Gerard Gertoux
God's
name, which one finds about 7000 times in the Bible under the form YHWH,
possesses the unique and remarkable circumstance of not having been vocalized by
nearly all translators. With this name being unpronounceable under its written
form YHWH, some overconfidant (or overzealous?)
translators refused to confirm this paradox and preferred to vocalize it with
an approximated form. Obviously, in every case the proposed vocalizations were
very rigorously criticized. A review of the past twenty centuries will allow us
to appreciate the reasonings which favored or opposed
the vocalization of God's name, and to understand the origin of the controversy
and the paradox of a name which can be written without being able to read it
aloud.
The
first translation of the Bible, called the Septuagint, was made by Jews at the
beginning of third century before our era. However, out of superstitious
respect these translators preferred to keep the Tetragram
YHWH written in Hebrew within the Greek text. There was however one exception,
a Jewish translator who preferred to insert it under the vocalized form Iaô (Iaw), which became well-known at this time because the
historians Varro and Diodorus
Siculus quoted it in their books (History I:94:2; Antiquitates
Rerum Divinarum). In
spite of these precise testimonies, the form of Iaô
found limited use, and was very often slandered. A paradox of
magnitudes. The great prophet Jeremiah explained that the objective of
the false prophets was to cause people to forget the Name (Jr
Flavius
Josephus, who understood the priesthood of this time very well, made it
clear that at the time the Romans attacked the Temple the Jews called upon the
fear-inspiring name of God (The Jewish
War V:438). He wrote he had no right to reveal this name to his reader (Jewish Antiquities II:275),
however he did give information of primary importance on the very pronunciation
he wanted to conceal. However, in his work The
Jewish War V:235 he stated: «The high priest had his head dressed with a tiara of fine linen
embroidered with a purple border, and surrounded by another crown in gold which
had in relief the sacred letters; these ones are four vowels» This
description is excellent; moreover, it completes the one found in Exodus 28:36-39.
However, as we know, there are no vowels in Hebrew but only consonants.
Regrettably, instead of explaining this apparent abnormality, certain
commentators (influenced by the form Yahweh) mislead the readers of Josephus by indicating in a note that
this reading was IAUE. Now, it is obvious that the ‘sacred letters’ indicated
the Tetragram written in paleo-Hebrew, not Greek. Furthermore, in Hebrew these consonants Y, W, H, do
serve as vowels; they are in fact called ‘mothers of reading’ (matres lectionis). The writings of Qumrân show that in
the first century Y used as vowel served only to indicate the sounds I and É, W
served only for the sounds Ô and U, and a final H served for the sound A. These
equivalences may be verified in thousands of words. Additionally, the H was
used as a vowel only at the end of words, never within them. So, to read the
name YHWH as four vowels would be IHUA that is IEUA, because between two vowels
the H is heard as a slight E. Eusebius quoted a writer of great
antiquity (before 1200 BCE?) called Sanchuniathon who spoke about the Jews
in chapter four of his work entitled Phoenician
History. Philo of Byblos translated this work into
Greek, at the beginning of our era, and Porphyry was familiar with it. Sanchuniathon maintained that he got his information from Ieroubal the priest of IÉÜÔ (Ieuw), that is Jerubbaal found in Judges 7:1. According to Judges 7:1, Jerubbaal was the name of Judge Gideon who was a priest of
Jehovah (Jg
Irenaeus of Lyons believed that the word IAÔ (Iaw in Greek, [Iah] in Latin) meant ‘Lord’ in primitive Hebrew (Against Heresies II:24:2) and he esteemed that the
use of this Hebrew word IAÔ to denote the Name of the unknown Father, was
intended to impress gullible minds in worship of mysteries (Against Heresies I:21:3). Furthermore,
the Greek concept of an anonymous god, mainly supported by Plato, being mixed
in with the Hebrew concept of the God with a personal name engendered
absolutely contradictory assertions. So, Clement of Alexandria wrote in his
book (Stromateon V:34:5) that
the Tetragram was pronounced Iaoue
while writing, and then later, that God was without form and nameless (StromateonV:81:6). In the same way,
Philo a Jewish philosopher of
the first century had good biblical knowledge and knew that the Tetragram was the divine name pronounced inside the temple,
since he related: «there was a gold
plaque shaped in a ring and bearing four engraved characters of a name which
had the right to hear and to pronounce in the holy place those ones whose ears
and tongue have been purified by wisdom, and nobody else and absolutely nowhere
else» (De Vita Mosis II:114-132). However in the same work, paradoxically,
he explains, commenting on Exodus 3:14 from the LXX translation that God has no
name of his own! (De Vita Mosis I:75).
The
Christian translators (of heathen origin) not understanding Hebrew exchanged
the Tetragram with Lord; Marcion
in 140 C.E. even modified the expression «Let
your Name be sanctified» into «Let
your spirit be sanctified». On the other hand, some Christians (of Jewish
origin) such as Symmachus kept the Tetragram written in Hebrew inside the Greek text (in 165).
Eusebius clarified that Symmachus was an Ebionite, that is a Judeo-Christian, and that he had
drafted a comment on Matthew's book (Ecclesiastical
History VI:17). However, the Judeo-Christians were
completely rejected after 135 of our era by the "Christians" as
Jewish heretics.
The
whole of translations being made according to the Septuagint, many readers
ignored the problem of the vocalization of the Name. However Jerome, who
realized the first Latin translation directly from the Hebrew text, noted in
his commentary on Psalm 8:2: «The name of
the Lord in Hebrew has four letters, Yod He Waw He, which is the proper name of God which some people
through ignorance, write P I P I (instead of h w h y) in Greek and which can be pronounced Yaho». Augustine of Hippo wrote around 400 that «Varro was rightly writing that the Jews worship
the god Jupiter»! (De consensu
evangelistarum I:22),
his remark proves that he probably confused the
name of Jupiter (Ioue) with the Hebrew name of God Iaô, or perhaps Ioua.
Some
oriental Christians, due to their knowledge of the Hebraic language, prevented
a complete disappearance of the name. Thus, Severi of
Antioch, used the form IÔA (Iwa) in a series of comments in
chapter eight of John's gospel (Jn 8:58), pointing
out that it was God's name in Hebrew, a name that one finds also in the front
pages of a codex of 6th century (Coislinianus) to assign the Invisible or the Unspeakable.
It is interesting to note that Matthew's gospel in Hebrew was found in a work
dated from 6th to the 9th (Nestor's book) and attributed to the
priest Nestorius, in which God's name appears under
the Hebraic shape "The Name" (Hashem)
instead of the usual "Lord". In commenting on a work of Severi of Antioch, the famous scholar James of
Edesse made clear around 675 in
a technical comment, that the copyists of the Septuagint (of his time) were
divided over whether to write the divine name Adonay, to keep it within the Greek text in the form P I P I (corresponding in fact to
the Hebrew name YHYH as he mentioned), or to translate it as Kurios and write it in the
margin of the manuscript.
These
quotations are exeptional however, because even the
famous translator Albinus Alcuini, specified that although God's name
was written Jod He Vau Heth, it was read Lord, because this name was ineffable.
Things began to change when translators again made translations directly from
Hebrew and not from a translation. The first was doubtless the famous Karaite Yefet ben
Eli who translated the Bible into Arabic. In copies of this translation (made
around 960), one finds at times the Tetragram
vocalized Yahwah (or Yahuwah),
a normal transcription of the Hebrew shape Yehwah of
this time (or Yahowah whom one finds in some codices
within Babylonian punctuation); because in Arabic there are only three sounds: â, î and û. The shape Yahuwah was apparently understood Yah Huwa
"Oh He" in Arabic, because it seems so in a manuscript dated 10-th
century. Some famous imams, such as Abu-l-Qâsim-al-Junayd
who died in 910, now known as Fahr ad-Din Râzî, while knowing that God had 99 beautiful names
explained that the supreme name (ism-al-a‘zam) of God was Yâ Huwa not Allah. A follower of al-Junayd,
the Soufi Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallâj
(857-922), asserted : «Here are the words of which sense seemed ambiguous. Know that temples
hold by His Yâ-Huwah and that bodies are being moved
by His Yâ-Sîn. Now Hû and Sîn are two roads which
end into the knowledge of the original point»[2].
Yâ-Sîn is a reference to the Sura
36 and Yâ-huwah wrote y‘hwh
in Arabic, makes reference to the Hebrew Tetragram.
Al-Hallâj was rejected as madman by his teacher, al-Junayd, and died executed in
The
works of two Jewish scholars marked a decisive bend in the vocalization of
God's name. In order to contend with influences of Philosophy, Gnosticism, mystical, and even astrological beliefs which became increasingly
influential {mainly due to the third century work, entitled Sepher Yetsirah (Book of Forming) which speculated on the
letters of the divine names}, Maimonides, a Jewish scholar and famous talmudist,
put forward a whole new definition of Judaism. His reasoning centered on the
Name of God, the Tetragram, which was explained in
his book entitled The Guide of the
Perplexed, written in 1190. There he
exposed the following powerful reasoning: the God of the philosophers did not
require worship only polite acknowledgement of his existence, since it would be
impossible to establish relations with a nameless God (Elohim).
Then he proved that the Tetragram YHWH is the
personal name of God, that is to say the name distinctly read (Shem hamephorash), which is different from all the other names such as: Adonay, Shadday, Elohim
(which are only divine titles having an etymology), because the Tetragram has no etymology. Maimonides
knew well the problem of the pronunciation, since Jewish tradition stated that
it had been lost. On the other hand, he also knew that some Jews believed in
the almost magical influence of the letters or the precise pronunciation of
divine names, but he warned his readers against such practices as being pure
invention or foolishness. The remarkable aspect of his argumentation lies in
the fact that he managed to avoid controversy on such a sensitive subject. He
asserted that in fact it was only true worship which had been lost, and not the
authentic pronunciation of the Tetragram, since this
was still possible according to its letters. To support this basic idea (true
worship is more important than correct pronunciation), he quoted Sotah 38a to prove that the name is the
essence of God and that is the reason it should not be misused, then he quoted
Zechariah 14:9 to prove the oneness of this name, also Sifre Numbers 6:23-27 to show that the priests
were obliged to bless by this name only. Then, to prove that the pronunciation
of the Name did not pose any problem in the past, and that it had no magical
aspect, he quoted Qiddushin 71a, which said that this name was passed on by certain rabbis to their sons. Also, according to Yoma 39b, this pronunciation was
widely used before the priesthood of Simon the Just, which proved the insignificance of a magical concept, because
at this time the Name was used for its spiritual not supernatural aspect. Maimonides insisted on the fact that what was necessary to
find was the spirituality connected to this Name, and not the exact
pronunciation. In order to demonstrate this important idea of understanding the
sense and not the sound conveyed by this name, he quoted a relevant example.
Exodus 6:3 indicates that before Moses the Name was not known. Naturally this
refers to the exact meaning of the Name, and not its pronunciation, because it
would be unreasonable to believe that a correct pronunciation would have
suddenly been able to incite the Israelites to action, unless the pronunciation
had magical power, a supposition disproved by subsequent events.
It
is interesting to observe that Judah Halevi, another Jewish scholar, put forward almost the same arguments
in his book The Kuzari published some years before, in 1140. He wrote
that the main difference between the God of Abraham and the God of Aristotle
was the Tetragram. He proved also that this name was
the personal name of God and that it meant “He will be with you”. To show once
again that it was the meaning of this name which was important and not the
pronunciation, he quoted Exodus 5:2 where Pharaoh asked to know the Name: not
the pronunciation which he used, but the authority of this Name. He pointed out
that the letters of the Tetragram have the remarkable
property of being matres lectionis, that is the vowels
associated with other consonants, much as the spirit is associated with the
body and makes it live (Kuzari IV:1-16). Judah Halevi specified in his work
that the yod (Y) served as vowel I, the waw (W) served as O, and that the he (H) and the aleph (’)
served as A. According to these rudimentary indications, the name YHWH could be
read I-H-O-A "according to its letters " (H
is never used as vowel inside words; in that exceptional case the letter aleph
is preferred). A French erudite, Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, explained that the best pronunciation of the divine Name
according to its letters was Ihôah, and when he began
to translate the Bible (Genesis, chapters I to X), he systematically used the
name Ihôah.
The
expression “pronounced according to its letters” which Maimonides
used is strictly exact, only in Hebrew (vowel letters as pointed out by Judah Halevi). Joachim of Flora gave a Greek
transliteration of the Tetragram I-E-U-E in his work
entitled Expositio in Apocalypsim, that he finished in 1195.
He also used the expression «Adonay IEUE tetragramaton nomen» in
another book entitled Liber Figurarum.
The vocalization of the Tetragram was improved by
Pope Innocent III in one of his sermons
written around 1200. Indeed, he noticed that the Hebrew letters of the Tetragram Ioth, Eth, Vau (that is Y, H, W) were used as vowels, and that the
name IESUS had exactly the same vowels I, E and U as the divine name. He also
drew a parallel between the name written IEVE, pronounced Adonai, and the name written IHS but
pronounced IESUS. These remarks on the Name concerned only a circle very
restricted by medieval intellectuals.
Furthermore,
the pope Innocent III (1160-1216) did not make known in the Catholic world that
God's name was Ieue and not Lord, the Hebrew scholar
Judah Hallevi (1075-1141) did not denounce the Jewish
superstition to replace the name Ihôa by the
substitute Adonay, the Soufi
al-Hallâj (857-922) did not reveal in the Moslem
world that Yâhuwa was the proper noun of Allah, etc.
From
thirteenth century, knowledge of the Hebrew language would progress
considerably, involving notably the role of matres lectionis. For example, the famous
scholar Roger Bacon wrote in his Hebraic
grammar that in Hebrew there are six vowels “aleph,
he, vav, heth, iod, ain” close to the usual Masoretic vowel-points. (The French erudite Fabre d'Olivet also explained in his
Hebrew grammar the following equivalence: aleph = â,
he = è, heth = é, waw = ô/
u, yod = î, aïn = wo).
Raymond
Martini, a Spanish monk,excellent Hebrew scholar, and a very good
connoisseur of Talmud, impressed by the arguments of Maimonides,
was involved in controversy with the Jews in his book Pugio
fidei in 1278, on the fact that God's name could be
pronounced and he used the shape Yohoua. However, in
1292, his pupil Arnauldus of Villenueva,
keen on Cabal, returned to the dumb (speechless) form of IHVH. On the other
hand, Porchetus de Salvaticis,
an admirer of Raymond Martini, enriched his arguments and used several times
the form Yohouah in his book Victoria Porcheti adversus
impios Hebraeos in
1303. However, the convert Abner of Burgos, used
(between 1330 and 1340) the form Yehabe in his book Mostrador de Justicia.
Another convert, Pablo of Burgos preferred the dumb shape YHBH (in 1390).
The
first scholar who gave exactly and clearly the reasons of his choices of
vocalization was cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. In 1428
he dedicated moreover his first sermon on John 1:1 in which he explained, based
on rabbi Moyses's works, the various names of God (Adonai, Jah, Sabaoth, Schaddai,
etc.) and the meaning of the Tetragram, which he
vocalized Iehoua. In this sermon, he began to develop
the idea that Jesus was the ‘speakable’ element (the
Word) of the ‘unspeakable (ineffable)’ God. He explained in another sermon, written around 1440,
that the name of Jesus means ‘savior’ which is pronounced Ihesua
in Hebrew, and this name ‘Savior’ is also the Word of God. He indicated that
the unspeakable name is Ihehoua in Hebrew. In two
other sermons, written in 1441, he pursued the connection between the
unspeakable Greek Tetragram, spelt Iot, He, Vau, He, and the ‘speakable’ name of Ihesus which
he often wrote Ihûs. Then in a sermon written in
1445, he explained in detail the grammatical reasons permitting a link between
these two names. God's name is the Greek Tetragram
which is spelt in Hebrew Ioth, He, Vau, He; these four letters serve as vowels, corresponding
to I, E, O, A in Greek, because in this language there is no specific vowel for
the sound OU (the letter U in Greek is pronounced as the French Ü). So, in
Greek, the transcription IEOUA would be more exact and would better reflect the
OU sound of the Hebrew name I-e-ou-a, becoming in
Latin Iehova or Ihehova,
because the letter H is inaudible and the vowel U also serves as a consonant
(V). He noted finally that the Hebraic form IESUA of the name ‘Jesus’ is
distinguished from the divine name only by a holy letter “s” (shin in Hebrew) which is interpreted as
the ‘elocution’ or the Word of God, also the salvation of God. He would
continue this parallel, between God's name (Ieoua)
and the name of Jesus (Iesoua) in yet another sermon.
However towards the end of his life he wrote several important works (De Possest in
1460, Non Aliud
in 1462, etc.), to explain the purely symbolic character of God's name which
had all names and so none in particular. Contrary to his books, his sermons
were not widely diffused.
In
1474, Marsilio Ficino
proposed the name Hiehouahi in his book De Liber
Christiana Religione XXX. Johannes Wessel Gansfort, the spiritual
father of Luther, preferred, around 1480, to vocalize God's name Iohauah in his work Oriatione III:
For
example, by 1488, Paulus de Heredia
suggested in his Epistle of Secrets
vocalizing the Tetragram in Yehauue,
because its presumed Hebraic meaning was according to him: "He will make be " or " He will generate " (future piel of the verb to be). John Reuchlin
proposed in 1494 in his De Verbo Mirifico, to move
closer to the Latin Tetragram IHVH towards the name
of Jesus which he presumed written IHSVH (the link with the Greek name Iesue which he supported supposes so a vocalization Ieue of God's name). John Pico della Mirandola in his Disputianum Adversus Astrologos (in 1496) fustigated the heathens which used
the name Jupiter to have plagiarized God's name (Jove father). Friend of Mirandole, Agostino Justiniani, clarified in 1516 in his translation of the
Psalms that the Tetragram was pronounced as Jova (or Ioua).
At
the beginning of the sixteenth century this situation had become extremely
vague. The translator Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples indicated in 1509, in his comments on the Psalm
LXXII, that the Hebrew Tetragram was pronounced as it
was written, that is in Latin I-He-U-He or Ihevhe
(while noticing that the Hebrew name of Jesus was Ihesvha
and concluding it should have been Ihesvhe). When he
published in 1514 Nicholas of Cusa's sermons, he used
instead the shape Iehova, according to the original
manuscripts. In 1516, in Justiniani's Bible, one
could read the shape Ioua, etc.
In
order to clear up the variants of pronunciation of the Tetragram,
Pietro Galatino dedicated a good part of his work entitled De Arcanis Catholice Ueritatis (Concerning Secrets of the universal
truth), published in 1518, to explaining the (Hebraic) reasons for this
pronunciation. First, he quoted profusely from the book of Maimonides The Guide of the Perplexed, especially chapters 60-64 of the first
part, as a reminder that the Tetragram is the proper
name of God and that it can be pronounced according to its letters. However, he
demonstrated that the pronunciation Ioua, accepted in
his time, was inaccurate and he gave the reasons why. He explained for example
that the proper name Iuda, written hdwy (YWDH), was an abbreviation
of the name Iehuda written hdwhy (YHWDH). All Hebrew proper
names beginning in YHW- [why] are moreover always vocalized Ieh-. Consequently, if the Tetragram
was really pronounced Ioua it would have been written
in Hebrew hWy (YWH), which was never the
case. So, because the Tetragram is written hwhy (YHWH), one should hear the
letter H inside the Name. He concluded that, because this name is pronounced
according to its letters, the best transcription was the form I-eh-ou-a (Iehoua), rather than the
form I-ou-a used for example by Agostino
Justiniani, a friend of Pico della Mirandola, in his polyglot translation
of Psalms published in 1516. If Galatino had
transcribed the Masoretic form directly, he would
have obtained Yehouah and not Iehoua.
In
1526, Luther wrote in a sermon on Jeremiah 23:1-8: «This name Iehouah, Lord, belongs exclusively
to the true God». He will write in 1543, with characteristic frankness: «That they [the Jews] now allege the name Iehouah to be unpronounceable, they do not know what they
are talking about (...) if it can be written with pen and ink, why should it
not be spoken, which is much better than being written with pen and ink? Why do
they not also call it unwriteable, unreadable or
unthinkable? All things considered, there is something foul». However, when
he published in 1534 his complete translation of
the Bible based on the original languages, he did not use God's name, that he
knew well, but preferred to use the substitute HERR (Lord). Another example of this
vacillating attitude is John Calvin. In most of his books and sermons, he regularly encouraged his
readers not to use God's name! For example in 1555 in his
comment on Deuteronomy 5:11 he condemned the use of God's name. However,
a few years before, in 1535, he prefaced Olivetan's
Bible which used the name Iehouah, and a few years
later in 1563 when he published his comments on the five books of Moses, he
systematically used the form Iehoua including in the
biblical text and denounced in his comment on Exodus 6:3 the Jewish
superstition which lead to replacing Iehouæ with Adonaï. The excellent
Hebrew scholar Sebastian Münster used the name Iehova in his Hebraic grammar (in 1526), a name which he
introduced moreover into his Latin translation of the Bible in 1534. Tyndale was the first to introduce it in several places
into his English translation in 1530. Servetus in his
Trinitatis Erroribus (in
1531) strongly defended the shape Iehouah against the
shape Yehauue "He will make to be", because
the name Iehouah is close to the Hebrew theophoric name Iesua (Jesus).
Cardinal Giacoma de vio Cajetan used it constantly in his comments on the
Pentateuch in 1531. The translator Pierre Robert Olivétan
introduced it in some places of his French translation in 1535, clarifying in
foreword (Apology of the translator)
that this vocalization Iehouah expressed the sound of
the letter H better than Ioua. François Vatable used it in his translation in 1545. The first who
systematically used the name Iehouah was certainly
the German scholar Martin Bucer in his Latin
translation of Psalms in 1547, then Robert Estienne
used it in all the Bible in 1557, as did also the Spanish translator Casiodoro de Reina in 1569.
The
shape Iehouah was widely used, however there were some
exceptions. The Italian translator Antonio Brucioli
preferred the shape Ieova in 1541, the French
translator Sébastien Casteillon
preferred the shape Ioua in 1555, clarifying in a
comment on Matthew 1:21 that if the Latin name of Jesus was Josue,
this theophoric name could be improved into Iosua involving the vocalization Ioua,
effectively close to Ioue (Jupiter). He restored the
argument by clarifying that if the heathen had used by chance God's name then
with stronger reason Christians had reason to do so. The translator Benito
Arias Montano being afraid of favoring a name of heathen origin preferred to
use systematically the name IA in his translation of Psalms in 1574. The name Iehouah seemed to have won in part and to be necessarily
characterized in the Bible; however a large-scale attack against this
vocalization was going to begin towards the end of the sixteenth century.
The
first antagonist was Archbishop Gilbert Genebrard, who, in his book written in
1568 to defend the Trinity, dedicated several pages to the name in an effort to
refute S. Casteillon, P. Galatin, S. Pagnin, and others. First of all, he rejected Chateillon’s
Ioua using Saint Augustine’s explanation, via Varro, that the
Jews had worshiped Ioue (Jupiter!), and therefore the use of Ioua was
a return to paganism. In the foreword to his commentary on Psalms he went so
far as to state that the name Ioua was barbarian,
fictitious and irreligious. Concerning the writings of Clement of Alexandria (‘Iaou’),
Jerome (‘Iaho’) and Theodoret
(‘Iabe’), he considered these as mere variations of Ioue, and that these testimonies appeared unreliable
because, at the time they were written, the Jews had not pronounced the Name
for several centuries. Lastly, he claimed that P. Galatin
(as well as
Jan Drusius published in 1603 a long article dedicated to
the pronunciation of the Name. His main arguments were that the Masoretic punctuation of the Tetragram
could not be used as a basis for pronouncing the Name because it was a qere; so the form
Iehovih, resulting from the qere elohim,
would be nonsense. He thus concluded that Iehovah was
also a barbarism. He repeated the same arguments as Genebrard
against Ioua, and then reminded his audience that
according to the best grammarians of his time the expression ‘He
is’ should be pronounced Ieheve. This form is found
in Johannes Merceri's Thesaurus and that of Santes Pagnino under the Hebrew form YeHeWeH (West
Aramaic Peal imperfect) meaning ‘He will be’ which is now pronounced YiHWeH. He then theorized, using a few examples that the
form Ieheve (or Iihveh)
resulted from an archaic Iahave (or Iahveh), and in conclusion noted that this form Iahave was identical to the Samaritan pronunciation Iave given by Theodoret. Louis Cappel dedicated almost one
hundred pages to the pronunciation of the Name in one of his articles published
in 1650. As well as resuming many of Drusius’
arguments, he explained a few new ideas. He maintained that the first syllable
was certainly Iah-, because many names had lost their
initial vowel, for example Nabô which had become Nebô, but he noted that the most ancient witnesses (hence
the most reliable) usually used Iaô. He preferred Iahuoh to Iahave or Iahue. However the form Iahue
eventually took over for two important reasons; first of all, it retained the
first syllable Ia- as determined by the most ancient
sources (it was also similar to the versions provided by Epiphanius, Theodoret and Clement of Alexandria), and, above all, it was close to a grammatical form beginning
with Ya-, meaning ‘He will cause to be’ or ‘He will
make exist’, first suggested by Johannes Leclerc around 1700. This form
would be a hypothetical imperfect hiphil, vocalized YaHaYeH
resulting from an archaic [?] YaHaWeH. The cabalistic approach was in fact more
“scientific” (!), because it was based on the probable imperfect piel form YeHaWeH meaning ‘He will make to be’ or
‘He will cause to become’). This very complicated explanation intended to
justify the form Yahweh disconcerted some
translators who had used the “simplistic” Iehoua
Some
nostalgic translators returned to a form "according to its letters",
so the German translator Johann Babor used: Ihoua (in 1805), the French translator Antoine Fabre d'Olivet: Ihoah (in 1823), the Latin translator Augustine Crampon: Jova (in 1856), etc., however the "scientific"
shape Yahweh began to appear in force in the Bible towards the end of
nineteenth century and competed with the "religious" shape Iehoua. For example, the agnostic translator Eugène Ledrain, insisted (in
1879) to use the shape Yahweh, because this name was in agreement with the
meaning "He causes to be" or " He causes to become", a name
which he systematically used in his translation finished in 1899. Other
translators breached the barrier and used the name Yahweh as
those of: Emphasized Bible (1878), Rodwell (1881),
Addis Documents of the Hexateuch (1893), Banks J.S
(1895), Rotherdam (1897), Leidse
Vertaling (1899), etc.
In
front of this growing mess, the religious leaders decided to produce a
qualitative translation directly from the masoretic
text which would benefit most from all of the projections acquired in the study
of languages. The first to initiate the banns (proclamations?) was the French
Jewish translator who, by leaning on the works of the famous German grammarian Gesenius, chose systematically to return the Tetragram by Iehovah (1856). Then
the Russian orthodox translator also systematically chose to render the Tetragram by Jehovah (1867), as did then the American
Protestant translators (1901), and finally the French Catholic translators who
did the same choice (1904). This choice is surprising for two reasons, first of
all it was unanimous in spite of serious religious differences and then it was
decided in a very controversial context where Yahweh seemed to prevail.
One
could have been led to believe that with the unanimous weight of religious
authorities the name Jehovah was going to be necessary, but such was not the
case. To the contrary, religious authorities, and once more unanimously,
utterly denied their first choice. It seems, by observing the histories of the
various choices, that scientific arguments were not the only ones in play.
Indeed, one can determine that the first translators who introduced the name
Jehovah into the Bible were either Walden's sympathizers, such as François Vatable or Pierre Robert Olivétan,
or they were anti-Trinitarian proponents, such as Michel Servetus
or Sébastien Casteillon.
The first who attacked violently the name Jehovah were Catholic theologians as
the archbishop Gilbert Génébrard or the cardinal
Robert Bellarmin. When Walden's movement was
completely absorbed by the Protestant reform, Catholic authorities started
again in their tasking this name Jehovah, which was this time violently
attacked by Protestant theologians, as Jan Drusius or
Louis Cappel. Finally, when the
In
the end of the twentieth century the majority of translators have abandoned the
form of Jehovah in their translations, it is a thorn to note that the shape
Yahweh, which was used to eliminate it, is today considered absurd by the
grammarians because all the arguments which served to support it are false.
Indeed, the Greek witnesses in Iaô correspond to the
Trigram YHW and not to the Tetragram YHWH as widely
showed by the Elephantine letters. The dropping of the first vowel (a becoming
e) can not be invoked, because this change took place in the third century
before our era, and the Septuagint, which kept track of this phenomenon, did
not preserve any theophoric names (without exception)
beginning with Ia-. Finally, the causative shape of
the verb to be, "He causes to be" or "He causes to become
", invented to justify a verbal shape beginning with Yah-, has never
existed and will never exist. Furthermore, this form is trebly absurd, as the
translators Pirot and Clamer
point out. First of all, the metaphysical notion of a God "who is" or
"who cause to be" is too much abstracted with regard to the time when
it is supposed to appear (time of Moses), and corresponds better with the
philosophic thinking of the Greeks. On the other hand, the
notion of a God who "will be" with his people is a very concrete idea
which Talmud often developed, and is in agreement with the biblical context.
Secondly, the notion of a god who "causes to be" would have to be
expressed, of necessity, by the shape yehaweh (future
piel in Hebrew). Finally, in Exodus 3:14, as
mentioned in a note in the Jerusalem Bible, the grammatical shape used without
a shadow of a doubt is a future shape qal (which one
can translate by "I shall be", therefore "He will be ").
It
is amusing to note that the form of Yahweh, which was supported by some of the
most brilliant theologians, the most competent grammarians, the most eminent biblicists, the most prestigious
dictionaries, is known finally to be false. The king Solomon, who is presented
as having received God's wisdom, nonetheless never quoted the Tetragram in his famous book called Ecclesiastes, but
mysteriously used a rare grammatical shape yhw’ for yhwh (Qo 11:3), which appears
only once in all the Bible. The height of the irony, biblicists translate this shape into: "it will
be" (Bible of the King James, Darby, etc.) which is so the elementary
meaning of the Tetragram. The translators of the
Septuagint themselves translated this shape into "He will be" (estai). Furthermore the Hebrew
vocalization of this word, kept by the Masoretes is:
"Yehou[a]", which constitutes the natural
vocalization of the Tetragram. It could be possible
indeed in this situation that as Job
[1] Gerard Gertoux, Un Nome
eccellente, http://www.testimonidigeova.net/YHWH.htm
[2] L. Massignon - Akhbar al-Hallâj