMoos 20:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eliminating numerical sentence[edit]

I deleted this sentence:

The Tetragrammaton appears 1,839 times in the Torah. Note that 1,839 is the Neutron/Electron rest mass ratio (Mn/Me) to 4 sig. figs. and also thrice 613, the number of Mitzvot of the Jewish faith.

Not least because I've done a little searching in the Hebrew text of the Pentateuch, and I come up with something more like 1,819 occurrences. But even if it were true, it would be very doubtfully relevant. AnonMoos 02:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Structural problems...[edit]

For ignorami, such as myself, who happen accross such a page as this, perhaps the structure should be changed because of possible... eh, problems which may arise in the current format. For instance, a foolish reverend, such as myself, who wishes to hold other faiths other than his own in good terms might be perusing such an article as this and start reading from the top, as I, for one, am rather used to doing. Now, this revered person, out of pure curiousity, happens accross the pronounciation key, and again, from said curiousity, attempts to pronounce it. Now we find ourselves at a problem, as this person who holds other religions in the utmost respect has now, unwittingly desecrated the holy name of God. Because of said reason, I think that it is in the best interest for the whole wikipedia community to perhaps explain what the Tetragrammaton is before the pronounciation key; that is all. --Lucretius Julius Impavide, 10 January 2006

Not sure what you're talking about; the first two paragraphs seem to define the basics adequately. AnonMoos 18:51, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Puzzling redirect[edit]

I'm bewildered why searches for the Levantine deity Yahweh are redirected to a discussion of how His name is pronounced. Shouldn't there be a separate article under "Yahweh" containing information about Jewish and other Near-Eastern cults of Yahweh, His relation to El, the discoveries at Ugarit, Mark Smith's work etc etc? Could someone more knowledgable please delete the redirect and create a stub at least?

YHWH is the personal name of the national God of Israel -- (just as Chemosh was the god of the Moabites etc.). I'm not sure there are any significant attested "other Near-Eastern cults of Yahweh" (though there is of course the non-monotheistic Jewish worship at Elephantine in Egypt and elsewhere). AnonMoos 18:48, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In any case, some of the type of discussion you wanted is now at Yahwism. AnonMoos 08:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Word Count[edit]

YHWH occurs more often than any other word in the old testament. The following computer software is used to prove this fact. http://www.chooselife.org.au/dean/ECC.htm Englishmans Contextual Concordance] -- unsigned comment by Dmonty 21:01, 4 February 2006

I have no particular intention of downloading that software program to verify your assertion -- especially since the software seems to be English-based, and I much prefer to work with the original Hebrew text. However, it would greatly clarify matters if you could specify on what exact basis the Tetragrammaton is said to be the most frequent word in the Bible. If it's just that the Strong Number for the Tetragrammaton is the most frequently-occuring Strong Number, then I don't know that that really establishes anything. There are many possible ways of counting "words". If the clitic conjunction prefix ו we- / u- / wa- is counted as a "word", then it would undoubtedly be the most common word in the Hebrew Bible. AnonMoos 22:23, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The fact is based on Strong's Number counts and not English word counts. Englishman's Concordance, unlike Strong's Concordance, lists each Hebrew word and where it occurs in the Bible. Strong's Concordance only lists where the English word appears in the Bible. The software program counts the Strongs numbers which are linked directly to the Hebrew words. One can also affirm this fact by studying Lexicons with word counts for each Hebrew word, howbeit this would be slower methodology. One could debate that conjunctions and prepositions like vav-(and/but), lamed-(to/toward), calf-(like), repeat more often, but they are joined to the Hebrew words and are not separate words by themselves. --dmonty 06:55, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that I'm not really persuaded that you've established anything other than that YHWH has the most frequently-occurring Strong's number in the Old Testament -- and this doesn't necessarily establish anything of general interest. Strong was not trying to establish a linguistic definition of word in Hebrew, and probably would not have claimed to be establishing any linguistic definition of the word in Hebrew, but instead was doing whatever he felt would work out best in a strictly pragmatic and practical sense for his limited purposes of helping English speakers with no knowledge or little knowledge of Hebrew. To find out what the most common word is in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, you've got to have a reasonable definition of "word" in the Hebrew language, and just relying on Strong's numbers won't cut it, because Strong's numbers weren't really devised for this purpose. AnonMoos 20:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

consider this... the new testament has ZERO occurance while the OT has YHWH more times than any other name, title or personal designation combined... when you find a dollarbill without silk thread what does that imply? Jiohdi 20:48, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

God of Israel[edit]

The tetragrammaton was the "distinctive name of the God of Israel" (or of the Israelites) in the same sense that Chemosh was the god of the Ammonites, Milcom was the god of the Moabites, Qaws was the god of the Edomites, Moloch was the god of the Phoenicians, etc. etc. AnonMoos 18:03, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Duffer1[edit]

It's a fact that the "New World Translation" of the Bible replaces attested Greek kurios with "Jehovah" in its English version of the New Testament. AnonMoos 11:41, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am aware of this, The NWT Translators did this approximately 237 times (a point already covered in the NWT article). This is not what the article says. Witnesses teach and believe that it is likely authentic autographs of the books of the NT (if ever found) would include the Tetra (not "Jehovah") for various reasons. The removed section was false on several fronts 1 - We do not teach or believe any extant or non-extant Greek NT manuscript would include the name "Jehovah", we believe it to be probable that the Tetra would be found in authentic autographs if ever found. 2 - "Jehovah" is not "the only sacred name of God". The Tetra is; rendered in various forms in given languages "Jehovah" in English, "Jeová" in Portugeus, "Jehovových" in Czech, "Geova" in Italian, etc.. Instead of inundating the article with these irrelevant facts, I simply removed the erroneous sentence. Duffer 02:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One can't help notice the similarity between "Jove" and "Jehova"[edit]

According to the Roman numerals article, IV was short for both Jove and YHWH. And that got me to thinking that the words "Jove" and "Jehova" were very similar, but any reason for the similarity is not addressed in that article or in this. Is there a connection between the two words or is it merely a striking coincidence? 24.199.113.113 21:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Total coincidence owing to transliteration between two or more language. Jove in Latin is "IOVIS" (YO-wees), and Jehovah in Hebrew was originally something like "Yahweh" but the reading that leads to Jehovah sounds like "Ye-ho-wah" and is no older than the 13th century.Yahnatan 21:32, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly -- "Jove" comes from older Indo-European words with a form something like Dyews (the same source as Greek "Zeus"), while the tetragrammaton YHWH in all probability is derived in some way from a triconsonantal root H-W-Y. So when you look at the original sources, the Indo-European root deyw and the Semitic consonantal root h-w-y, then the words really don't look too similar... AnonMoos
This subject has been discussed in a Finnish book called "Vainamoisen juuret" or "The Roots of Vainamoinen" (ISBN 952-90-1483-X) by Mikko Ollus. The book suggests that the name Jove is derived from Yahweh/Jehovah/YHWH. -- unsigned comment by User:Wessi 20:44, 12 April 2006
Then I suspect that the book is non-scholarly borderline nonsense. AnonMoos 07:08, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The author refers to Wilkinson's book Egyptians and Hislop's the Two Babylons. But I understand, you have a mission. --Wessi 07:42, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have a "mission" all right -- scholarly accuracy. I'm holding in my hot little hands at this very moment the dissertation "Indo-European *Deiwos and Related Words" by Grace Sturtevant Hopkins, which is a nice summary of the results of traditional neo-grammarian style scholarship in this area, and she feels no need to call in Semitic languages... AnonMoos 08:04, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"She?" -I rest my case ;)--Wessi 20:29, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What the ----is that supposed to mean???? I bet that Grace Sturtevant Hopkins (whoever she may have been) knew quite a bit more about Indo-European linguistics and etymologies than you do! AnonMoos 00:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anon Moos, RE: "Proto Indo European Roots": Much ado about nothing[edit]

One should not give so much as an ounce of credibility to the reconstructed 'Proto Indo-European language' and its so-called 'roots'. I have never seen so much hype concerning a hypothetical language the existence of which cannot be ascertained by any hard evidence, so why are the linguists so certain? In fact, each of these purported roots is far more of a conjecture than any of the hypothesized vocalizations of YHWH, and even there the much-touted (improbably bisyllabic) YAHWEH vocalization has been hailed by neo-scholars as a metaphysical truth, though it has been rightly assailed and questioned by many. As an example, you mentioned that the Roman name for Jupiter, i.e. Jove or IOVE/IOVIS, is in fact derived from the 'proto-Indo-European root' *Deiwos or *Dyeus. How so? There are words in Latin obviously derived from a root along those lines, i.e. DEUS (God) and DIVUS (deified), which is etymologically related to Latin DIES (Day), and similar to the Greek God ZEUS. But the etymology of JOVE is not so obvious, as the Indo-European scholars are also quick to imply that Jove's wife, JUNO, has a name derived from a different 'proto-Indo-European root' *Yeu, vital force, related to the word 'youth'. Furthermore, it will not escape the discerning eye that the full Latin name of IUPPITER, is of similar form to the Greek god, related to Zeus, called IAPETUS. It's interesting that Iapetus does not retain the initial consonant found in Zeus, just like Iuppiter does not retain the initial consonant found in Deus. Concerning YHWH in Hebrew, it most likely based on the Hebrew root havah, which is an archaic form of hayah, which in the present tense signify 'to be'. Both of these roots, if used in the past and future tenses and followed by the inseparable preposition 'L' , are related to the word 'have', i.e. possession. Havah is a very ancient root, and its similarity to the words for 'have' in various European languages is obvious. Naturally, the Indo-European scholars will find a way to write it off as coincidence or conveniently tie it to some separate "proto-Semitic root" which has yet to be found. Hopefully, the field of pro-linguistics will be taken over by people who have a keen understanding of both families of languages, who will not be so quick to come up with non-existent proto-roots without a shred of hard evidence. ---JB

Whatever -- you have your opinions, but if the consensus of scholars holds to a different opinion, then your opinion probably doesn't belong on Wikipedia (unless its the notable belief of a notable religious group). The place to debate the non-existence of proto-Indo-European roots is the List of Proto-Indo-European roots article and similar articles, not here (but I doubt whether they will find your contributions useful there, either). Meanwhile, I notice an interesting inconsistency in what you're saying -- you admit that Jove has a "d"-consonant in its original etymology, while YHWH has nothing like a "d" consonant in its original etymology. So how can the words be related? AnonMoos 13:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. There's even an article Dyeus... AnonMoos 22:38, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ineffible name?[edit]

If the Jewish position really is that the name of G-d is ineffable, i.e. unpronouncable, wouldn't that mean that it is not intended to have any vowels? That way no one would be able to pronounce it--it truly would be ineffible. This would necessitate the Jews borrowing vowels from some other word to be able to pronounce this one, and obviously they would borrow either from Adonai or Elohim or both, sometimes one, sometimes the other.

There's no evidence that any Jews anywhere at any time ever used the consonants of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai or Elohim in actual out-loud pronunciation. Rather, the vowel diacritics of Adonai (only partially written) had the purpose of reminding them to pronounce YHWH out loud as "Adonai". This is exactly the same type of "standing Q're" or "Q're perpetuum" as when a word spelled he-waw-aleph (usually pronounced "hu", a 3rd. masc. sg. pronoun) has a hireq diacritic under it as reminder that it should be pronunced "hi" instead (i.e. as a 3rd. fem. sg. pronoun). If you combined the vowel of the Q're reading with the consonant letters of the K'tibh reading in this case you would get "hiw" (which does not mean anything). The hypothetical "hiw" would be just as much nonsense as "Yehowah"/"Jehovah" is, since both are derived using exactly the same (wrong) method.
Furthermore, the out-loud pronounciation of the Tetragrammaton was basically confined to one yearly utterance by the High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple already by the time of Jesus -- over 500 years before any of the Hebrew vowel diacritics were ever invented... AnonMoos 04:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And deriving vowels by random guess is a solid scientific principle, right? "There's no evidence that any Jews anywhere at any time ever used the consonants of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai or Elohim in actual out-loud pronunciation." Of course not, because no one ever writes a word the way they pronounce it.
Please see Q're Perpetuum (which I announced and conveniently linked just below) for a detailed explanation as to why the vowel points of one word would be written within the consonantal orthography of another word. The Jews didn't "guess" anything -- from even before the time of Jesus, most of them pronounced YHWH as Adonai in most cases, plain and simple (which is why the word Kurios shows up in Greek translations). If anyone was doing any "guessing" (if you want to call it that), it was the 18th-19th century Christian scholars who came up with Yahweh -- Yahweh is a slightly speculative reconstruction, and has always been admitted by scholars to be a slightly speculative reconstruction. However, this has nothing to do with the fact that the masoretic orthography of the Tetragrammaton (with the partial vowel points of Adonai inserted into the consonantal orthography YHWH) has nothing to do with the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton -- i.e. Yehowah/Jehovah is simply a mistaken form. So the Masoretes didn't indicate any pronunciation for YHWH in their annotated Biblical text -- and furthermore, they didn't want to indicate any pronunciation for YHWH in their annotated Biblical text. Also, a point you don't seem to have grasped is that the Masoretic vowel diacritic systems probably didn't start being invented until the 7th century A.D., and weren't really in widespread use until around the early 900's -- many centuries after YHWH had stopped being pronounced at all by mainstream Jews. AnonMoos 19:02, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In general terms, idle speculations by persons without detailed knowledge of relevant ancient languages and orthographies are unlikely to be very fruitful... P.S. It's spelled "ineffable". AnonMoos 19:02, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Added Q're perpetuum article[edit]

Q're perpetuum of the 3rd. fem. singular pronoun

I made an article just on Q're perpetuum, with an accompanying image... AnonMoos 17:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Historical phonology[edit]

If you're not familiar with historical phonology and the history of the pronunciation of ancient Greek and/or Hebrew, then please don't try to fake it. Claiming that Greek omicron-upsilon couldn't be a transcription of a Hebrew [w] consonant is pretty much linguistic nonsense... AnonMoos 04:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Off-topic sections?[edit]

I removed this article from Category:Wikipedia articles with off-topic sections because it is unclear which section(s) this refers to. If anyone notices anything off-topic, please leave a note to that effect, or simply move the offending material to an on-topic article. Thanks! -- Beland 23:31, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was kind of wondering about that, too; probably a remnant of long-past edit wars. AnonMoos 07:09, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Transcribing the tetragrammaton[edit]

I don't know what this POV fork edit war is all about but I moved its talk page to Talk:Tetragrammaton/Transcribing the tetragrammaton. I don't care what happens to it but it was at Archive:Talk:Transcribing the tetragrammaton which isn't the proper place for it. —Wknight94 (talk) 12:27, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What it basically all means is that some people all of a sudden somehow seemed to perceive an urgent burning need to merge "Jehovah" into "Tetragrammaton" at top speed with blazing emergency priority -- and they don't seem to have really explained themselves at any length or consulted with regular editors of the articles in question, but instead merely loosely tossed around a few jargon terms like "POV fork", and then immediately proceeded with hasty drastic surgery which left several fragments of things lying around in different places. AnonMoos 06:50, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IOUO[edit]

has anyone heard of this? i'm not a jehovah's witness and i found this website by chance. it's from a jehovah's witness pursuit of truth and as a believer of god and the historicity of god i am fascinated by the tetragammaton. what i want to say is this: i came to the same conclusion as he did and when i found his work, i was in awe of the coincidence. if anyone is interested this is the site. http://www.iouo.de/

It may or may not have any interest as a pure hypothetical speculation detatched from history and linguistics -- but unfortunately, it seems to have very little relationship with the ancient Hebrew language. Every one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet was originally and primarily a consonant letter -- only a few letters could write vowels, and then only in somewhat restricted circumstances (see Matres lectionis for an overview, though this doesn't fully explain all the restrictions). According to these restrictions, Y י can't be a mater lectionis at the beginning of the word, and H ה can only be a mater lectionis at the end of the word, so right off the first two letters of YHWH are guaranteed NOT to be vowel letters. Furthermore, in the Biblical Hebrew language, every syllable had to begin with a consonant sound (except the shortest word for "and, but", which is irrelevant to the Tetragrammaton). That means that wherever you see a syllabic vowel in Biblical Hebrew, then you must see a consonant immediately preceding it. (Syllabic vowels are all vowel elements except for a few vowel elements which are the non-sonorous parts of diphthongs, and these are again not relevant to the Tetragrammaton). This means that according to the rules of Biblical Hebrew, only the third OR the fourth letters of YHWH can be a vowel letter (and not both together) -- all the other three have to be pronounced consonant letters. AnonMoos 12:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK i get that but i still think there is a percentage chance that ivpater [YW father as it would be modernly written] has its foundation on the YHWH and it could be vowels since there is a josephus attestation of such. and according to ancient biblical hebrew, how would you pronounce the tetragrammaton under the right grammar significance? yehovah? yahowah? and what about yahweh? is it feasible? i do think that there is a historic knowledge of god in the ancient world prior and simultaneously in accord with the biblical hebrew traditions. for me jupiter is a offset of ywhw. ps: did you read the whole thing or just burst in with your preconceived understanding? K2 02:50, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Dude, all surviving works of Josephus are written in the GREEK alphabet, which was a very different matter from the Hebrew alphabet (since Greek was a very different language than Hebrew, with a different phonological inventory and phonotactics). It so happens that the Hellenistic Greek writing system didn't have any way of writing ANY of the sounds [y], [w], or non-word-initial [h] in an unambiguously consonantal manner -- so that Hebrew YHWH is of course necessarily guaranteed to look like it has a lot of vowels and no obvious consonants when transcribed into Greek. However, this has very little to do with the Hebrew pronunciation. As for the "Jove" nonsense, I've discussed its problems in detail with scholarly references above, while you seem to be abstractly hypothetically speculating from a position of relative ignorance of the relevant facts. If you're determined to follow this though, then the proper place to start would be to try to trace a connection between the EARLIEST RECOVERABLE forms on each side -- i.e. the Indo-European root *deiw (meaning "bright, divine") and the Northwest Semitic consonantal root h-w-y or h-w-w (meaning "to be", "to exist"). However, trying to make something of a vague sound-resemblence between the later derived forms "Jove" and "Yahweh" or YHWH (which, byt the way, was NEVER pronounced Yehowah/Jehovah in Hebrew) is a linguistically highly unsound procedure. AnonMoos 17:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
dude, ok, i admit, i'm not schorlarly as you are but i'm not an idiot either. i also care about etymologies and i have a special love for names. and i still think you didn't read or go to the site i reffered above. i do belive there is a connection between *DYEVS, IVPITER & IHVH OR YHWH as now it is acclaimed to be. to think, to limit the name of god in the hebrew lexicon is a major mistake. god existed before the jews, yehudim??; i know a bit of greek, latin and hebrew, and i can read them as they are written. back to god, i think it's down right ridiculous and outrageous to deliberate a proclamation of truth of the name of god alone to the hebrew. it's like making sense of middle english according to the style of shakespeare. yes, the hebrew bible is important but to make sense of the language according to it it not. if you study english, you can grasp the changes of middle english and thru me you can conprehend by comparative learning, how the language evolved from old english to this mutant we call modern english. the same principle can be applied to hebrew. we don't know the coming abouts of the language. we only know what's been given to us, and to exclude the hebrew language and jewish tradition from the middle east culture is a intolerable blunder. and since you know hebrew more than i do. what would you think to be the pronunciation of the name or why would it not be pronounced then? i'll go more about my findings later on but i like this.K2 02:04, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder why it is that people untrained in linguistics often seem to think that by idle hypothetical abstract speculation they can know things with a certainty that is denied to professional scholars who have devoted a lifetime of work to serious study in the area? People untrained in civil engineering and architecture don't usually have the delusion that they can design a 100-story skyscraper much better than a professional architect or engineer could, and people who have never done any woodworking don't usually assume that they can do a marquetry inlay better than a professional carpenter. But for some reason, some people think that linguistics is somehow different.[7]
P.S. Your comments would be easier to read if you would use capital letters. AnonMoos 06:26, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
hello, world. so i'm pretty sad that i got censured. why? my use of suction as a means of reasoning. i stated a fact, not an opinion. and i'm sorry mr. anon, i don't think i have to oblige to standards just to participate in this discussion. had it been an article, i would've complied with the regulations. i'm still pretty bummed that you don't tell your opinion about anything. i am not a jw. and i don't think that my faith should play a part. i believe you're ignorant about linguistics, if you knew any, you'd know that folk etymology is ancient as it is modern, let's just say hamburger. and since i'm a speaker of more than one language, i think i know how languages behave just fine. and i just realized something: i didn't even state my position about the tetragrammaton, i was just sharing something which i thought is relevant. why is the tetragrammaton important to you?K2 03:30, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

do you people really think this is the most important thing to be getting upset about? about a dare I say it a 'name'

Still discussing merging Jehovah?[edit]

Somebody put a merge template suggesting merging Jehovah into the relevant section of this article.

As chaotic as this has been, I have to wonder if that's wise. Still, I think the majority of the Jehovah article can be merged here, with a minimum of a redirect from Jehovah. On the other hand, I have to wonder if there might be more content to Jehovah than just the Tetragrammaton. --Joe Sewell 20:37, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment editors seem to be free to edit the section:Jehovah in this Wikipedia Article:Tetragrammaton, as well as to edit the Wikipedia Article:Jehovah. Maybe it should be left the way it is.
There was a time when a small group of editors fought to have a single Wikipedia Article:Jehovah. Once again they have such an article available.
I have been thinking of adding to the section Jehovah here as well as adding to the Wikipedia Article:Jehovah.
Seeker02421 21:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Iaoue again[edit]

Seeker, please put the material which is more relevant to the Iaoue article than to this article in the Iaoue article, and not into this article. If you leave it up to me to make the transfer, then you're probably not going to be happy with how I'll do it. AnonMoos 01:57, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jehovah's Witnesses?[edit]

Shouldn't the group that has done more to make the world aware of this subject than anyone else have mention in this article? I am bringing it up here to avoid edit disputes. There was a section at one time and an external link but has been removed for some reason. George 13:03, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In past discussions, some JW editors have felt sensitive their group being singled out (see #Duffer1 above for a small part of this), while others have felt that JW's have overall played more of a negative role with respect to sound linguistic-historical scholarship. AnonMoos 01:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. JW's are routinely singled out in internet forums. Although WP is probably the easiest to operate within (as a JW). It can be difficult since most don't look at our information before deciding we're wrong, they just believe we are because of conflicts with popular doctrines/dogmas.
For example: A quick look at this shows that as far as 'sound liguistic-historical scholarship' is concerned, JW's agree with the scholarly sources sighted in the WP article.
Duffer was under attack by some now banned users and may have been in a poor position to work effectively at the time. George 23:34, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I added a reference note to the article. that should suffice.George 21:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ya Allah[edit]

Salaam,

I'm removing the rubbish about how the "Ya" (O) in "Ya Allah" is derivative of the YH (Yah) of YHWH (Yahweh).

The Qur'an (in its original Arabic) also uses:

Ya Musa = O Moses = O Moshe Ya Da`uud = O David = O Dovid Ya Haroon = O Aaron = O Aharon

And so on, and so forth. Ya means O (Oh), it does not find its root in the Tetragrammaton since Moshe, Dovid, Aharon etc. are humans, they are in no way associated with Almighty God.

Let me be crystal clear: "Ya Musa" (O Moses) does not MEAN OR IMPLY "Lord Moses". This implication is without basis, it's nothing but heresay and isn't accepted by anyone with a shred of Semitic knowledge or dignity.

No god but GOD, He alone is GOD, He has no partners or associations. GOD be glorified.

I think the argument actually was that near-homophony with the Tetragrammaton indirectly contributed to the loss of the vocative particle from Hebrew. However, it was basically only speculation (I'm not sure how linguistically sound), so its deletion is no great loss. AnonMoos 07:32, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yahweh in the Greek New Testament[edit]

This section was highly dubious, and rather inappropriately prescriptive when it said that Kurios "should" be translated into English as Yahweh. As a simple matter of historical fact, no one but the JW's has consistently and thoroughly done so (and they use "Jehovah", not "Yahweh"). Furthermore, translating Old Testament YHWH into Greek as Kurios was a standard Jewish practice dating at least to the Septuagint (150 years before Jesus was born), and the New Testament isn't particularly special in this respect. AnonMoos 00:58, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strangely, there has been a lot of debate about this on B-Hebrew recently, as well as about the validity of the LXX in general. I have read the debates, but I do not participate in them much, since it seems to be mostly speculative. One thing is certain: it would be absolutely impossible to translate κύριος as "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" all the time in the New Testament. First of all, this does not allow for a separation between Jesus and "God" (as in the phrase "was with God", John 1:1b), a separation which is consistent in the NT. For instance, Paul says in Ephesians 4:5-6 --
εἷς κύριος, μία πίστις, ἓν βάπτισμα, εἷς θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ πάντων, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν. (Greek text)
"[There is] one lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, the one [that is] over all and through all and in all." (my translation)
"one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all [persons], who is over all and through all and in all." (New World Translation)
It would make very little sense indeed to translate κύριος in this passage as "Yahweh" (or some other transliteration of the Tetragrammaton). Obviously, he was refering to Jesus in the first bold phrase and to God in the second bold phrase. Even the JWs do not translate it otherwise here. If the Tetragrammaton does not appear in the NT, how do you make the judgment about which verses should be translated as "lord"/"master" and which should be understood as a nomina sacra substituted for "YHWH"? Yonah mishael 14:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Uniformity[edit]

Hi,

I've seen several article about God's name. This one and Jehovah are labelled "NPOV", but not Yahweh (which should be labelled to, cause it tells : "this form, Yahweh, as the correct one"). Also there is another called Iahoue which could be integrated to Yahweh.

I suggest to turn them all into a main article (Tetragrammaton) and a specialized article for the pronunciation problem, which exposes arguments and origins for Yehowah (also Jehovah, Iehovah, etc.) and Yahweh forms. What's your opinion about it ? Ayadho (From the french Wikipedia)

Adminster[edit]

Dear Adminster, you're unlikely to impress anyone very much, as long as your main "contributions" consist entirely of deleting large sections of the article. If you have specific objections, then why not discuss them here first before you start trying major surgery? AnonMoos 09:48, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Transcription vs. Transliteration[edit]

I decided to enter these comments in case someone else is wondering the same thing:

When I first read this article, I thought "Why aren't they using the word 'transliterate' instead of 'transcribe' throughout the page?" I did so, because the common understanding I have of these words when applied to copying (writing) a text are:
1) Transcribe = To copy what you see using the same characters; get it as close as possible so as to pass along the same information. Similar to those who 'transcribe spoken words' ('dictation') but in a visual sense instead.
2) Transliteration = Copying words/letters from one language into another; esp. when the two languages have a completely different character set, but also attempting to reprodcue the original language's sounds using the target language's characters (though additional symbols may be required to accurately do so).
If such definitions (esp. #1) were employed, you can see why I immediately felt changes were necessary here; that putting a Hebrew word into Greek, Latin or whatever other language/alphabet should be 'transliteration'. Yet, after reading Wikipedia's articles on these two words, Transliteration and Transcription, it seems there's much more overlap between the two than I'd hoped for. As a matter of fact, each article at times appears to be conflicted with itself over its definition! I still believe my first (literary) instincts are correct concerning their usage, however reading the articles as they are at present left me so confused, I'm going to defer to a more knowledgable editor.

Insofar as linguists make a distinction between the two, "transliteration" is often applied to a fairly strict letter-by-letter (or grapheme-by-grapheme) translation of written language from one writing system to another writing system, while "transcription" is a more general and loose term. AnonMoos 07:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't you agree, though, that "transcription" deals with how to represent the phonetics of a given word? In other words, we can transcribe יהוה‎ as [jɑ'wɛ] or [jɑ'vɛ] or something analogous, but we would transliterate it using a set of symbols that attempt either a letter-for-letter representation or sound-for-sound equivalent (the latter not tapping into a special character set). Transliterations might include Yahweh, YHWH, Jehovah, or Yěhōwāh. In other words, I would take "transcription" to be more technical than "transliteration," thinking that the former has more to deal with an accepted standard representation of the phonetic values of a word, whereas transliteration can either be letter-for-letter or phonetic. This is how I have understood the division, but I might be wrong. ;) Yonah mishael 14:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Yonah wrote:
"Transliterations might include Yahweh,snip/snip"
On b-hebrew "YAH:WEH" [ not "Yahweh" ] is said to be a transcription [ not a transliteration ] of Gesenius's proposed Hebrew punctuation of YHWH [ i.e. יַהְוֶה‎ ].
Refer to the Michigan-Claremont-Westminster transcription scheme (MCW) which is used by posters on b-hebrew.
However both the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon and the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1901-1906 use the English spelling "Yahweh" [ not "YAH:WEH" ] to represent Gesenius's proposed Hebrew punctuation of YHWH.
"Yahweh" does not seem to be a transliteration of יַהְוֶה‎, since the silent shewa used as a syllable break does not appear in the spelling "Yahweh".
Some sources seem to believe that "Iaoue" [ in Greek letters ] can be represented by "Yahweh", but is "Yahweh" a legitimate transliteration or transcription of "Iaoue" [ in Greek letters ]?


Seeker02421 23:21, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Seeker -- I was not intending to mean that Yahweh could not be also used as a transcription, seeing that the patach (ַ) is transcribed most of the time with a short "a" (a) and the segol (ֶ) with a short "e" (e). In this case, it is a perfectly normal transcription of יַהְוֶה‎ (since it is an attempt the name phonetically). Having just checked the American Heritage Dictionary on dictionary.com, however, I see that in entry 6 "transcribe" is used as a synonym of both "translate" and "transliterate." In Linguistics (entry 5), it is said to mean "[t]o represent (speech sounds) by phonetic symbols", which is the meaning that I intended. Again, "transliterate" comes out in the same dictionary as "[t]o represent (letters or words) in the corresponding characters of another alphabet", which is what I was trying to express before -- that it deals with letter-for-letter equivalence rather than sound-for-sound or phonetic transcription. - Yonah mishael 16:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tetragrammaton in the New Testament[edit]

This article has been worked up well, and mainly discusses why some scholars feel the name should be included in the NT. Anyone care to join in? George 13:17, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about this?[edit]

Is the answer to the question people keep so simple many over-look it? personally i think that YAHWEH is at least close to the correct pronunciation of GOD's name. not because of what the scholars say, its because i can breathe. GOD is the GOD of life, and how do we stay alive, we have to BREATHE! so as a reminder of who he is, for those who will take the time and listen, GOD has put his name into breathing itself. take a nice, calm deep breath, what does it sound like? yah.....weh......can anyone else besides me hear it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tcsv (talk • contribs) 04:52, 20 July 2006 UTC

And that is the basis for this validation? I've heard this argued before and though it may have personal meaning, it is no basis for a deduction or conclusion pertinent to the pronunciation of YHWH. You are anglicizing or Europeanizing what Israelite tribespeople of 3,000 years ago originally might have uttered phonemically. That is pure speculation - hardly a proof. Stevenmitchell 08:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Non-Christian messianic interpretations?[edit]

I met this dude yesterday who believes that the tetragrammation could be interpreted as something derived from Yahushua (but interestingly thought the name "Jesus" is blasphemous). I was wondering if anyone who knows about this kind of interpretation of the tetragrammation as a name for a Jesus-like god could add a section on this interesting movement. Daniel 71.200.160.117 17:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Yahshuah for a little of the background to this... AnonMoos 03:31, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Popular Culture section[edit]

Is there any real benefit to the "Popular Culture" section? It appears to be simply a random list of minor occurences with no actual relation to the rest of the entry. Readers interested in the Tetragrammaton itself are not likely to care about any of these, and readers interested in the games/books/etc in the list aren't going to be looking here for information. The only really worthwhile part of the section is the St. Marri image, which could easily be moved elsewhere in the article. Thoughts? Dbratton 18:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it's not here, then people are going to want it to go somewhere (maybe to a "Tetragrammaton (disamboiguation)" page). You're right that Image:Tetragrammaton Paris StMichele.JPG isn't really "popular culture"... AnonMoos 20:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Given the general lack of enthusiasm for keeping this section (but thanks to AnonMoos), I'm going to be bold and excise the section based in large part on the Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles guidelines. There's a few interesting bits of information in there, but most of it is quite inconsequential and none of it is important to the subject of the article.
As mentioned above, the St. Marri image may be worth saving simply as illustration if an appropriate position in the article can be determined. I had a cursory look through the page and nowhere jumped out at me, but others may be able to place it. Dbratton 17:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The section is reproduced here in case an editor finds a point they feel is worth saving for integration into the rest of the article:

{{spoiler}}

Crucified Jesus below a radiant Tetragrammaton at the church of St. Marri at Paris, France.
Religious Broadcasting
Art
  • A crucified Jesus below a radiant Tetragrammaton is found in the church of St. Marri at Paris, near the Centre Pompidou.
Films
  • In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones must cross a room of lettered tiles. To step on the wrong letter would trigger a deadly trap. An ancient Latin manuscript provides a clue to safe passage: he must walk in a sequence that will spell out "the name of God." He remembers not a moment too soon that "in the Latin alphabet, 'Jehovah' begins with an 'I'".
  • In Equilibrium, a dystopic view of the future in which the government mandates that all individuals take psychiatric medications to suppress feeling, the agency responsible for policing the state is known as the Tetragrammaton.
  • In Pi, a group of kabbalistic Jews looking for the true name of God enlist the help of a mathematician to analyze the Torah.
  • In Monty Python's Life of Brian, a man is persecuted for saying out loud the name of God ("I only said that this bit of halibut was good enough for Jehovah!"). The accuser then accidentally lets this "blasphemy" slip out and is himself stoned.
  • In Bruce Almighty, Yahweh! is the name given to Bruce's computerized tool for sorting prayers to answer, parodying popular search engine Yahoo!.
  • In Ghoulies, the phrase "yod hay vav hay" is said to summon up the evil spirits that ultimately become the ghoulies.
Literature
  • The Tetragrammaton features extensively in Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, and in short stories such as "Death and the Compass" by Jorge Luis Borges.
  • In Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the Universe, the "real" pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton is rendered as "Yahu-Wahu". (The "evidence" for this is that the cartoon character representing the author is struck by lightning while speculating whether the original pronunciation of YHWH is "Yehowah [Jehovah], Yahweh, or even Yahu-Wahu". Later in the book, Israelites are shown attacking a Canaanite city while uttering the war cry "Yahoo! Wahoo!").
  • In Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, a sort of alternate history in which magic and religion have objective reality and scientific status, the Tetragrammaton is used as the insignia of United States Army Intelligence units.
  • In the book All Hallow's Eve by Charles Williams, the dark magician Simon the Clerk uses an ultra-powerful spell of destruction or dissolution called the Anti-Tetragrammaton.
  • In the work of Nikos Kazantzakis "The Last Temptation of Christ", in the form "Jehovah".
  • In Philip K. Dick's novel Eye in the Sky, the eponymous Eye belongs to a god referred to as "(Tetragrammaton)".
  • In the short story "The Horror at Red Hook," by H.P. Lovecraft, the word "Tetragrammaton" appears in an engraving found by the protagonist. The engraving is said to be a list of "the most terrible daemon-evocations of the Alexandrian decadence" without further explanation.
Music
Games

Dbratton 17:13, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not meant to be pronounced?[edit]

Is anyone familiar with the theory that the Tetragrammaton was never a real word but was a combination of the vowel letters which were developed by Hebrew to make reading & writing more "accessible" to the masses? And that these vowel letters symbolized the power of language as inspired by God? I thought this was a fairly well-respected theory, I know I've read about it in a couple of books about the Hebrew language. I at least expected to find a section on this in the article, but everyone seems to be too worried about the putative "correct pronunciation". Not that I'm saying there isn't one; I wouldn't know, but this article is written under the presumption that there is one.

First, the correct term is Mater Lectionis. The term "vowel letter" could be misleading, because all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet had a basic and primary consonantal function during the whole ancient Hebrew period. Second, I don't know that there was greater literacy among ancient Hebrew-speakers than among Phoenician-speakers, yet the orthography of the Phoenician language used almost no "matres lectiones" whatsoever (until the very late Punic period). Third, there are rules as to the particular circumstances in which Matres Lectiones can indicate vowels (as I believe is discussed above), and the upshot is that no more than one of the letters of YHWH can be a Mater Lectionis -- either the "W" or the final "H" (but not both), and that's it. The Y can't be a Mater Lectionis, because word-initial consonant letters are never Matres Lectionis (except in very special circumstances applying to the proclitic conjunction morpheme, which are irrelevant here). The first H can't be a Mater Lectionis, because the letter he only occurs as a Mater Lectionis at the ends of words. The "W" and second "H" can't be Matres Lectiones simultaneously, because two vowels in a word must be always separated by a consonant (except in the special case of the "furtive patach", which is not relevant here). Fourth and last, most serious etymological speculation tends toward a derivation from a triconsonantal root meaning "to be" -- speculative synthesis of mystical words from scratch based on the properties of individual letters composing the word was not something that the Israelites/Jews of ca. 900 B.C. really went in for (it sounds a lot more like the kind of thing that the Qabbalists of 2000 years later would do...). AnonMoos 05:57, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First, I have come across the term "Mater lectionis", although I hardly see how that is the only "correct term", even in English discourse. Second, the theory I refer to does not necessarily assume that the Hebrews were more literate than any other people; it could be that the Hebrews themselves merely became more literate than they otherwise would have been after the development of vowel letters/matres lectionis, and recognized this. Third, I am perfectly aware of the rule that every syllable must begin with a consonant (even if that consonant, i.e. aleph, merely symbolises the absence of any consonantal sound), and that the yodh and waw, assuming the Tetragrammaton is a word, could not therefore function as symbols of a vowel sound. However, I think all of your arguments except the fourth entirely miss the point of the theory. And why is "serious etymological speculation" the be-all and end-all? - etymology is the study of the origins of words. I no longer have access to the book I read about this in, I don't even necessarily think it's right. But it's notable, it's been published, and I think there ought to be an entry on it here. (Sorry, I forgot to sign my first comment.)GSTQ 23:27, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dude, to cut to the chase, real scholars don't take such speculations seriously, so why should this article? What is the "notability", other than some random book you can't even remember the name of? AnonMoos 23:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]


User:AnonMoos[edit]

Anyone here who has issues with User:AnonMoos please note them.

I believe AnonMoos may be causing problems on Wikipedia. His actions are extreme to say the least. Just take a look at what he's been doing to the Flower of Life article. Multiple times he has eliminated a large amount of relevant information by completely reverting the changes I'd made to the article on the Flower of Life. To give you an idea of how extreme this is, please see a snapshot of before and after I contributed to the article. Any normal person would conclude that I contributed a great deal of useful information describing the subject. He simply erased it, and did so on the basis of his biased opinion towards the beliefs (which he called "New Age gobbledegook" and "Jargon") presented in the article. It is an article about a symbol which is considered sacred to people from various religious backgrounds, including Christian, Jew, Egyptian, and others from all over the world and throughout history for at least six millenia. What I did was to present the facts that these people held such beliefs in regard to the symbol. I even cited literally over 100 sources. His erasing this was comparable to if he had gone to the article on the Star of David and deleted any information on beliefs associated with the symbol. Ridiculous.

Now I happened upon AnonMoos causing even more problems. I contributed some important information to this article on the Tetragrammaton, amazed that it wasn't even mentioned to begin with. The Tetragrammaton is spoken of by the Rosicrucians. This article does not even mention this, in spite of the Rosicrucians being a notable ancient and current group of people. I contributed this information to the article and even cited my source; a reliable one at that. AnonMoos once again deleted my contributions by reverting the article.

I've also noticed that AnonMoos may have been causing other problems here with excessive reverting of work done on the Tetragrammaton article. That was my impression anyway.

Could someone please express some consensus here that AnonMoos is in the wrong? Is there something we can do about this? I sincerely believe that he is taking away from Wikipedia and in my opinion should be banned. --sloth_monkey 06:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This elaborate Jeremiad is almost entirely being misplaced, with most of it belonging on the "Flower of Life" article talk page, my user talk page, or in a mediation request (if you really found it necessary). However, I will say:
1) Even if the Rosicrucian Tetragrammaton information were factual, documentable, and noteworthy (something about which I have my doubts), it does NOT belong in the section up at the top of the article, but rather far, far down among the cultural references and trivia. It has almost nothing to do with the history of ancient or medieval religion, or scholarly studies thereof. As a rough rule of thumb, someone who doesn't already know much of the material in article Q're Perpetuum would appear to be lacking in the necessary qualifications for changing this article in a major way (such as by radically changing the content of what appears in the top section of this article, above the table of contents).
2) By all means, I encourage anyone who is interested in the topic to compare my currently preferred version of the "Flower of Life" article and Sloth_Monkey's. "My" version (which has actually been worked on by a number of people over years) is concise but factual (and NOT a "stub" in the sense of the word which Sloth_Monkey implies), while his version contains some potentially useful material, but thickly interlarded with New Age gibberish, which he apparently mostly got from the promotional puffery included in a board-game insert(!!) and a Jewelry store website(!!), and some random occult-oriented websites. AnonMoos 13:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category please[edit]

Maybe instead of arguing about what to and what not to include in one article and still keep it reasonably small, this article should be turned into a category, so that a neutral summary not favoring any ideas can be placed at the beginning of the category, and all roots of the article be referred through Category:Tetragrammaton. Austinian 22:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

history of not saying YHWH[edit]

When did the practice of not saying YHWH aloud begin? The fact belongs in this article and I couldn't find it. Did I just miss it? Jonathan Tweet 15:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether it's known exactly, but probably some time in the Persian-Hellenistic period. By Roman times, apparently the High Priest said it aloud once a year during a particular ritual. AnonMoos 13:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Adonai -- Singular or plural?[edit]

There is currently a content dispute between User:AnonMoos and myself regarding whether the word "Adonai" is grammatically singular or plural. User:AnonMoos insists it is plural but provides no evidence for this beyond his own original research on the subject to support his claim. --User:Karimarie 22:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stop saying that it's "original research"[sic] when you have good reason to know that it's not "original research"[sic]. Insisting on things which are factually false, and which you should have good reason to suspect are factually false, is not the way to promote the "civility" which you claim to allegedly value so highly!
In fact, consulting standard Biblical Hebrew reference works such as lexicons and grammars is not "original research"[sic]. As far as it has appeared up to now, I have the standard Biblical Hebrew reference works on my side, while Karimarie seems to have no applicable relevant knowledge or sources whatsoever to bring to bear in her attempts to overturn the state of the article as it existed for many months (before she and IP 130.91.237.16 started interfering). AnonMoos 22:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion has been moved from User talk:Karimarie and User talk:AnonMoos. Commentary is requested. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 22:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the standard relevant Biblical Hebrew morphological paradigm which can be found in any appropriate reference work on the subject (sorry that I use a rough-and-ready transcription in place of original Hebrew script, but my browser software doesn't handle niqqud too well). But according to Karimarie, cracking open a dictionary would be "Original research"[sic]! AnonMoos 22:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
אדון Singular Plural
Absolute state Adon Adonim
Construct state Adon Adonei
with 1st.sg. suffix Adoni Adonai
with 2nd.sg.masc. suffix Adonkha Adoneykha
with 2nd.sg.fem. suffix Adonekh Adonayikh
with 3rd.sg.masc. suffix Adono Adonaw
with 3rd.sg.fem. suffix Adonah Adoneyha
with 1st.pl. suffix Adonenu Adoneynu
with 2nd.pl.masc. suffix Adonkhem Adoneykhem
with 2nd.pl.fem. suffix Adonkhen Adoneykhen
with 3rd.pl.masc. suffix Adonam Adoneyhem
with 3rd.pl.fem. suffix Adonan Adoneyhen
just to be clear what sentences are we talking about and how would they read differently? Jon513 09:19, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This diff shows where anonymous IP 130.91.237.16 first introduced singularism into the page: [8] -- AnonMoos 18:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Allow me to try to clarify: AnonMoos is right that A––nai literally means "my Lords." However, 99% of the instances of "A––nai" in the Bible that refer to God are given singular verbs and adjectives, so the translation "my Lord" is most appropriate. If you don't believe me, the use of A––nai is common in the book of Psalms, so just do a search of it in Hebrew to be convinced. The same applies to E–––him; it literally means "Gods," but in 99% of cases is treated as singular (for example, "vayo'mer E–––him" in Genesis 1:3 et al.) so is best translated as "God." Note that both Names are also used in the Bible as common nouns for human "masters" and "judges" respectively, and in these cases the words are treated as plural. For an exception to the use of singular for God, see Samuel I 4:8, and note that the plural there was used by Philistine idolators who were accustomed to polytheism. Also note that "E–––him" is commonly modified by plural adjectives in Hebrew (eg. "E–––him chayyim"), but this is true of other singular nouns with an –im suffix; that deserves a separate discussion. In any event, I think the Tetragrammaton article captures the singular/plural paradox well later in the article by translating A––nai and E–––him as "my Lord(s)" and "my God(s)." I don't know the reason for the paradox, but I suspect it has something to do with God's simultaneously infinite and unified nature. If you disagree with any of this, please respond. Best of health! —Rafi Neal 16:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's called pluralis majestatis. Very common in many languages. Not worth making a fuss about. JFW | T@lk 18:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it takes singular agreement when referring to the God of Israel (the same as for Elohim, as discussed in the grammar section of the Elohim article), but it's still basically morphologically plural; both a literalistic translation and a contextual equivalence translation are given in the article. AnonMoos 22:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Removed Vowels[edit]

 I thought this was a pretty standard teaching, (the first part I'm going to say at least) but I guess not.  Here goes.

 The origional Torah was believed to be written with all vowels intact.  It was thus kept and guarded by the Priests of the Temple as precious as many believed the Hebrew Language itself to hold certian magickal powers, particularlly the word Tetragrammaton, which was only to be spoken within the Temple, and only within it's deepest layer, the holy of holies.
 Eventually, as time passed, Government became more powerfull than the Temple, and the people of Israel decided that they wanted a national language.  I forget exactally, but I believe it was mostly Aramaic that was spoken around that time, but I might be off on my timeline.  Anyway, the priests were horrified, because their belief was that others would learn to invoke these names, and thus use their powers for their own desire.  Thus all vowels were removed from the alphabet.  For this reason, punctuation marks are found only in Scripture, and not in Yiddish (common Hebrew).  I believe they may have been added much later though...
 YHVH, was therefore two words.  One was a name.  Another was a form of power.  The only difference was the vowels.  For example, if we were to take the vowel Maoch (sp?) and put it in it's proper place - obviously not including the other vowels for the above mention reasons (further discussed below) then it would read:
YHMVH.
Whereas Yahway, by whatever way you want to spell the pronounciation, would read with different vowels.  Thus, we have two different things.
 Tetragrammaton, as we now call it, was a formulae, a pattern, a mathamatical equation, whatever you would percieve it as.  In itself it is not a power or ability, it is simply a word which represents the ultimate controll (whether percieved as a pattern, formulae, or word invoked using gemmetria) through which all manifested action takes place.  Having the power to invoke this name, the "Ultimate Name," would, according to Legend, give you power over the entire universe.  The reality is, sadly, according to some, that it gives you control over the power you have, or in most case for those who obtain it without preperation, lack thereof.
 Thus it was legended that attempting to invoke the ultimate 'name', with it's true spelling, sought by scholars and mages for thousands of years through mathamatical and gemoetric methods (called gemmetria), would result in insanity, shattering the mind with thoughts of the ultimate understandings of the universe.
 Interestingly, some people with Schizophrenia are often diagnosised, as a precursor to symptoms to begin by saying that they believe they are starting to understand the mysteries of the universe, that there is a universal code, that everything somehow connects... but over time they become confused with reality, and stop looking outside themselves for the answers and look inside themselves, forsaking reality, thus begin dellusions and, in most cases, even hallucinations, most commonly of sight and sound (an interesting corrolation if you study the letters in question of the word and their values in Hebrew Gemmetria) to support a reality that no longer matches reality.
 Other interesting parrallels found in people whose dellusions begin in this way is that they somehow know information which is untrue, but represents a true reality.  (For example, one Mental Patient once stated of a Hospital that the walls and pipes were filled with mold, and everyone was getting sick.  It was eventually discovered that the lead based paint, and contamination in the pipes were making people sick, and that without aquiring any knowledge the patient knew this...  However, she created an internal, irrational justification that there was mold, which was not present.)
 Then of course lies the theory that Schizophrenia is not one illness, but many, with different root causes, but similar outward effects.  Since Schizophrenia is by medical definition not technically diagnosiable by anything but symptoms (cannot be scanned for in the brain, tested in the blood, etc) one can say this is a valid theory which can apparently be neither proven nor disproven my modern medical standards, only by belief.
 However, mental patients without both medication and psychological treatment will eventually "relapse" into a pattern of dellusional thinking which represents their last relapse, as if they were part-way into a puzzle, and can never get past that one peice.  Many resist taking medication, trying to reclaim a reality saying this time they will get it right, but this appears to be impossible.
 Regardless, many concepts found in Gemmetria (a mathamatical system which parrelles the concepts of the meaning of hebrew words - i.e. the mathamatical value for mother, added to the mathamatical value for child = the mathamatical value for child, thus mother + father = child) gives us a method for understanding Hebrew.  Perhaps the solution of life's ultimate riddle of the Universe is the solution of finding those letters, and perhaps it is best left alone.
 And perhaps people assume Jehovah, or Yahwey, is all powerfull while in fact Tetragrammaton is all powerfull, being that Tetragrammaton (being the manifestation of all actions, spiritual and physical laws) is all things which happen.
 Would it be appropriate (if not interesting) to consider it from this angle, both of the Kabbalistic study of Gemmetria, and of the correlations between Yahwey and Tetragrammaton as a person, and what we would now call a scientific law?
 Also, the mental illness and it's parrallels to Gemmetria are interesting, but I guess mostly in the context of the Legendary madness assoicated with obtaining T's power without being at at least Magus level (by the Order of the Golden Dawn's Standard of Spiritual awareness and control, since that seems to be the best standard I can think of).
 I know I spelled most of that wrong, sorry.

- P.A. / 56
You formatted what you wrote in a way that makes it very difficult to read, but in partial answer:
1) There was no orthography for vowels until well after 500 A.D. (except for the very partial system of matres lectionis).
2) It's generally accepted that Yah is short for Yahweh (or whatever the original form of YHWH was). If you subtract Yah from Yahweh, then you certainly don't get anything meaningful left over... AnonMoos 12:25, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Where the word YHWH come from?[edit]

When Moses asked god about his personal name, god answered him ..[ I am (who) what I am .....אהיה אשׁיר אהיה] …. Aheh asher Aheh ...NOT YHWH . יהוה…read ..Exodus 3:14… This Name ..[ I am (who) what I am….... אהיה אשׁיר אהיה]...…NOT… [YHWH …יהוה ]….should be Remember by Israelites Generation by Generation [דּר לדר ]..and forever [לְעלָם] Exodus 3:15….it means that [YHWH …יהוה ] is just a generic name for lord…not personal ONE, same as El, Elshadi, and Elohim.

……and why his personal name is not lord [ Jealous ] ?.......Exodus 34: 14 Do not worship any other god, for the [LORD, whose name is Jealous], is a jealous God…

YHWH is …. יהוה ....I am is Aheh אהיה …..where as the word …what / who ….in Hebrew is Asher אשׁיר.. …. I am what (who) I am… אהיה אשׁיר אהיה … Aheh asher Aheh Exodus 3:14.

The Question is … HOW the word [YHWH …יהוה ]….. is .. extracted or taken from the phrase …. I am what I am… ...אהיה אשׁיר אהיה … and how it became the personal name of the lord …not I am what I am ? ….where.. the word [YHWH …יהוה]..come from?

And if we supposed that YHWH is Personal name..we read ..Exodus 6:3 And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty בְּאֵל שַׁדָי , but by my name [YHWH יהוה]was I not known to them.

So it is either Exodus 6:3 is an Insertion ( which means YHWH is just a generic name Not a personal name of the god.. that if the personal name .. not.. I am what I am )……Or …{Genesis 22:14, Genesis 26,and Genesis 28}..are insertions in which means ( No story of Isaac to be sacrificed in mount of YHWH will provide” יְהוה ירָאֶה Gen 22:14 as Abrham himself gave it that name, ….No Alter being built by Isaac named after YHWH in Gen 26:25, …...and No Vision of Jacob seeing YHWH Gen 28 and Manifested to him as YHWH Elohim of Abraham, Isaac..etc..etc..and gave him the Promise….this Problem is for you to solve.

217.44.222.210 09:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, אהיה is conventionally vocalized "Ehyeh", not "Aheh"[sic]. "Asher" also has a short vowel in its second syllable, and so is spelled אשׁר , and not אשׁיר . You also appear to have little knowledge of Semitic morphological derivation by consonantal roots. AnonMoos 13:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First of all ...yes i did a spelling mistake.. Thank you for correcting me....

Secondly I am a Semite....But THEN....that is not the problem....the problem is not in my "OWN" spelling mistake ..coz people do mistakes ,same as the uncorrect "Aheh" instead of Ahieh or Ehyeh...that is how you you write it to English...alphabets...to give it "a relatively Close".. right vocalized Pronounciation.. Though..ironically it may be... there is NO agreement of the right pronunciation of the word YHWH . יהוה...

BUT ..The issue ..Is....What is the right personal Name of god ..YHWH …י הוה ..or Iam what I am.......… אהיה אשׁר אהיה ..?

Thank you again for correcting my spelling, and the close english pronouciation, But please give me the answer for this question...since you have not answer the question yet...81.152.236.210 15:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you study Hebrew grammar, especially morphological verb derivation by means of Triconsonantal roots, then you'll understand why Ehyeh and Yahweh are closer in terms of Hebrew than they seem to be in English. AnonMoos 16:00, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To Anonmoos Continue where the word YHWH come from?[edit]

Hi Anon

When Moses asked god about his personal name', god answered him ..[ I am (who) what I am .......אהיה אשׁר אהיה] …. Ahieh asher Ahieh ...NOT YHWH . יהוה…read ..Exodus 3:14… This Name ..[ I am (who) what I am…... אהיה אשׁר אהיה]…NOT… [YHWH …יהוה ]….should be Remember by Israelites Generation by Generation [דּר לדר ]..and forever [לְעלָם] Exodus 3:15….it means that [YHWH …יהוה ] is just a generic name for lord…not personal ONE, same as El, Elshadi, and Elohim.

''''The Question is where the word [YHWH …יהוה ]come from or how was it extracted from ....Ahieh Asher Ahieh....אהיה אשׁר אהיה ......what is god name..?...why not lord Jealous Exodus 34:14 ..?''''

And why this name .....אהיה אשׁר אהיה...never been mentioned again..in the bible..except in greek and by Paul 1Cor 15:10 .which close to I am what I am..knowing the fact..that...it. should be Remember by Israelites Generation by Generation [דּר לדר ]..and forever [לְעלָם] Exodus 3:15...?

Show me how is it drived..and stop the duck and dive tack -ticks..please...dont give me a whole web site to read...but make brief and simple

You have not answerd the question yet. Thanks. 81.152.236.210 16:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi 81.152.236.210,
Wikipedia is not a discussion forum. Take it to user talk or email, please. This page is for discussing the article - if you have additions or edits that you want to make, please describe them, otherwise please avoid filling this page with challenges to other editors on personal theories. Thanks. DanielC/T+ 17:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all

I appologize if it became like challenge..it is not suppose to be...but it is just a question.

Thanks.81.152.236.210 17:38, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a big deal, we just need to avoid turning this talk page into a debate about tangential subjects instead of information about the article itself. If you want to bring it up directly with specific editors feel free - you might also try one of the many Torah-study discussion boards on the internet. :) DanielC/T+ 18:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


the J in Jehovah[edit]

If martin Luther placed the J in the name Jehovah then who put it into the name Jesus? and why is the name Michael translated Migel in Spanish? The names in the Bible have meanings. Jehovah means "he causes to become" Jesus (Iesus, Yeheshuah) means "Jehovah (Yahweh, YHWH, JHVH) is salvation" Kljenni 02:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever -- "I" and "J" weren't systematically distinguished until the 17th century, and often weren't considered separate letters of the alphabet until the 19th century. Furthermore, the Hebrew of Jesus' name is Yehoshua` (long form) or Yeshua` short form (NOT "yeheshuah"[sic]). Here's something I wrote for a past ref-desk question:
The name was originally Hebrew and/or Aramaic, ישוע Yêshû`, which was a post-500 B.C. shortened form of older Hebrew יהושע Yehôshû` or "Joshuah". The same name ישוע Yêshû` occurs in the Hebrew of the Old Testament at Ezra 2:2, 2:6, 2:36, 2:40, 3:2, 3:8, 3:9, 3:10, 3:18, 4:3, 8:33; Nehemiah 3:19, 7:7, 7:11, 7:39, 7:43, 8:7, 8:17, 9:4, 9:5, 11:26, 12:1, 12:7, 12:8, 12:10, 12:24, 12:26; 1 Chronicles 24:11; and 2 Chronicles 31:15, and also in the Aramaic of the Old Testament at Ezra 5:2 -- but due to certain historical vagaries in transcription practices, in modern English Bible translations this name is usually rendered "Jeshua" in the Old Testament, but "Jesus" in the New Testament.
When this name was borrowed into other languages, neither ancient Greek nor ancient Latin had distinct letters for an [i] vowel and a [y] consonant -- the same letter was used for both sounds in each language. The Greek spelling was Ιησους (i.e. Iêsous). This was borrowed into Latin as IESVS (as it would have been carved in a monumental inscription). Ancient Latin IESVS is usually transcribed into modern alphabets as Jesus (since the letter "I" represented a consonant sound, while the letter "V" represented a vowel sound). The letters "J" and "I" were not fully distinguished in English until the 17th century, so that "Iesus" and "Jesus" were fully equivalent before that time (a swash glyph variation, not a distinction between separate letters). English "Jesus"/"Iesus" was derived from the Latin nominative case form, while "Jesu"/"Iesu" (common in Middle English) was derived from the Old French oblique case form and/or the Latin vocative case form. There were also some medieval spellings with "H" ("Ihesu", etc. similar to rednerings of other Biblical names such as Hierosolyma for Jerusalem), and could be influenced by Greek Eta (see IHS, for example), but these probably weren't generally pronounced with an "H" sound in medieval Latin / middle English. AnonMoos 03:32, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I once owned a replica of a 1772 Scottish Encylopedia Btitannica in which words starting with an initial letter "I" and words starting with an initial letter "J" were in the same section.
In my opinion the Roman Catholic 1749-1752 revision of the Douay Rheims Bible was the first English Bible to change "Iesus" to "Jesus". Later when the KJV was revised in 1762-1769 "Iesus" was changed to "Jesus". So for what it is worth both the Roman Catholic Church and the revisers of the King James Bible placed their seal-of-approval on the English spelling "Jesus" in the 18th century.
I own a Roman Catholic Missal which shows the Roman Catholic Priest using the Latin word "Jesus" [which was probably pronounced "ee-ay-sooce" like the Greek word "Iesous"] while the congregation followed along by using the English spelling "Jesus".
I assume that the "J" in Martin Luther's "Jehovah" sounded like an English "Y" sounds in 2007.
Seeker02421 11:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

so then you agree that Jehovah and Jesus are acceptable spellings and pronunciations.Kljenni 12:38, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The English form "Jesus" comes from a chain of successive adaptations when a word was borrowed from one language into another language, and natural changes when the sounds within one language evolved over time. So Greek Iêsous ΙΗΣΟΥΣ was the closest approximation of Hebrew/Aramaic ישוע Yêshû` which was possible in Greek, given the phonotactics of Greek (which lacked "sh" and the pharyngeal `Ayn sound, and in which consonantal "y" was a mere allophone of vowel "i"), and given the morphological requirements of Greek (where something had to be added onto the end of the name in order to allow it to have distinct case forms for the nominative, accusative, genitive etc. cases). Latin IESVS (in terms of modern letters "Jesus") is just a respelling of Greek ΙΗΣΟΥΣ when the word was borrowed into Latin. In the development of sounds from Latin into medieval French, Latin consonantal "y" sound became a "dzh" or "j" affricate, and "s" between two vowels was voiced to a "z" sound. In the development of sounds from medieval English to modern English, and original "ay" type vowel developed into a modern "ee" type vowel in the first syllable, while the vowel of the unstressed second syllable was reduced to a schwa vowel. So every step in the change of the Greek/Latin pronunciation yay-sooce to modern English dzhee-zuhs can be explained by natural patterns of cross-language sound adaptation, or within language sound change.
By contrast, a pronunciation "Yehowah" never actually existed in Hebrew (see Q're Perpetuum), so "Jehovah" is on much shakier ground than Jesus. AnonMoos 13:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Here are a few names from the Bible and their meanings


Ad·o·ni′jah Jehovah Is Lord.

A·bi′jah My Father Is Jehovah.

Je·ho·ad′din Jehovah Is Pleasure.

Je·ho′a·haz May Jehovah Take Hold; Jehovah Has Taken Hold.

Je·hosh′a·phat Jehovah Is Judge.

Je·hosh′e·ba Jehovah Is Plenty.

Je′sus Lat. form of the Gr. I·e·sous′, which corresponds to the Heb. Ye·shu′a‛ or Yehoh·shu′a‛ and means “Jehovah Is Salvation”.

Josh′u·a shortened form of Jehoshua, meaning “Jehovah Is Salvation”.

Je·hosh′u·a Jehovah Is Salvation.

Jah a poetic shortened form of Jehovah,

I·sa′iah Salvation of Jehovah.

John English equivalent of Jehohanan, meaning “Jehovah Has Shown Favor; Jehovah Has Been Gracious”.

It is simple and you dont need to pull out your PhD for this, the J in Jehovah is there because the other J's are Kljenni 00:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If "Yehowah" had ever existed in Hebrew, then "Jehovah" would certainly be an unexceptionable conventionalized English transcription of such a form "Yehowah". Unfortunately, "Yehowah" never existed in Hebrew. AnonMoos 03:57, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


AnonMoos please explain these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah#Transcription_in_other_languages Kljenni 04:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Kljenni
The Brown Driver Briggs Lexicon provides solid evidence that יְהֹוָה‎‎ is found 6518 times in the Masoretic Text that underlies the Old Testament of the King James Bible.
Strong's Concordance provides evidence that James Strong transliterated יְהֹוָה‎‎ into English as Yehovah, using his transliteration rules.
The issue is that Hebrew scholars to not believe that the Masoretes ever meant for the Jewish reader to read יְהֹוָה‎‎, "as it was written".
Modern scholars believe that Martin Luther made a serious mistake when he transliterated יְהֹוָה‎‎ into German as "Jehovah".
Modern scholars believe that Tyndale made a serious mistake when he transliterated God's name into 1530 A.D. English as "Iehouah".
Modern scholars believe that the Masoretes pointed "YHWH" with a modified version of the vowel points of "Adonay" thus creating the Hebrew spelling יְהֹוָה‎‎, which was never meant to be pronounced "as it was written.
Of course the scholars could be in error, but how to you explain why יֱהֹוִה‎‎ is found in the Masoretic Text 305 times when YHWH immediately precedes "Adonay" or immediately follows "Adonay"?
יֱהֹוִה‎‎ has the precise same vowel points as אֱלֹהִים‎ [i.e. Elohiym] has.
Seeker02421 10:36, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Since the Jews left off pronouncing Gods name early on in history probably due to superstition, and because the Hebrew Language did not have vowel points until after 50ad the pronunciation was lost. why would anyone argue against saying Gods name out loud? or the proper pronunciation of it? most words have changed for varying reasons,lazy speech habits are one major cause in our own time. How would you say in Biblical Hebrew "he causes to become"? that is the meaning of the name. Kljenni 12:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Hi to you all !

I dont see any problem about jesus name..or the right pronunciation of the word YHWH . יהוה....these are all together a total different and Minor problems.

The subject ..or Real Problem is ..is [YHWH …יהוה‎]…itself the true personal name of god...?....The Reason why...and I am deeply deeply sorry if I am making my self assertive/annoying in regard to this ( I think most important issue for me)..is because when Mosses asked God about his personal name, so to inform the Israelites about god's name ..if Israelites ask Moses. Then God ..said..tell them .. I am what I am…אהיה אשׁר אהיה‎…exodus 3:14-15..NOT [YHWH …יהוה‎]…

This Name ..[ I am (who) what I am…... אהיה אשׁר אהיה]…NOT… [YHWH …יהוה ]….should be Remember by Israelites Generation by Generation [דּר לדר ]..and forever [לְעלָם] Exodus 3:15.

And how the word [YHWH …יהוה‎]….. is .. extracted or taken from the phrase …. I am what I am…אהיה אשׁר אהיה‎… please Show me the Method..and make it brief and simple.

Once again My deep Apologies to you Ladies and Gentelmen

cheers and Regards.81.153.68.103 14:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jehovah a Separate Article[edit]

I am proposing a separate article instead of having Jehovah redirect here. Ice9Tea 12:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There was a separate article, but then someone eliminated it without any discussion or consensus, leaving a lot of untidy fragments around such as "Tetragrammaton content fork", "Talk:Tetragrammaton content fork", etc. There's some discussion about it in some of the sub-sections far above on this page. AnonMoos 22:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
how then does one un-merge these articles? Ice9Tea 01:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia Article Yahweh presents evidence that since at least 1604 A.D. there has been strong criticism of both Hebrew spellings of the Tetragrammaton [ e.g. יְהֹוָה‎ and יֱהֹוִה‎ ] that are found in the 1525 A.D. Ben Chayyim Hebrew text that underlies the Old Testament of the King James Bible.

Nevertheless in 2007 A.D., there are still persons who strongly believe that God's name is actually Yehovah (a.k.a. Jehovah).

In my opinion the separate Wikipedia article:Jehovah should be resurrected.

It is very easy to do.

Seeker02421 10:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. As it is, there is not a clear distinction between this article "Tetragrammaton" and the article Yahweh, which also has a lot of content on Jehovah. The hatnote here says,
This is a discussion of transcription of 'YHWH'. For the deity these letters represent, see Yahweh
but that does not seem to be a valid (current) explanation of the difference. I would favour merging all the articles on versions of this Name e.g. Iaoue and I am that I am, otherwise the encyclopedia is liable to hold overlapping and contradictory articles. If there is too much content to merge, then the distinction between the content of the various connected articles much be made clearer. - Fayenatic london (talk) 13:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The name Jehovah deserves its own article. The god Jehovah has 6,741,444 followers worldwide and does not have a wikipedia article devoted to his name.The name of Jehovah is printed within the pages of millions of Bibles each year, on Biblegateway.com it appears at Psalm 83:18 in five English version/ translations and three in Spanish. Yahweh appears there in one English version.
in contrast,There are approximately 1,000,000 Rastafarians worldwide whos god [9]
Haile Selassie has a wikipedia article devoted to his name.
Your example has only one line about that name and over 200 about the person, his actions and their results. In contrast, there are screens and screens about the semantics of this name. As a result, we need separate article about the name, and about the deity himself. The hatnote describes this distinction, but the articles do not provide it. Fayenatic london (talk) 16:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
ok you are right, it is the person of Jehovah who should be the topic of the article, the name, the meaning of the name, and the use of the name would be included in the article. maybe the article should be called Jehovah GodIce9Tea 16:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Favor An article about Jehovah the God would be useful and encyclopedic. Mention of the meanings and transliterations would be appropriate but detailed discussion of that topic would be better off here or even in another sub article. George 18:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are already articles on God in Islam, God in Buddhism, God in Sikhism. Perhaps it would make sense to add complementary articles on God in Judaism, God in Christianity, Jehovah Witnesses' teaching on God, LDS ditto, etc. These would be about the attributes of the deity as taught by each faith. As for the semantic articles, given the amount of content about the Tetragrammaton name and its interpretations, I'm coming round to favour a semantic article entitled Jehovah, if the separate articles Yahweh and Iaoue are to remain. To avoid unnecessary duplication, a lot that is currently in Tetragrammaton should then be moved out to separate articles on Jehovah, Yahweh, I Am that I Am, and Gematria. Fayenatic london (talk) 21:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am really impressed that anything gets done with the plethora of ideas that come out here. I like yours. George 01:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea of articles titled God in Judaism, God in Christianity, Jehovah Witnesses' teaching on God, etc. I think Tetragrammaton should be the main article about the name of God with subsidiary articles Jehovah, Yahweh. I am that I am should be a subsidiary article of God in Judaism and God in Christianity. --Richard 16:03, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I have created a new article God in Abrahamic religions. We already have God in Islam. We can add God in Judaism and God in Christianity later if it seems appropriate. --Richard 16:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a discussion going on over at Talk:Jehovah which started due to an edit war over whether or not to redirect that title to Yahweh. I have opened up the scope of discussion to include Jehovah, Yahweh and Tetragrammaton. Please express your opinion in the discussion. --Richard 15:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Clean Up[edit]

This artical seems a bit confusing and does not site refrences so i added the clean up banner

Stop the arguing.[edit]

Baptist is the logical standpoint. The catholics ad the word of the pope and the books inbeteen the old and new testament. The names of which escape my mind at the present moment. Methodist ignore the spirit and preach in toungs, which helps noone understand the Bible. i cover on ly baptism methodism and catholoscism i do not have time presently to place other beliefs in for i need to get to bed -- A Warior for Christ, Samuel Robbins<>< —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.52.201 (talk) 02:06, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What the heck does Protestantism vs. Catholicism have to do with the Tetragrammaton??? Absolutely nothing whatever, as far as I can see... AnonMoos (talk) 03:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article[edit]

User:Anthony_Appleyard section: YHWH[edit]

Perhaps this can be placed within the page somewhere? However, I do see the point that pronunciation of the Name is more related to the article YHWH. Thoughts? --AustinWellbelove (talk) 16:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anthony. You know as well as I do, that there is something very odd about the fact that Sky and Lisa are so adamant in deleting this quote from the article. Two sentances referring to what scholars consider most accurate pronunciation to to be, cannot be a bad thing. Kght (talk) 17:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a section[edit]

I think it'd be appropriate to add a section on the transliteration of the Tetragrammaton in to english. What do others think? 82.203.3.3 (talk) 09:40, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think that such a section would be plausible. However, further details of the English transliteration can be found at Yahweh and Jehovah. Is there really a need for it? --AustinWellbelove (talk) 10:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed the section, but added a link in the see also section to to information concerning the pronunciation of the name. The section added wasn't really about the English transliteration anyway, it was more about the correct pronunciation. --AustinWellbelove (talk) 10:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I was just thinking that a sentance or two should be included about the name Yahweh, since it is this name that most scholars beleive is the accurate pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton. Alleichem (talk) 09:55, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I agree. I think it does deserve some mention. As long as it doesn't turn into content-forking then it should be fine. --AustinWellbelove (talk) 17:41, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Jewish Name of God"[edit]

In the article it says that "The Tetragrammaton is the ancient Jewish name for God". Shouldn't this be the ancient "Hebrew" name or am I getting this wrong? Peace. Alleichem (talk) 12:35, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess if you could find other Hebrews using it... -LisaLiel (talk) 17:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's the ancient name that the Jews use for the Jewish God, so in that sense it is the ancient Jewish name for God. However, I do take your point that it is also the ancient Hebrew name for the Jewish God. However, the ancient general term for "god" is El (Hebrew: אל). What I propose is a rephrase? "The Tetragrammaton is the ancient Hebrew name for the Jewish God". I'll assume that this is fine and add it to the article. --AustinWellbelove (talk) 17:58, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How about "The Tetragrammaton is one of the ancient Hebrew names for the Jewish God." It's not the only one. -LisaLiel (talk) 18:02, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly, not to sure with the phrasing of "is one of". How about "The Tetragrammaton is an ancient Hebrew name for the Jewish God."? --AustinWellbelove (talk) 18:05, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What's the matter with "is one of"? It's accurate, verifiable, and informative. Not to mention true. -LisaLiel (talk) 12:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
it depends how one defines "name". --AustinWellbelove (talk) 15:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, that was cryptic enough. Care to elucidate? -LisaLiel (talk) 15:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... I guess not. -LisaLiel (talk) 11:41, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that. What i meant is that, you can have a Propper name as in you might call a cat "Fluffy". Or a general name such as calling a fluffy thing with whiskers a "cat". yod-he-waw-he could be argued to be the "Propper name" of the Jewish God. --AustinWellbelove (talk) 15:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. So given the fact that Jews view it as one of numerous names, we'd go with that, right? -LisaLiel (talk) 15:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Occurrences and Uses[edit]

I think the data found here with the times the name appears could be incorrect, no reference or source etc. Perhaps a check on this? Bible version etc.? Can anyone verify this? --AustinWellbelove (talk) 18:03, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've just searched a few codex's and they all give various results, most are around 5100-5300. Maybe we should remove this from the article? --AustinWellbelove (talk) 18:17, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Did a search on the Hebrew text, and got 6,828 occurrences... AnonMoos (talk) 08:14, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Various sources point to different numbers, what should we do? --AustinWellbelove (talk) 15:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the Allepo Codex, I found יהוה (yod-he-vav(waw)-he) 5175 times. In The Westminster Leningrad Codex i found it 5166 times. So what is the true answer? --AustinWellbelove (talk) 15:58, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Are you sure you're counting all hyphenations and vocalizations? I could generate a list of verse numbers, but it would be kind of unwieldy to post on a Wikipedia article talk page.... AnonMoos (talk) 23:43, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For example, I find seven occurrences of the Tetragrammaton in Obadiah, two in verse 1, and one each in verses 4, 8, 15, and 21. One of the occurrences in verse 1 has a less common vocalization, the occurrences in verses 4, 8, and 15 are hyphenated, and the occurrence in verse 21 has a prefixed preposition. If your search is turning up less than seven occurrences, then it may be having problems dealing with some of these cases... AnonMoos (talk) 03:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're right, for some reason, the search is not including hyphenations and vocalisations. I think what we should do, concerning the article, is remove the table, and just state the number of times the name occurs, followed by the codex etc. eg. Biblia Hebraica. I think that is better. There isn't really a need for the table (although, I do admit that I did place it there. --AustinWellbelove (talk) 06:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The entire bible has 8362 occurences of the name Jehovah.Ervs :son (talk)
Genesis=193, Exodus=435,Leviticus=320, Numbers=406, Deuteronomy=565, Joshua=235, Judges=191, Ruth=18, 1 Samuel 348, 2 Samuel=165, 1 Kings=279, 2 Kings=301, 1 Chronicles=183, 2 Chronicles=399, Ezra=38, Nehemiah=19, Esther=1, Job=49, Psalms=809, Proverbs-90, Ecclesiastes=1, Isaiah=512, Jeremiah=759, Lamentations=48, Ezekiel=460, Daniel=32, Hosea=49, Joel=34, Amos=86, Obediah=8, Jonah=29, Micah=47, Nahum=17, Habakkuk=16, Zephaniah=35, Haggai=38, Zechariah=142, Malachi=51, Matthew=26, Mark=11, Luke=45, John=9, Acts=78, Romans=24, 1 Corinthians=20, 2 Corinthians=12, Galatians=5, Ephesians=7, Philippians=5, Colossians=11, 1 Thessalonians=10, 2 Thessalonians=4, 1 Timothy=11, 2 Timothy=9, Titus=1, Hebrews=15, James=15, 1 Peter=10, 2 Peter=9, 2 john=1, Jude=5, Revelation=19.Ervs son (talk) 00:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately: -- 1) The New Testament is completely irrelevant as far as Jews are concerned. 2) That count is based on tabulating most occurrences of the Greek word κυριος as equivalent to the Tetragrammaton, something which is highly interpretative at best (and some would say rather meaningless). 3) Strictly speaking, there are absolutely zero occurrences of "Jehovah" in the Bible, since that particular incorrect vocalization of the Tetragrammaton YHWH simply didn't exist until the middle ages, when certain Christian would-be Hebraists misunderstood certain Jewish scribal practices of Q're and Ketib... AnonMoos (talk) 02:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I stand corrected. Accuracy is paramount when discussing subjects of this nature. Therefore, the following is irrefutable. The Tetragrammaton (YHWH) is recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures nearly 7000 times. If a person closes their eyes (s)he will miss the point entirely. Over the course of centuries (YHWH) has been systematically removed from the bible. Hence, There are differing tabulations of occurences in the Hebrew scriptures. The older the bible the more time you will see the divine name. -- 00:48, 25 September 2008 Ervs son
I don't think that there's much variation with respect to the occurrences of the basic consonant letters Y-H-W-H in Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible at all. What is true is that: 1) The scribes of ca. 500 A.D. and later who added systems of annotations (niqqud) to the basic consonant letters of the Biblical Hebrew text did not include any vowels to be pronounced with the consonants of Y-H-W-H. Instead, they indicated that completely different words (usually Adonai, occasionally Elohim) should be pronounced instead of YHWH. This was done in accordance with the customary Jewish Biblical recitation practices of that historical period. 2) The King James Version translation usually translated YHWH into English as "LORD", but seven times (all in the Old Testament) YHWH was translated into English in the KJV as "Jehovah" (however, three of these occurrences were in placenames). After that, the American Standard Version of 1901 (which had several unfortunate features, including a rigidly literalistic approach to Greek verb aspects which was later discovered to be inaccurate) translated YHWH into English as "Jehovah" in the great majority of cases. But most translations after the ASV went back to "LORD". No reasonably-widely-diseminated translation other than the New World has ever translated New Testament Greek κυριος as "Jehovah", as far as I'm aware...AnonMoos (talk) 02:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Removing "dubious source" tag[edit]

I really don't have much patience with many of the "special" or "unique" JW interpretations in this area (see User_talk:Ice9Tea#Tetragrammaton etc. etc.), but the basic count of the occurrences of YHWH in the text of the Hebrew old Testament seems to be reliable -- I get exactly the same number when searching the scholarly e-text of the BHS (see above), which is completely independent of anything JW... AnonMoos (talk) 22:44, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moves and merges (May 2007)[edit]

  • Discussion of most of these articles is taking place at Talk:Jehovah. The "speedy delete" is requested solely to facilitate getting the "edit history into the "right place". There may be some significant restructuring of the articles after the discussion is over. --Richard 09:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Would any merging be useful? Anthony Appleyard 08:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Discussion of most of these articles is taking place at Talk:Jehovah. The "speedy delete" is requested solely to facilitate getting the "edit history into the "right place". There may be some significant restructuring of the articles after the discussion is over. --Richard 09:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I deleted the new Tetragrammaton and moved Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton back here. Anthony Appleyard 09:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see that you did the "the right thing". Thanx. --Richard 09:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • All makes sense and I have no objections, though perhaps more info on other uses of the Tetragrammaton could be handy. (Eg. its history of tranlation/transliteration, role in esoteric beliefs like Kabbalah). The page Yahweh is mostly specific to Judeaism and how the Tetragrammaton has been translated as Yahweh--perhaps a page on the history of the Tetragrammaton itself?I am no expert and there may well be little to say on the subject but it might be useful.--Rubylady 08:42, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • All or most of the mages listed above are redirects to page Yahweh. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:26, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why no article?[edit]

  • I am wondering why this page is not an actual article about the Tetragrammaton, but instead a faux disambiguation page that doesn't give any guidance to the reader which page might have the information they're looking for. If you follow the first link, it takes you to an article about "a proposed English reading of יהוה", and the second takes you to one about "an English transcription of יְהֹוָה‎". So where's the article about "יהוה‎" itself? I'd hardly know where to begin with one myself (which is why I came here looking for it). - JasonAQuest 14:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • That matter is in page Yahweh. The word "Tetragrammaton" is a name for the word "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" (y-h-w-h), not for the god. i.e. "Tetragrammaton" is a name of a name. If matter about the name, or the god, was allowed in here, it would enlarge gradually into content forking with page Yahweh. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:24, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I slowly started to make a separate article, with the intention of moving large amounts of material from Yahweh to here. The NPOV policy strongly suggests that the discussion of how to read the tetragrammaton belongs in an article with a neutral title. Wpid (talk) 21:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I merged back. A move to page Tetragrammaton would split matter between pages and lead to content forking. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:50, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmm - disruptive editing, almost censorship. Nothing was wrong, but (in my opinion incorrectly) assuming that moving Yahweh and Jehova material to Tetragrammaton might cause more content forking in the future, you revert. Moreover, technically you did a bad job - I improved Tetragrammaton a little. You brought it into a somewhat messy state worse than before I started. Wpid (talk) 15:36, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The word 'tetragrammaton' IS NOT a name for the name Yahweh, nor is it a name for the name Jehovah!

The 'tetragrammaton' is a word that has been coined, and used to refer to the fact that the hebrew form for the personal name of God i.e. יהוה is comprised of four letters, hence, the tetra-(Greek for 'four')-grammaton (gram′ma = Greek for 'letter'). Tetragrammaton is not the name of Jehovah/Yahweh, nor is it, as some wiki editors seem to believe, another of God's names. If tetragrammaton is one of God's names, how many worshipers pray to Tetragrammaton? How many pray, "Dear God, Almighty God Tetragrammaton, please forgive me ...."? That would be ridiculous. So, lets have a full article on the tetragrammaton in its own right. Which came first, the tetragrammaton, or 'Yahweh' or 'Jehovah'? We all know that the latter two are translations/interpretations of the tetragrammaton, so let's start with the basics, before we start 'reverse engineering' in the wrong direction! Even the chart on this(?)discussion page is ridiculous. It is not 'translations of Jehovah/Yahweh into foreign languages' (e.g. in Italy they write Geova! Well, that's pretty obvious, and not particularly informative! However, in reality, many foreign (non-English) translations of the original bible texts have rendered יהוה into a near equivalent in their own languages. The fact that they have rendered the name of god in similar but slightly different ways is significant. They are not transliterating from the English, but are using their own scholarship to render the hebrew letters into a recognisable form in their own languages. German is a specific example of this, where German Hebrew scholars, and even Hebrew German scholars have contributed in an outstanding way to our, and the world's, understanding of biblical texts. I appreciate that compiling and editing reference material is no mean task, but the present situation is far from satisfactory.--87.115.4.52 (talk) 01:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Restoration of 'Tetragrammaton' article[edit]

  • I am very pleased to see that the article on the tetragrammaton is, apparently, being restored in Wikipedia. Originally this article was quite extensive (I must confess, perhaps too extensive?), so I can understand why additional and separate articles were created for 'Yahweh', and for 'Jehovah'. However, it was ridiculous to remove the entire Tetragrammaton article from here and to merge it all under 'Yahweh'.

'Tetragrammaton' as a distict subject appears in all other dictionaries and encyclopedias, so why not in Wiki? The tetragrammaton is universally known. The tetragrammaton is the basis for Yahweh and Jehovah. A lot of information about this was in the original 'tetragrammaton' article which was here, but now that the data has, quite unilaterally, and thoughtlessly it seems, been lifted from here and merged all into Yahweh, systematic reading, study and research on the subject has been sorely frustrated and undermined. The tetragrammaton does not come from Yahweh, but rather, the word Yahweh comes from the Tetragrammaton. Therefore, in my view, to merge it all into one article under 'Yahweh' is illogical and a demonstration of indecent haste and questionable scholarship.

It is going to take a lot of concentrated effort to unravel the results of such misguided or naive editing to put back all the tetragrammaton information where it belongs, i.e. under 'Tetragrammaton'! I don't know the mechanics of undertaking a complete reversal of the ill-conceived merge into 'Yahweh' and, as there has doubtless been subsequent editorial updates within Yahweh, perhaps it would be unwise at this late stage to press any 'restore' buttons! However, if other editors share my views on this matter, I would gladly contribute to unpicking this present muddle by slowly lifting relevant sections from 'Yahweh' and restoring them to their proper place, i.e. here! If editors would like to share in this task, they have my full and unequivocal support! Regards, Editor62 --87.115.6.26 (talk) 15:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The tetragrammaton (יהוה) in art, on coins, in artitecture, and on ancient artefacts:
Your opinions please.[edit]

  • Outside of bible manuscripts, the יהוה is found in art, on coins, religious buildings, and on ancient non-biblical artefacts. This public display of the tetragrammaton is found in many countries. The Wiki article on Tetragrammaton makes no reference to these important facts.

If someone wanted to add such information to Wiki, this page 'Tetragrammaton' would seem, to me, to be the ideal place for it.
The article on Yahweh displays two pictures showing where יהוה is a feature in religious buidings, but, as that Wiki article is about 'Yahweh' rather than the tetragrammaton, it is understandable why information about the prevalence of יהוה have not been included.
The article on Jehovah is similarly an exegesis about 'Jehovah', with no mention of the 'public' use of יהוה as far as I can see. So, please may I have your views. Where would the best place be to provide information about the public display of יהוה ? --Observer29 (talk) 10:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A Consensus on Yahweh on Tetragrammaton article:[edit]

Rubylady,Austin and Anthony, the main contributers to this article had all agreed that the name Yahweh should be mentioned. However a user called User:LisaLiel has attempted to get rid of the two sentences included. This conduct is neither justifiable or acceptable and if it persists, the appropriate action should be taken against such [vandalism] . 72.3454.34 (talk) 16:01, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know anything about such a consensus. Nor was my removal of the content vandalism by any stretch of the imagination. If you'd like to discuss it, you can feel free to do so. But the content I removed doesn't belong in this article. The statement about how the Tetragrammaton is to be pronounced is a single POV, and is discussed at length in the article of that name. I'm going to remove it again from this article, because it does not belong here.
This article has a note about the "main article". That's where your quote belongs.
PS, it's considered appropriate to post a new section at the bottom of the talk page, so I've moved your section down here. -LisaLiel (talk) 17:08, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
NOTE -- the user in question was confirmed to be another Davidamos sock-puppet and has been indefinitely blocked. SkyWriter (Tim) (talk) 17:19, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sky. Please stop vandalising the article. The quote should stay. That's the consensus. Kght (talk) 13:04, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A consensus of sock-puppets is not a consensus. SkyWriter (Tim) (talk) 13:36, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ruby Lady, Austin , Anthony and Alleichem are not sock - puppets. Kght (talk) 15:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Open letter to David Amos[edit]

David, you strike me as someone who has some religious sentiments. That being the case, I'd like to ask you to please try and have respect for Wikipedia and its rules, and stop trying to game the system by use of repeated sockpuppets. It isn't just a matter of breaking rules; it's really disrespectful to those of us who are trying to edit appropriately. There isn't one of us, I don't think, who hasn't accepted an edit (or several) that we disagree with on a personal level because this is Wikipedia, and not our personal blogs or online forums.

Please try and rein in your personal feelings and views and treat Wikipedia as it is meant to be treated. It's a great resource, and you have the ability to be an excellent editor, if only you can get your need to pursue this single minded agenda under control. -LisaLiel (talk) 19:28, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

POV statement about pronunciation[edit]

I've deleted (again) a line in this article which presents one specific POV as fact. This is regarding the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton.

Frankly, from an encyclopedic point of view, it's bad enough that this article lists the article about that pronunciation as the "main article". This should be the main article, with branches to the two different vocalizations, if necessary.

Nevertheless, I'm not aiming to change that at this point, unless I can get a consensus for it. What I do want to change is the introduction of POV into this article. There is a discussion of the different views of how this name is to be pronounced in the "main article" that's referenced at the top of this one. It is inappropriate to do an "end run" around that discussion and present one view as fact in this article. -LisaLiel (talk) 02:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is no reason whatsoever for deleting the quote other than allowing your own personal views on the subject - you don't believe in any pronunciation [[10]]- to obscure the article. The article of consensus is the one with the quote Lisa. The quote is well cited and well sourced. It fits in well and does not at all contravene any rules whatsoever. You seem to be acting very immature. Several members have voiced their concerns with your behaviour already, now please, would you kindly stop such blatant vandalism? Yahweh is considered by scholars to be the most accurate pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton. Two sentences stating this cannot be deemed "wrong".Now please, unless you'd like me to take this up with other wikipedian theologians, do stop . Kght (talk) 17:01, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This user "Kght" is yet another sockpuppet of the infamous David Amos. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. -LisaLiel (talk) 17:54, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with Lisa here. The information from BDB may be relevant, but not with the direct statement as it stands. Right now it's not worded NPOV. SkyWriter (Tim) (talk) 18:19, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You have been concurring with Lisa, when she said Yahweh is a guess word. I don't think your "concurrence" is very valuable here Sky. Kght (talk) 13:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation Redirect[edit]

Lisa's most recent edit redirecting to the main article is the most approprate solution. It prevents the potential for POV forking. SkyWriter (Tim) (talk) 19:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What POV forking Sky? Would you complain about the mention that "Jesus" was supposed to be a Jew, on the Jesus article. No. In the same way it is pointless to be complaining about a sentance about Yahweh on a tetragrammaton article. You and Lisa are being immature. Kght (talk) 13:01, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tetragrammaton/Archive_3&oldid=1092057339"