This article is about the literary manifestations of the name of God in Hebrew. For other attributes of the name of God, see Yahweh, God in Judaism, and God in Abrahamic religions.

The Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BC to 135 AD), old Aramaic (10th century BC to 4th century AD) and square Hebrew (3rd century BC to present) scripts.

Tetragrammaton (from the Greek τετραγράμματον, meaning "[a word] having four letters")^[1] refers to the Hebrew term יהוה, the name of God depicted in the Bible.

יהוה is composed of four Hebrew consonants, and it occurs 6,828 times in the approved consonantal Hebrew text of the Bible.^[2][3]

The letters, properly read from right to left (in Biblical Hebrew), are:

Hebrew	Letter name	Pronunciation
י	Yodh	"Y"
ה	He	"H"
ו	Waw	"W" or placeholder for "O"/"U" vowel (see mater lectionis)
ה	He	"H" (or often a silent letter at the end of a word)

Front side of the Roman Catholic Basilica of St. Louis, King of France, or the Old Cathedral, built in 1834 and located in downtown St. Louis, Missouri near the Gateway Arch. The Tetragrammaton is seen on the Tympanum.

These four letters are usually transliterated from Hebrew as IHVH in Latin, JHWH in German, French and Dutch, and JHVH/YHWH in English. This has been variously rendered as "Yahweh" or even occasionally as "Jehovah", based on the Latin form of the term.^[4], while the Hebrew text does not clearly indicate the omitted vowels. In English translations, it is often rendered in capital and small capital letters as "the LORD", following Jewish tradition which reads the word as "Adonai" ("Lord") out of respect for the name of God and the interpretation of the commandment not to take the name of God in vain. The word "haŠem" 'the Name' is also used in Jewish contexts; in Samaritan, "Šemå" is the normal substitution.

See "Historical overview" at Yahweh and Jehovah.

[edit] Pronunciation

For views on the pronunciation of the name, see the main article, Yahweh.

[edit] Occurrences and uses

The Tetragrammaton occurs 6,828 times in the Hebrew text of both the Biblia Hebraica and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.^[3] It does not appear in the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, or Esther. It first appears in the Hebrew text in Genesis 2:4.

[edit] The Leningrad Codex of 1008-1010 A.D.

Vowel points were added to the Tetragrammaton by the Masoretes, in the first millennium A.D.

Six Hebrew spellings of the Tetragrammaton are found in:
The Leningrad Codex of 1008-1010 A.D. [1] as shown below (note that the entries in the transliteration column are not intended to indicate how the name was intended to be pronounced by the Masoretes, but only how the word would be pronounced if read without q're perpetuum):

ĕ is hatef segol; ǝ is the pronounced form of plain shewa

[edit] See also

• Tetragrammaton in the New Testament
• Yahweh
• Jehovah
• INRI

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Media related to Tetragrammaton at Wikimedia Commons
•  "Tetragrammaton". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.