Two Presumed Names of G-d (Part 1)

The substitution of the title “the LORD” for the Four-Lettered Name of G-d (YHWH / the Tetragrammaton) in the Scriptures has resulted in a great cloud of uncertainty over its pronunciation. It has led theologians to suggest various versions. In 1749, the German Biblical scholar Teller mentioned several pronunciations of G-d’s Name that he had come across in his readings: “Jao” (Diodorus of Sicily, Macrobius, Clement of Alexandria, Saint Jerome and Origen); “Jahe” or “Jave” (Samaritans, Epiphanius, and Theodoretus); “Javoh” (Ludwig Cappel); “Jahve” (Drusius); “Jehva” (Hottinger); “Jehovah” (Mercerus); “Jovah” (Castellio); “Jawoh” or “Javoh” (LeClerc).

Over the centuries, however, two forms have each gained sufficient favor and following to be accepted as the presumed correct vocalization of the Tetragrammaton. Let us see what these are and how it happened.

The first presumed Name

In the 1^st century A.D., Jewish historian Flavius Josephus supplied a hint on the lost pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton in his book Wars of the Jews. Writing in Koine (common) Greek, the international language of the time, he described the garments of the high priest at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem partly as follows: “A mitre also of fine linen encompassed his head, which was tied with a blue riband, about which there was another golden crown, in which was engraven the sacred name (of G-d); it consists of four vowels.”¹

Four Hebrew vowels?

Josephus was a Jew who surely knew that the Tetragrammaton consisted of four Hebrew consonants. According to the editor of the Loeb edition of Josephus’s Jewish Wars, “He was perhaps thinking of a Greek form.”²

Researcher Voy Wilks agrees: “Josephus spoke of four GREEK vowels in order to accommodate his Greek readers, and did not in any way intend to leave the impression that the four Sacred Letters on the priest’s garments were vowels from the Hebrew alphabet. After all, the Hebrew alphabet contained no vowels.”³

Author B. Earl Allen notes: “The Greek language does not… have a Y sound, nor an H sound in the middle of a word, nor a W sound.”⁴ All of these three Hebrew consonants that make up the Tetragrammaton were not part of the Greek writing system!

Hebrew names Hellenized.

Josephus admitted in his other book Antiquities of the Jews: “With a view to euphony and my readers’ pleasure these names have been Hellenized (made Greek). The form in which they appear is not that used in our country, where their structure and termination remain always the same.”⁵

We find in Adam Clarke’s Commentary that “neither Greeks nor Romans could pronounce either the Hebrew or Persian names, and when engaged in the task of transcribing, they did according to their manner of pronunciation.”⁶

The Jews followed suit. “Once the Jews came under Greek influence, we note a tendency to replace or to translate Jewish names by similar sounding Greek names.”⁷

Four Greek vowels.

Rabbi Yeshayahu Heiliczer explains that “when the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician/ Paleo-Hebrew alphabet they used leftover consonants that did not occur in their language and used them as symbols for vowels.”⁸ He quoted writer Robert Whiting: ‘Therefore, the Hebrew yud (Y) became the Greek vowel iota (I); the Hebrew hey (H) became the Greek vowel epsilon (“E”); and the Hebrew vav (W/V) became the Greek vowel upsilon (“U”)’.”⁹ 

Vowel indicators

The Israelites themselves, though, had developed a rudimentary system for indicating vowels. Sacred Name researcher Choon-Leong Seow shares: “Beginning in the monarchial period (10^th to late 7^th centuries B.C.E.), certain letters [H], [W], [Y] were added at the end of words to indicate various vowels…”¹⁰

Last Day Ministries of Texas concurs: “It is true that the letters y, h, w can function as vowel letters… the yod acts as a vowel in the word ‘Eli’… ‘The h… at the end of a word is always a mere vowel letter, unless marked by a Mappiq as a strong consonant…’ The waw w… carries the ‘o’ sound… Therefore the letters yod, he, and waw can be vowel letters, they can also be consonants, depending on the usage.”¹¹

The booklet The Mistaken J (YNCA) provides us with more specific pronunciations. The three letters, called vowel-consonants or semivowels because they can be used either as vowels or consonants (like Y) at the end of words, are pronounced as follows:

		Yod	/	Y	=	ee as in “see”
		Hey	/	H	=	ah as in “bah”
		Waw	/	W	=	oo as in “cool” 12

           

‘IEUE” or “IAUA.”

If the Greek vowel equivalents (Y=I, H=E, W/V=U), as shown by Rabbi Heiliczer, were used, the sacred Name (YHWH) would be spelled IEUE in Greek.

However, if the four consonants are transliterated with the three Hebrew semi-vowel sounds “ee,” “ah,” “oo,” we will get the four Greek vowels I-A-U-A (iota, alpha, upsilon, alpha) forming the word “IAUA”.

Author B. Earl Allen concludes: “(YHWH) would be transliterated correctly into Greek as Iaua…” The Seventh-Day Adventist Dictionary confirms this from Sumerian inscriptions: “He (namely, the God) (is) spelled Yaua in cuneiform records.”¹³

 “IAUE.”

The form “IAUA”, though, was not linguistically proper in Greek. Brian Allen says: “For the Greek translators to have preserved the true spelling in Greek (IAUA) or (Iaua) would have caused a language revolution.”¹⁴

“The sacred name… was transliterated into the Greek IAUE, the Greeks changed the ‘a’ to ‘e’, just as they did with Noah, Judah, Oshea, Korah, etc. The Greeks have it Noe, Jude, Osee, and Core, etc.”¹⁵ Other examples are: Nogah/Nagge, Joshah/Jose, Jehoshua/Iesoue, Joshua/Josue, Gomorrah/Gomorrhe, Abishua/Abisue, Jeremiah/Ieremie, etc.

Feminine “ah”? Elder Jacob O. Meyer of Assemblies of Yahweh rationalized: “The ‘h’ (hay) has the vowel sound of an A (aw or ah)… The ‘h’ (hay) standing at the end of a masculine name has the vowel sound of short E. The Hebrew long A sound (pronounced aw) is a feminine ending at the end of a name...”¹⁶ Therefore, the “hay, the last letter is pronounced ‘eh’ (short e) and not ‘ah’ (short a)…”¹⁷

“IAOUE.”

The Greek form “IAUE” was further modified. The Missing J notes, “Early Christian writers such as Clement of Alexandria transliterated it into Greek as IAOUE.”¹⁸

Seow reports a number of “Greek transliterations of the name in the early Christian period and in some magical papyri in the early centuries of that era, including Iaoue, Iaouai, Iabe, Iabai, and Iaue.”¹⁹

Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Prof. Anson F. Rainey, said, ‘The mystic name which is called the tetragrammaton… is pronounced Iaoue, which means, “Who is, and who shall be”.’”²⁰ 

“IABE.”

Another form of the Name surfaced after about two centuries. “Later on, Theodoret (c. 390-455) and Epiphanius (c. 315-404) transliterated the sacred name as Iabe, but a couple of hundred years had passed since Clement…”²¹ The Jewish Encyclopedia says “Theodoret (‘Quaest. 15 in Exodum’) states the Samaritans pronounced the name ‘Iabe’.”²²

Different pronunciation. The Jews and the Samaritans, however, had religious differences. We read in The Good News magazine:“Professor Eerdman’s article showed that it is not safe to follow the Samaritan pronunciation advocated by Theodoret and Epiphanius, because the Samaritans were opposed to the Jewish way. ‘They built their own Temple on Gerizim and had their own priesthood. They thwarted the Jews whenever they could. On the account of their attitude we may safely assume that the Samaritans had their own (different) pronunciation of the holy name. For this reason the Samaritan pronunciation should not have been regarded (by modern scholars) as evidence for the Jewish pronunciation.’”²³

Moreover, Christ told the Samaritan woman at the well that her people did not truly know G-d. “Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22).

“YAHWEH.”

Meyer told his readers, “Now, if we combine these (Greek) letters we have the English word in the letters IAUE. Pronounce them slowly and then rapidly. You will discover you are saying YAHWEH!”²⁴ The Missing J suggests a similar exercise: “When we pronounce the Tetragrammaton IAOUE we get the sound ‘ee-ah-ou-eh.’ Saying it rapidly we produce ‘Yah-way,’ which appears as Yahweh in English.”²⁵

The Encyclopedia Judaica states: “The true pronunciation of the name YHWH was never lost. Several early Greek writers of the Christian Church testify that the name was pronounced ‘Yahweh’.”²⁶

Many proponents of the name “Yahweh” quote the preceding statement to support their contention. However, common sense tells us: How could early Greek writers who Hellenized foreign names, including Hebrew ones, have “testified” to the true pronunciation of the ancient Hebrew Name of G-d?

Meaning of “Yahweh”.

The advocates of the name “Yahweh” cannot seem to agree on one single meaning. According to The New 20^th Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge: “The divine name would thus go back to a verbal form meaning ‘he causes to come into existence,’ or in effect, ‘he creates’.”²⁷ The Assemblies of Yahweh slightly rewords the meaning. “And in the imperfect form this means that the Name of the Heavenly Father should be understood as He Who shall cause things to exist or He Who shall cause to be.”²⁸ The Ambassador College in California, though, proposes other definitions: “But Yahweh is a name meaning the Everliving, or the Eternal. There is no one word in the English language that translates it exactly… Actually, Yahweh means the Self-Existent, Everliving, Eternally Living Creating One.”²⁹

Yet, we already know the meaning of the Tetragrammaton from the Bible. The meanings proposed by the advocates of “Yahweh” are different. The true pronunciation of the Four-Lettered Name of G-d should carry the original meaning – “I AM THAT I AM”.

Doubts and disagreements.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, states: “The name YHWH is often reconstructed as Yahweh, based on a range of circumstantial historical and linguistic evidence. Most scholars do not view it as an ‘accurate’ reconstruction in an absolute sense, but as the best possible guess.”³⁰ The Aid to Bible Understanding also says that “there is by no means unanimity among scholars on the subject (of the form ‘Yahweh’), some favoring yet other pronunciations.”³¹

Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon tells us that “this same form (Yahweh) appears on the gems of the Egyptian Gnostics as the name of God… (but these gems are not of the most remote antiquity; they are the work of heretics of the second and third centuries).”³²

Even those who use the form “Yahweh” maintain a certain amount of reservation. Meyer related that one of his Hebrew professors once said: “We use Yahweh because it is the best representation of the original letters of the Name, transliterated into English. Scholarship is now quite positive of this form, although our minds are not closed should new evidence be introduced.”³³

Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-211/215?), Epiphanius (315-403), and Theodoret (393-458/466?) were among the most prominent leaders of the early Christian Church. We can safely say that Epiphanius and Theodoret had read the writings of their predecessor Clement. If Clement’s pronunciation, “Yahweh” (Iaoue or Iaouai), was beyond the shadow of any doubt, why did Epiphanius and Theodoret propose other pronunciations?

(Excerpted from Chapter 11, “Two Substitutes, One Original”; THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson)

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¹Flavius Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book 5, ch. 5, sec. 7

²Jewish Wars, Loeb Classical Library, p. 273

³Voy Wilks, “The Sacred Name YHWH Consists of Four Vowels?”, tract, 11\17\91

⁴B. Earl Allen, Publish the Name of Yahuwah, Revised 2009, p. 62

⁵Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Ch. 6, Sec. 1

⁶Adam Clarke’s Commentary, Vol. 3, pp. 393-394

⁷Iesous, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, pp. 284-293

⁸Yeshayahu Heiliczer, “The Divine Name,” Messianic Home, Summer 1999, p. 19

⁹Ibid.

¹⁰Choon-Leong Seow, “The Ineffable Name of Israel’s God,” Glossary, Bible Review, December 1991, p. 49

¹¹“Four Vowels,” Last Day Ministries, tract, undated

¹²The Four Vowels, The Mistaken J, YNCA, 1996, p. 32

¹³Brian Allen, “Open Letter to Tony Sukla,” undated

¹⁴Last Day Ministries, tract, undated

¹⁵Ibid.

¹⁶Jacob O. Meyer, The Memorial Name – Yahweh, 1987, p. 83

¹⁷Meyer, Seven Ancient Witnesses, 1973, p. 2

¹⁸The Missing J, Yahweh’s Assembly in Messiah, Revised 1996, p. 7

¹⁹Seow, op. cit., p. 50

²⁰Anson F. Rainey, Biblical Archaelogy Review, Sept.-Oct. 1994

²¹B. Earl Allen, op. cit., p. 41

²²The Names of God, Jewish Encylopedia, Vol. 9, p. 161

²³The Good News, Nov.-Dec. 1972; quoted by B. Earl Allen, op. cit., p. 64

²⁴Meyer, The Memorial Name, loc. cit.

²⁵The Missing J, loc. cit.

²⁶God, Names of, Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 7, col. 679

²⁷The New 20^th Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 2^ND edition, p. 886

²⁸Meyer, op. cit., p. 22

²⁹Faculty Members of Ambassador College, Padadena, California, “God Speaks Out on the New Morality”; quoted by Meyer, op. cit., p. 8

³⁰Names of God, Kabbalah, Wikipedia, Internet

³¹Aid to Bible Understanding, Watchtower Tract and Bible Society, p. 885

³²Jehovah, Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon

³³Meyer, op. cit., p. 87