JEHOVAH, an erroneous pronunciation of the name of the God of Israel in the Bible, due to pronouncing the vowels of the term "Adonay," the marginal Masoretic reading,. with the consonants of the text-reading "Yahweh,* which was not altered to avoid the profanation of the divine name for magical or other blasphe mous purposes. Hence it is pronounced "Mona?" the "Lord" or "Adonay Elohim,P "Lord God? The oldest Greek versions use the term the exact translation of the current Jewish substitute for the orig inal Tetragrammation Yahweh. The reading can be traced to the early Middle Ages and until lately was said to be invented by Peter Gallatin (1518), confessor of Pope Leo X. Recent writers, however, trace it to an earlier date, being found in Raymond Martin's 'Pugeo Fidei' (1270). It was doubtless due to the fact that Christian Hebraists regarded it as a superstition to substitute any word for the divine name, or, as Professor Moore suggests, they may have been ignorant of the rule that although the consonants of the word to be sub stituted are ordinarily written in the margin, yet as was regularly read for the in effable name, it was deemed unnecessary to note the fact at every occurrence. Of the various Yahwah, the commonly accepted spelling for names of God that appear in the Old Testament, Jehovah, occurs the most frequently. There are some divergencies in regard to its use by the Biblical writers which have given rise to the terms Elohist and Jehovist documentary sources. For example, it was made known to Moses in a vision at Horeb (Ex. iii). In Ex. vi 2, 3, it is said the name was not known to the patriarchs. It is not employed in Ecclesiastes and in Daniel is found only in Ch. ix. In many of the Psalms, Elohim occurs much more frequently than Yahweh. To avoid repetition of this name, when the name Adonay precedes, Yahweh is written by the Masorites with the vowels of Elohim and is read Elohim instead of Yahweh. Throughout the New Testament it is rendered like the Septuagint It was pronounced by the priests only in the temple service; it was mentioned 10 times on the day of Atonement. Josephus (Antiq. ii, 12) de clares that religion forbids him to make known its pronunciation. Philo in more than one passage calls it ineffable, to be uttered only by those whose ears and tongues are purified by wisdom to' ear and utter it in a holy place and the penalty of death is to be expected by those who utter it unseasonably. (We Vita Moses). After the temple services had ceased, rabbinical tradition kept up reverence for the name whose misuse evoked the words of the Mishua (Sank. x, 1), life who pronounces the name with its own letters has no share in the future world' It was utilized in those early centuries by healers and magicians—magic papyri pre serve it in many places. Attempts at pronuncia
tion were made by some of the Christian Fathers, but without any uniformity. It was not long before the exact pronunciation was wholly lost. There has been much speculation as to the origin and meaning of the term. At tempts to connect it with any Indo-European deity or to trace it to Egypt or China need not be considered seriously or efforts to identify it with other Semitic divinities. Exact scholar ship is wanting and sources are very meagre. Even Friedrich Delitzsch was not successful in his labors to read it in Babylonian tablets of its first dynasty, before 2000 B.C. It is no less dif ficult to interpret its meaning. Oriental lan guages have a mysticism of their own and pre sent peculiar problems to cooler and less unim aginative Western minds. Merely to give cur rent explanation of the meaning of the word, some derive it from a Hebrew root "to fall' sig nifying originally some sacred object believed to have fallen from heaven; others from a root "to blow," a name for the God of the storm, and still others, with more probability, see in it the causative form of the word • to be° — he who causes to be, that is the Creator. The passage in Ex. iii, 14, where in answer to the question "What is His name?" the reply is given 'CI am that I am" emphasizes the idea of God as a living, active being, who was, is and ever will be, as many Jewish commentators interpret the cited phrase,
Compared with the lifeless gods of the heathen, He is the ever existing source of creation, illustrated by many passages in Holy Writ. In rabbinical tra dition it has been the subject of much discus sion; but it was reserved for the Cabalist in direct contradiction to the spirit of restraint and reverence that forbade the mention of the divine name to make it and its synonyms an essential part of their cosmology, giving it the power to perform miracles and create life. It was awe at the sacred name not any superstitutious fear that dictated the general Jewish reticence as to its expression by voice or pen, for in letter writing it is not written out in full, but repre sented by the letter The' or a Male' with an accent. Nothing could be in more marked con trast to such reticence than the glibness and fre quency with which the term is used by the mod ern world whether as an oath or exclamation. Consult Blau, 'Das altjud.
(1898) ; Driver, 'Present Theories on the Ori gin and Nature of the Tetrag.> (in