יהוה, which transliterates into Roman letters as YHWH. Now, the problem is the pronunciation. The transliteration of the Tetragammaton is itself unsure, since YHVH, JHVH and JHWH are also possible -- consonantal "Y" and "J" are allophones of the same phoneme, and "V" and "W" are also allophones.

What's more, Hebrew is written with consonants, and the vowels are indicated by diacritical marks called "points". The Tetragammaton is written as a name of God in the Hebrew Bible, but when the Bible is read aloud in the synagogue, the actual name of God is too sacred to pronounce, so Adonai -- "Lord" -- is said instead. To remind the reader of this, the points for "adonai" are transcribed in the Torah when the Tetragammaton is written. This has led to the error that the name of God is pronounced "Jehovah", which is one version of what you get when you combine the points for "adonai" with the Tetragammaton.

The actual pronunciation is a matter of conjecture. The name probably comes from one form of "to be", in which case the likely pronunciation is "Yahweh", or something like it. I have come across a supposition that it should be "Yahu", from an ecstatic cry -- "Yahoo!" -- but that is very much a minority opinion.

You will note my constant use of words like "problem", "unsure", "likely" and so on. The answer is that nobody knows for certain how the Tetragammaton should be pronounced.

Which makes for some fun when the Jehovah's Witnesses show up. (The use of 'Jehovah' in English is a result of the mistransliteration
of the word that was originally deduced where the "J" was pronounced as the English "Y".

So the first question to the Jehovah's Witnesses is "do you know that the word 'Jehovah' never appears in the Bible"? The trainer steps forward with a broad smile and says "well it can be either Jehovah or Yahweh if you prefer"?

Responding with "well it can't be either because the hard 'J' doesn't appear in the Biblical Hebrew and is a mistransliteration of the German by people who had no idea what they were reading, but in any case did you know that neither 'Jehovah' or 'Yahweh' appear in the Hebrew Bible.

While they are sorting that out I explain the use of The Tetragammaton I then ask "if you can't get the name right what else have you gotten wrong?

Usually they are gone by that time.

[MDSNtl.cryptomuzemNSA.gov(WHISPEERS)]

But I did have a couple of Old Testament courses. And my mother's family are all Jews.

Last edited Thu Jan 2, 2014, 03:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Some sources attribute some fragmented writings called the Chaldean Oracles to Zoroaster. Do you believe they are that old? Do you know of an online source, which offers a reasonable English translation of the ancient poem(s)?

Occultism is not one of my interests.

Eusebius attributed them to Zoroaster. Classical writers such as Plutarch and Diogenes proposed dates prior to 6000 BCE