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2015

Title page to Oswald Croll, Basilica Chymica (1st edition 1608: here the German edition, Frankfurt, 1629). The same design occurs in the 1611 Latin edition. A Tetragrammaton appears within a Trinitarian triangle surrounded by the nine orders of angels. The six alchemical masters are portrayed. 433 Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (Hamburg, 1595). The first edition has several remarkable hand-coloured engraved plates heightened with silver and gold. The illustration here shows the inner circle of the "Cosmic Rose." The central cruciform figure is surrounded by in hoc signo vinces and then the Pentagrammaton and other Hebrew names of God. The next ring links these to the Sephiroth. On the other rim are the Ten Commandments. 434 Robert Fludd, De Praeternaturali Utriusque Mundi Historia, p. 157. A representation of the Sephirot as an upside-down tree. The leaves emerging from Malkuth at the bottom are themselves are identified with the Sephiroth and one of the orders of angels. Hochma and Geburah are identified with the Son and Binah with the Holy Spirit. Each of the Sephirot is associated with a Hebrew name of God, and the Tetragrammaton lies along the trunk, vocalized as Ie-ho-va. 436 Robert Fludd's copper engraving Causarum Universalium Speculum from Utr. Cos. 1621. The plate is discussed in the text. 438 Robert Fludd's diagram showing the heavenly emanation of the Tetragrammaton, displaying three stages in the growth of the name. 438 Robert Fludd's diagram representing divine harmony (1619) with Tetragrammaton. 439 The frontispiece of Kircher's Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (Scheus, Rome, 1646) with Tetragrammaton. 441 The Tetragrammaton supposedly concealed in an Egyptian Hieroglyph.

Jacquet Publishing, 2019

The oldest discovered artifact of the Tetragrammaton dates from the Divided Kingdom of Israel period and is written in the Phoenician script as - - - - which has evolved into the present-day Hebrew Tetragrammaton - - - - translated into English as YHWH. Many inquisitive people today wanting to know more about The Creator God’s Name are asking such good questions as “Should YHWH be translated as Jehovah or Yahweh?” and “What is the difference between Jehovah and Yahweh?” This research will investigate the origin of the Tetragrammaton and those names. Since these four letters have retained their names in contemporary Hebrew and the ancient languages of Aramaic, Paleo-Hebrew/Phoenician AND EGYPTIAN, there is no doubt that the original four letters making up the Tetragrammaton were written in the Egyptian script! Since this Sacred Name of God came out of Egypt, we must go back to this original location and try to find out not only what the pronunciation of The Sacred Name was, but more importantly What is The Meaning of The Name! In this PART 3, more than a dozen ancient manuscripts will be examined in the quest to find the historical roots of the Tetragrammaton and the meaning of the four letters.

Journal for The Study of The Old Testament, 2007

The representation of the divine name in the Masoretic tradition and in the early translations of the Septuagint is the subject of ongoing discussion. It can be demonstrated that even the oldest Masoretic vocalization as preserved, among others, in codex L must refer to adonai (the Lord) rather than shema (the Name). By means of exegetical observations in the Greek version of the Torah, it becomes clear that already the translators of the Septuagint have chosen 'Lord' (kyrios) as an appropriate representation of the tetragrammaton; the replacement by the Hebrew tetragrammaton in some Greek manuscripts is not original. Moreover, it becomes clear that the translators of the Septuagint were influenced by theological considerations when choosing an equivalent for the divine name.

The purpose of the research was to investigate the evidence that the memorial name of Israel's God Yahuwah/IAO was in use among the Christians in the early Church. The principal result of the research was that there is clear evidence that IAO operated as a transliteration of the Tetragram in what are the earliest strata of the LXX. This Old Testament (LXX) of the early Greek speaking Church was often cited by the New Testament writers. It was also noted that in some parts of the second and third century Church, the name IAO was in use in the Scriptures, in prayers, in Biblical commentaries and in baptisms. The appearance of a form of the Tetragram in a Christian baptism has consequences for the way scholars of the New Testament will read the book of Acts and other texts where kurios is supposed to have replaced the Tetragram in citations from the LXX.

Jacquet Publishing, 2019

The Tetragrammaton is a word which means “The Four Letters” in reference to the name of God as given to Moses upon Mount Sinai after the Israelites and Hebrews departed Egypt in the famous Exodus. Since Moses was “very great in the land of Egypt", he was a man of great influence and high status close to Pharaoh. Moses would have been a learned man in speaking Egyptian and other languages and a learned man in writing Egyptian hieroglyphs. Many would like to believe that his bringing down the Ten Commandments and the later writings of the Torah were written in Hebrew but there are centuries into the future before the “Hebrew language and script” is developed. The script that the Israelites did use once the Nation of Israel was established with their first real King was with the use of the Phoenician script, already in wide use in the Levant region. These ancient Hebrew writings discovered have been called “Paleo-Hebrew” by contemporary historians, a term coined for the first time in 1954. The oldest discovered artifact of the Tetragrammaton dates from the era of King David’s reign and is written in the Phoenician script which has evolved into the present-day Hebrew Tetragrammaton which is translated into English as YHWH. Many people today wanting to know more about The Creator God’s Name are asking such good questions as “Should YHWH be translated as Jehovah or Yahweh?” This research will investigate the origin of the Tetragrammaton and those names. No matter how one looks upon the history of conquerors - the good, the bad and the ugly - we cannot forget where all of this originated from – Egypt! Since this Sacred Name of God came out of Egypt, we must go back to this original location and try to find out not only what the pronunciation of The Sacred Name was, but more importantly What is The Meaning of The Name! Since these four letters have retained their names in contemporary Hebrew and the ancient languages of Aramaic, Paleo-Hebrew/Phoenician AND EGYPTIAN, there is no doubt that the original four letters making up the Tetragrammaton were written in the Egyptian script! Along with the examination of dozens of ancient artifacts with the Tetragrammaton written on them, I shall also provide the evidence that the name “Ya” and “Yah”, a shortened version of “Yahweh” was in Egypt far before the era of Moses in Egypt.

Divine Names: Different Approaches and Special Writing in the Qumran Scrolls, 2024

Traditionally, the ancient Israelites approached the name of God with reverence as is visible in the third commandment (Exod 20:7; Deut 5:11). In the written documents, a special approach towards the Tetragrammaton is already visible in the Elohistic Psalter (Psalms 42– 89 [83]) in which that name was usually replaced with אלהים in all textual witnesses. A similar avoidance of the Tetragrammaton is evidenced in many Qumran scrolls. Reflecting a similar approach to the avoidance of the use of divine names, scribal solutions were invented in order to avoid the regular writing of these names in the text; they are the focus of our analysis: (i) The writing of the Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew characters; (ii) Four dots (named Tetrapuncta) (....); rarely: (iii) A dicolon ( : ) in 4QRPb (4Q364); (iv) לאלהיכ written in red in 11QpaleoUnid. Text (11Q22). The picture that emerges is a clear tendency to present these names with various graphical solutions in the Qumran Hebrew scrolls, but not in the other Judean Desert scrolls. This tendency is not felt across the board in the Qumran scrolls, but it is mainly limited to the scrolls that are closely connected to the Qumran scribal practice. The writing of the Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew characters is also evidenced in Greek manuscripts and the connection between the Hebrew and Greek evidence is scrutinized.

Review. Robert J. Wilkinson, Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God: From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century. Journal of Jesuit Studies 2 (2015), 723-6.

European Journal of Language Studies, 2019

The subject of the translation, transliteration and rendering of the Tetragrammaton () into vernacular languages has been one of heated debate. This paper will look into the Phonetics, Phonology and Semantics of the Tetragrammaton as well as the linguistic and scriptural reasons for advocating its translation and equivalent rendering. Considering the original Hebrew texts as well as texts from the 1 st through to the 6 th Centuries CE of the Septuagint in Greek and Hebrew will provide clear evidence for the appropriateness of translating the Divine Name. Through this powerful linguistic and historical evidence it will also further refute ancient superstitions as well as arguments which are the basis of modern efforts to suppress and ban the use of the Tetragrammaton in both written and spoken form.

It has almost become a scholaily axiom to assume that the name of the Israelite God, the so-called Tetragrammaton (;rt;'t'), was originally pronounced yahwê.| Taking into account the fact that the sacredness of the Tetragrammaton2 had prevented its public utterance among the Jews in the first centuries of the CE, and the knowledge of its right pronunciation had begun to deteriorate and had altogether vanished in the Middle Ages,3 the great degree of certainty the assumption enjoys is rather surprising. Nonetheless, there are good reasons for This is also assumed by Prof. Tapani Haniainen (cf. Tapani Harviainen and Raija Sollamo, Heprean tekstikirja ja sanu;to [Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1987], 8) to whom this article is dedicated with the gratitude ofa pupil and a colleague. rffhether the Tetragrammaton ;tì;t! was the most original form of the name of the Israelite God (so, e.g., Ludwig Köhler and Waller Baumgatrcr, Hebrtlisches und aramãisches Leikon zum Alten Testament [3. ed.; Leiden: Brill, 1974], 2:377-378) or whether it is an expanded form of the more original tn'(so O. R. Driver, "The Original Form of the Name 'Yahweh': Evidence and Conclusions," AW 46 Í19281:7-25; Martin Rose, Jahwe: Zum Streit um den alttestamentlichen Gollesnamen [Theologische Studien 122; Zfrich; Theologischer Verlag, 19781, l6-30), which developed only as a result ofthe Josianic reform, is not important for the argument ofthe present article. I am only interested in the question about the pronunciation of lhe Tetragrammaton in the period just before and after the beginning of the CE. Nevertheless, it is not my purpose to prove that there was only one generally accepted form of the divine name of the lsraelite God around the beginning of the CE. On the contrary, some Nag Hammadi texts, some references in the writings of the early Christian theologians, some Aramaic texts from the Jewish military colony in the Egyptian Elephantine, and some Chrislian magical lexts seem to suggest otherwise (see n. I 5).

In die Skriflig / In Luce Verbi

In Romans 10:13, Paul quotes from Joel 2:32 (3:5 in Hebrew) in his treatment of Israel and the gospel. The quotation is the same as that found in Acts 2:21: 'everyone who calls on the 1.The Anchor Bible Dictionary (ABD) (Freedman, Herion, Graf et al. 1992) has included the article from Howard (1992c) entitled, 'Tetragrammaton in the New Testament'. This might suggest that Howard's New Testament Tetragrammaton theory has widespread currency among New Testament scholars. There is no such consensus in the New Testament community. Most reviews of Howard's thesis are cursory (e.g. Hurtado 2003:182ff). This provides incentive to evaluate Howard's thesis in detail and within a defined scope (see footnote 4 below). 2.Howard examines the following manuscripts: P. Rylands Gk. 458, P. Fouad Inv. 266, 8ḤevXIIgr, and pap4QLXXLev b. A fuller examination of these manuscripts and the textual traditions that informed the New Testament can be found in Span (2018). 3.Although Jesus is referred to as God in places in the New Testament, it is exceptional usage, and the customary referent of the term God ([ὁ] θεός) is the Father (Harris 1992:42) who is referred to variously in this article: God, God of Israel, Lord God, and YHWH. The Christological significance of the exceptional use of (ὁ) θεός in relation to Jesus Christ is a related issue, but largely outside the scope of this study. The Tetragrammaton has great significance in Judaism and Christianity. Hebraist George Howard has proposed a theory of New Testament documentary origins. On the basis of early Septuagint/Old Greek (LXX/OG) manuscript findings, Howard has suggested that the Tetragrammaton has played a part in the transmission history of the New Testament. The New Testament writers, according to Howard, would have retained the Tetragrammaton in their Old Testament citations. With the success of the Gentile mission, uninformed copyists replaced the Tetragrammaton with the Greek word κύριος [Lord]. The result was that passages that applied only to YHWH were now applied in error to both the Lord God and the Lord Jesus Christ so that the high Christology of the New Testament was, in part, artificially elevated through scribal corruption. A detailed response is in order to evaluate the validity of Howard's thesis. As a test case, the LXX/OG quotation from Joel 2:32 (3:5) in Romans 10:13 is examined to determine the proper referent of the linked word Lord. Contextual and grammatical indicators point to Jesus as the 'Lord' in the passage. Combined with documentary evidence, the Tetragrammaton thesis fails to convince. The final section of research applies the findings to two Divine Name Bibles, and the suitability of the Tetragrammaton in anglicised or Hebrew characters, as a translation option, is evaluated.

C. Bonnet et al. (eds.), What’s in a Divine Name? Religious Systems and Human Agency in the Ancient Mediterranean, 2024

One of the major changes with regard to the transition of ancient Israelite religion into Early Judaism is the transformation of Yhwh from being the patron god of Israel, enthroned in Jerusalem, to being a universal (and invisible) deity residing in heaven. The first part of this paper surveys how the study of divine onomastic attrib-utes has been approached by Septuagint scholarship, highlighting how this corpus crucially attests to a reconfiguration of Yhwh’s power and status, but also pointingout some methodological shortcomings which emerged in past research. The second part of the paper seeks to provide a new framework for the study of divine onomastic attributes in the Septuagint. Paying attention to the relationship between divine name and embodiment, it correlates the deterritorialisation process of Yhwh, as attested by the onomastic attributes, with broader issues concerning the conditions, forms and limits of experiencing the divine presence in cultic contexts.

When the Tetragrammaton began to be read as Adonai is the subject of signi cant debate. While in the Old Greek may be important evidence for this euphemism, many continue to doubt whether is original to the Old Greek. In this article, the unique value of the double title is established in tracing the euphemism in question, and the replacement of of 2 Samuel with in Chronicles is presented as early evidence of the euphemism. Thus the reading Adonai for the Tetragrammaton appears to have begun considerably earlier than is commonly thought.

Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God, 2015

A delightful mediaeval silver priest's ring was found recently at Hinton Blewett in fields some way behind my own house in Somerset, where much of this chapter was written. The ring has a rectangular section, on the outside of which are the letters agla, with each letter divided by a cross pattée.1 The charm is an acronym of the Hebrew 'ata gibor leʿolam 'adonai (Thou art mighty forever, O Lord), four words from the Second Blessing of the Jewish Shemoneh 'Esreh, and was used to prevent fever.2 (Joachim, as we have seen, observed that Adonai was used as much by Christians as by "Hebrews."3) The British Museum has a more famous ring found much earlier in Coventry Park in 1802, which has inscribed within the shank 'Vulnera quinqu' dei sunt medicina mei, pia crux et passio xpi sint medicina michi. Iasper Melchior Baltasar ananyzapta tetragrammaton.4 Here we have mention of "Tetragrammaton." A similar but fuller formula appears in a 15th-century "Charme for wyked Wych": in nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti Amen.… + a + g + l + a + Tetragrammaton + Alpha + Ω….5 There are many such items attesting to little more than the place of

The series, founded in 1923, publishes monographs or other studies on antiquity and its tradition.

Why, in the English-speaking world, is nobody is given the name "Jesus" while in Spain and Latin America this theophoric name is quite popular? Any confessional argument is ultimately insufficient and unsatisfying and therefore the quandary remains unsettled. And what of theophoric names in early Christ religion? How did early Christian writers who adopted theophoric names for themselves, or employed them for others, navigate the fine line between misuse and honor, religious qualm and religious tribute? Did they navigate it at all? In his two-volume work, the writer known as Luke calls his Christ-believing addressee "Theophilos"; the real or putative Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, nicknames himself "Theophoros"; the anonymous author of the small tract To Diognetus probably invented the designation to formally address a prospective non-Christian audience. Are such names ("beloved of god"; "sprung from Zeus") merely hackneyed commonplaces? Or do such practices bestow "peer/gentlemanly honor" (Appiah 2010) as a manly quality shared by both sender and recipient? Or, as the meta-theophoric "bearer of God" seems to suggest, are theonyms used to rank positions and claim religious prestige? Focusing on three early Christian texts, the paper will try to work its way through these intriguing questions.

The Origins of Yahwism

Ever since the first identificationofthe Tetragrammaton (Yhwh)within the onomastics of the texts from Ugarit in the 1930s, all available text corporaofthe 2 nd and 1 st millennium BCE have been scrutinizedf or pre-or extra-biblical attestations of the Israelite divine name, Yhwh.¹ The rich sourceo ff oreign names attested in Egyptian script attracted attention, especiallyi nl ight of the biblical Exodus-narrative with its connection to Egypt. Appearing in 1947, Bernhard Grdseloff's² paper "Édôm, d'après les sources égyptiennes" introduced af irst hieroglyphicallyw ritten pretender for the Tetragrammaton into the discussion. Until 1964,t he hieroglyphic writingso fn ames Grdseloff had collected within aso-called Fremdvölkerliste in the Nubian temple at Amarah-West were the onlysecure attestation of an Egyptian representation of the Tetragrammaton. Then, after the publicationo fi nitial reports and copies of inscriptions from the Nubian temple of Soleb, by acomparison of the Soleb-lists with those in the temple at Amarah RaphaelGiveon was able to addtwo further attestations.Inaddition, Giveon identified three further possiblecandidates: He introduced an attestation from the early2 nd millennium into the discussion and pointed at twol ists with names of foreign peoples and toponyms at the Ramesside temple at MedinetHabu (dated into the reign of Ramses' III.). The Egyptian evidence is insofar interesting as it antedates the second earliest attestation of the Tetragrammaton, i. e., that on the MoabiteMesha-stela, by at least 350 years. Even though all involved authors usually point out the often rather speculative character of the Yhwh-discussion, even the most bizarre localisation and etymological attempts always find agrateful audience in the neighbouringscientific disciplines. In recent times, one has to observethat the debate on the origins of the Yhwh-cult has moved from referring to the primary Egyptian sources to quoting secondary literature of often doubtful standards.³ The present paper at

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