Usually, God's name is presented as fundamental in the monotheistic religions, but its pronunciation is controversial (YeHoWaH, Yahve, Jehovah,...). However, the key to unlock this mystery was provided by the famous Maimonides 800 years ago, when he wrote that the Name of God (the tetragram YHWH) "is read as it is written". The paradox starts and ends here with these intriguing words.
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A6- Did some Hebrew Christian scholars read the vowels e,o,a of the Tetragram with its consonants YHWH getting the hybrid form Jehovah (YeHoWaH) ?
Of course, Hebrew Christians knew the Masoretic pointing YeHoWaH but they rather used the remarks from Maimonides, that they frequently quoted, to vocalize the Tetragram (The variants came from a bad knowledge about the "mothers of reading" system).
1- Period of Discovery (1200-1500). Early on Hebrew scholars, such as Joachim of Flora (1195) and Pope Innocent III (1200), tried to vocalize the name of God and they used the name IEUE. Why such a vocalization ? The starting point came from the book of the famous Maimonides, written in 1190, entitled The Guide of the Perplexed in which he explained that the Tetragram was the true name of God and he asserted that in fact it was only the true worship which had been lost, and not the authentic pronunciation of the Tetragram, because this was still possible according to its letters. That is why Pope Innocent III noticed that the Hebrew letters of the Tetragram Iohdh, He’, Wav (that is Y, H, W) were used as vowels, and that the name IESUS had exactly the same vowels I, E and U as the divine name IEUE. He used the Hebrew/ Greek equivalencies : Y = I, H = E and W = U (In the first century, Josephus explained that the Tetragram was written with four vowels.) Additionally, the French translator Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, obtained the name IHEUHE, because he preferred using the Hebrew/ Latin equivalencies : Y = I, H = HE and W = U in his comments on the Psalms written in 1509. However, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa explained in one of his sermon (Sermo XLVIII Dies sanctificatus) written in 1445, that God's name is spelled in Hebrew Iohdh, He’, Waw, He’; and these four letters serve as vowels, corresponding to I, E, O, A in Greek, because in this language there is no specific vowel for the sound OU (the letter U in Greek is pronounced as the French Ü). So, in Greek, the transcription IEOUA would be more exact and would better reflect the OU sound of the Hebrew name Ieoua, becoming in Latin Iehova or Ihehova, because the letter H is inaudible and the vowel U serves as a consonant (V). The best equivalencies would be Y = I, H = A (at the end of words) and W = O, as explained the Jewish writer Judah Halevi in his book The Kuzari written in 1140. That is why, the modern scholar Antoine Fabre d'Olivet said in his work entitled La Langue hébraïque restituée (The Hebrew Tongue Restored) published in 1823, that the best pronunciation of the divine Name according to its letters was Ihôah/ Iôhah/ Jhôah. Moreover, when he began to translate the Bible (Genesis, chapters I to X), he used systematically the name IHÔAH in his translation (that is to say Y-H-W-H = I-H-Ô-AH.) Several scholars preferred the equivalencies Y = I, H = A (at the end of words) and W = OU, because the sound OU is older than the sound Ô, for example the name Y-H-W-D-H is read I-H-OU-D-AH, not I-H-Ô-D-AH. They obtained the name I-H-OU-AH or IOUA because the letter H is inaudible. Strangely, many scholars believed that this name JOVA has been kept in the ancient name JOVE (Joue-pater that is Jupiter).
2- Improvements (1500-1600). To set in order the variants of pronunciation of the Tetragram, Pietro Galatino dedicated a good part of his work entitled De arcanis catholice ueritatis (Concerning Secrets of the Universal Truth), published in 1518, to explain the reasons for this pronunciation. First, he quoted the book of Maimonides The Guide of the Perplexed abundantly, specially the chapters 60-64 of the first part, to remind that the Tetragram is the proper noun of God which can be pronounced according to its letters. However, he demonstrated that the pronunciation Ioua, admitted in his time, was too rough and he gave the reasons for this. He explained for example that the name Iuda, written hdwy (YWDH), was an abbreviation of the name Iehuda written hdwhy (YHWDH). All the Hebrew proper nouns beginning in YHW- [why] are moreover always vocalized Ieh-. Consequently, if the Tetragram was really pronounced Ioua it would have be written hW:y (YWH) in Hebrew, which was never the case. So, because the Tetragram is written hwhy (YHWH), the letter H inside the Name has to be heard. He concluded that, because this name is pronounced according to its letters, that the best transcription was the form I-eh-ou-a (Iehoua), rather than the form I-ou-a used, for example, by Agostino Justiniani, in his polyglot translation of Psalms published in 1516 (if Galatino had directly transcribed the masoretic form, he would have obtained Yehouah and not Iehoua). The French translator Pierre Robert Olivétan also recognized in his Apologie du translateur (Apology of the Translator) written in 1535, that God's name was in Hebrew Iehouah rather than Ioua, because this last form did not express the aspiration of the letter H.
AUTHOR'S NAME DIVINE NAME USED DATE
Joachim of Flora IEUE 1195
Pope Innocent III IEUE 1200
Raymond Martini YOHOUA 1278
Porchetus de Salvaticis YOHOUAH 1303
Nicholas of Cusa IEOA, IHEHOUA 1455
Marsilio Ficino HIEHOUAHI 1474
Jacques Lefèvres d'Etaples IHEVHE 1509
Sébastien Chateillon IOUA 1555
Most of the time theses scholars specified that they tried to pronounce the Name "as it is written ", only the cardinal Nicolas of Cusa explained the difficulties to get a good transcription from Hebrew to Greek [I-E-O-A] or to Latin [I-HE-HOU-A].
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