Divine Name

JHVH (Ang), YHWH (Heb)

* **יהוה** (Heb), **YHWH**; (Ang) **JHVH**, four (tetra) letters (consonants), the Tetragrammaton of the Divine Name by which the personal name of God derives.
* **Jehovah** (Hebrew: יהוה, *Yahweh*), the translated personal name of God.
* **השם‎** (Heb), *HaShem*, meaning "The Name".
* **Almighty God** (Hebrew: אֵל שַׁדַּי‎‎ *El Shaddai*), a holy title for God.
* **God** (Hebrew: אלהים‎ ‎‎*Elohim*), a title for the Creator.
* **LORD**, or Master (Hebrew: אֲדֹנָי‎ *Adonai*, Greek: κύριος *Kyrios*), a title for God.

The **Divine Name** refers to the Tetragrammaton found in the Bible, the name of God. Since the original pronunciation of the *Divine name* has been lost to time, two modern-day translation variants have been proposed: Jehovah (*Ang.*) and Yahweh (*Heb.*)

## Tetragrammaton

God's name is represented by the **Tetragrammaton** (יהוה): four consonant letters translated from Hebrew into English as YHWH or JHVH. This is known as the *Divine Name*. In ancient Hebrew, the Tetragrammaton was not written with vowels. When ancient Hebrew was in everyday use, readers uttered the appropriate vowels. About a thousand years after the Hebrew Scriptures were completed, Jewish scholars developed a system of pronunciation points, or signs, by which to indicate what vowels to use when reading Hebrew. However, by that time, many Jews had the superstitious idea that it was wrong to say God’s personal name out loud, so they used substitute expressions. Thus, it seems that when they copied the Tetragrammaton, they combined the vowels for the substitute expressions with the four consonants representing the divine name. Therefore, the manuscripts with those vowel points are inaccurate for determining how the name of God was actually and originally pronounced in Hebrew.
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"Jehovah" is an anglophonic translation of the Divine Name of God, and “Yahweh” is its phonetic Hebrew equivalent. A Dead Sea Scroll containing a portion of Leviticus in Greek, transliterates the divine name Iao. Besides that form, early Greek writers also suggest the pronunciations Iae, I·a·beʹ, and I·a·ou·eʹ. However, reasonably no one truly knows how God’s ancient servants pronounced this name in Hebrew (Genesis 13:4; Exodus 3:15). It is largely agreed that God used his name repeatedly in communication with his people. They addressed him by the Divine name, and they used it freely in speaking with others (Exodus 6:2; 1 Kings 8:23; Psalm 99:9).

## Translations

### Yahweh

The Hebrew phonetic name of God, Yahweh, derived from the transliteration of the Tetragrammaton: YHWH. The Holman Christian Standard Bible restores the proposed Biblical Hebrew variant, *Yahweh*, wherever the Tetragrammaton occurs in the Hebrew Bible. *Yahweh* is less commonly found in other Bibles.

### Jehovah

The anglophonic name of God, Jehovah, derived from the transliteration of the Tetragrammaton: JHVH. This translation of the *Divine name* has more commonplace in various Bible translations than *Yahweh*. Appearances of the translation *Jehovah* occur in the King James 1611 version and the American Standard version. But it's the New World Translation that restores the *English rendering*: *Jehovah* (1) wherever the Tetragrammaton occurs in the Hebrew Bible and (2) wherever it would likely occur in the Hebrew scriptures that are quoted in New Testament Greek manuscripts.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 NWT, *The Divine Name in the Hebrew Scriptures*, p.1731