Yahweh

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The name used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to God, emphasizing a personal and covenantal relationship with His people
2. A sacred and ineffable name representing the monotheistic concept of the divine in Judaism
3. Considered the tetragrammaton in biblical texts, symbolizing the essence of divinity and its attributes in religious contexts

Etymology: The name is written with four Hebrew consonants, YHWH, known as the Tetragrammaton, and Hebrew readers traditionally did not pronounce it. Instead they read "Adonai" ("my Lord") aloud whenever the text showed it, a habit so ingrained that the original vowels were lost from the written tradition. As a result, nobody knows for certain how the name was originally sounded; "Yahweh" is the reconstruction most scholars favour today, and it is the form used in scholarship on the religion of ancient Israel and Judah. The English spelling "Yahweh" is surprisingly recent. The German spelling "Jahweh" was in use from the 1850s, and the "Y" spelling, chosen to make the first consonant sound like the "y" in "yes", appears in English in 1860, in the Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, edited by John Thomas, founder of the Antipas Christadelphians. English Bible translations first used it for the Tetragrammaton in the Emphasized Bible of 1902.

Synonyms: God, Jehovah, Lord, Divine