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The Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BC to 135 AD), Aramaic (10th century BC to 4th century AD) and modern Hebrew scripts.

Tetragrammaton (from the Greek , meaning '[word of] four letters' (tetra "four" + gramma (gen. grammatos) "letter"), ^[1] refers to , the name of the God of Israel, written with four letters, as written in the Hebrew Masoretic Text where it appears over 6,800 times.

The letters from right to left are:

|- ! Hebrew !! Letter name !! Pronunciation |-valign=top | ? | Yodh | "Y" |-valign=top | ? | He (pronounced "hey") | "H" (or sometimes silent) |-valign=top | ? | Vav | "V" or placeholder for "O"/"U" |-valign=top | ? | He | "H" or silent |}

is the quadriliteral name of God , which is referred to in Josephus, in the Church Fathers, in the Palestinian Talmud and in the magic papyri.

Biblical Hebrew often omits vowel sounds from its writings, which would be shown in English.

These four letters are usually transliterated from Hebrew as JHWH in German, French and Dutch, and YHWH in English. This was variously rendered as "Yahweh" or "Jehovah", since in Latin there was no distinct lettering to distinguish 'Y' from 'J', or 'W' from 'V', and the Hebrew does not clearly indicate the omitted vowels. In English translations, it is often rendered in all capital letters as "LORD", following Jewish tradition which reads the word as "Adonai" ("Lord") out of respect for the name of God and the commandment not to take the name of God in vain.

See "Historical overview" at Yahweh and Jehovah.

Occurrences and Uses

The Tetragrammaton is the ancient Jewish name for God. It occurs 5410 times in the Bible:

The Tetragrammaton occurs 6,828 times in the Hebrew text of both the Biblia Hebraica and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.^[2]

See also

• Tetragrammaton in the New Testament

References

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