YAHWEH. - Divine name, called the "tetragrammaton" because it has 4 letters, the most used in the Hebrew Bible (ca. 6823 times), revealed by God himself to Moses when he established his new relations with Israel, in the covenant of Sinai (Ex. 3, 13-17; 6, 2-4). God himself explains: "I am who I am" (Ex. 3, 14), that is, the eternally existing one, to whom existence belongs by nature, who assists (v. 12) his nation; immutable and therefore infallible in keeping promises (U. Cassuto [v. bibl.], p. 85).

J. is the only divine name that in all the Semitic languages has a preformative verbal formation (= imperfect of the verb hāh, hīh; in Greek: ὁ ὄν; "he who is"; A. Vaccari, J. [v. bibl.], pp. 5 ff., 9 ff.). Among the Jews there prevailed, after the exile, the reverential custom of not pronouncing the sacred name par excellence; substituting it with the generic 'adhōnaj ("my Lord"), they vocalized the tetragrammaton as 'adhōnaj; whence resulted the erroneous reading Jēhōwah (Iehovah), attested already in R. Martini, Pugio fidei, of 1270, but much earlier. As the equivalent of 'adhōnaj the Septuagint has Κύριος, and the Vulgate Dominus for J.

J., the full form, is the original one (it is found in the only ancient document that mentions J.: the Stele of Mesha, line 18); from it derive the short forms: Jāh, of the Elephantine papyri, and in theophoric names together with Jāh, Jō. It had been believed (1932) that the divine name J. was to be found in the texts of Rās Samrah (mt, VI, pl. X, lines 13-15; C. Gordon, Ugaritic Literature, Rome 1949, p. 26) in the form Jāh, which would therefore be the primitive one (K. G. Kunn, A. L. Williams, R. Dussaud). But the identification amounts to a mere possibility; nor is the passage from Jāh to Jāh explained (H. Bauer, O. Eissfeldt, A. Vaccari, A. Bea). So far, every attempt to derive J. from the Egyptian pantheon (D. Völter, W. M. Muller, J. Lieblein), or from the Babylonian one (F. Delitzsch, A. Loda), or from the Kenites (K. Budde, H. Gressmann, E. Sellin, C. Toussaint) has proved arbitrary and vain (C. Toussaint [v. bibl.], pp. 218-225; J. Plessis [v. bibl.], col. 837 ff.; F. X. Kortleitner, Commentationes biblicae, III, Innsbruck 1930, pp. 90-93; VIII, ibid. 1933, pp. 5-8). The very verbal form contradicts it. J. is a name not created by men, but revealed by J. himself (Vaccari).

Bibliography29 works

BIBL.: F. Prat, Jéhovah, in DB, III, coll. 1220-44; J. Plessis, Babylone et la Bible, in DBL, I, col. 837 ff.; L. Hennequin, Éléphantine, in DBL, II, col. 990 ff.; J. P. van Kasteren, Yahvé et El-Schaddai, in La science catholique, 8 (1894), pp. 296-315; M.-J. Lagrange, La révélation du nom divin «Tetragrammaton», in Revue biblique, 2 (1893), pp. 239-50; id., El et Yahvé, ibid., 12 (1902), pp. 370-75; id., Encore le nom de Yahvé, ibid., 16 (1907), pp. 383-86; C. Robert, La révélation du nom divin Jéhovah, ibid., 3 (1894), pp. 161-81; S. Landersdorfer, Der Gottesname Jhush in den Keilschriften, in Bibliotheze Zeitschrift, 10 (1912), pp. 24-35; G. R. Driver, The evidence for the name «J. » outside the Old Test., in Old Test. essay, London 1927, pp. 18-24; M. Noth, Die israelischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinismischen Namensgebung, Stuttgart 1928, pp. 101-104; A. Loda, Israël des origines au milieu du VIIIe siècle, Paris 1930, p. 371 ff.; C. Toussaint, L'ancien jaloïsme, ibid. 1931, pp. 215-29; H. Bauer, Die Gottheiten von Bas Schamra, in Zeitschrift für die alttest. Wissenschaft, 51 (1933), p. 92 ff.; A. Vaccari, in News Domini, in Verbum Domini, 13 (1933), pp. 3-7; id., J. e i nomi divini nelle religioni semitiche, in Biblica, 17 (1936), pp. 1-10; U. Cassuto, La questione della Genesi, Florence 1934, pp. 19 ff., 24 ff.; F. Ceuppens, De historia primavera, Rome 1934, p. 96 ff.; G. Eissfeldt, Neue Zeugnisse für die Aussprache des Tetrargamms als J., in Zeitschrift für die alttest. Wissenschaft, 53 (1935), pp. 59-76; K. G. Kuhn, Jn. Jho, Jhush. Über die Entstehung des Namens J., in Orientalische Studien E. Littmann, Leiden 1935, pp. 25-42; R. Dussaud, Les découvertes de Bas Shamra et l'Ancien Testament, Paris 1936, p. 107; A. L. Williams, The Tetragrammaton-J., name or surrogate?, in Zeitschrift für die alttest. Wissenschaft, 54 (1936), pp. 262-69; A. Vincent, La religion des Judoe-Arameens d'Éléphantine, Paris 1937, pp. 25-60; A. Bea, Archäologisches und Religionsgeschichtliches aus Ugarit-Ras Samra, in Biblica, 20 (1939), p. 440 ff.; G. Mercati, Sulla scrittura del tetragramma nelle antiche versioni greche del Vecchio Testamento, ibid., 22 (1941), pp. 339-66; F. Zorell, Lexicon hebraicum, Rome 1940 ff., p. 228 ff.; R. Dussaud, Yahvé, in Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles Lettres, 1940, pp. 364-70; W. A. Irwin, The tetragrammaton, in The journal of more eastern Studies, 3 (1944), pp. 257-59; J. A. Montgomery, The Hebrew divine name and the personal pronoun hā', in The journal of biblicae Literature, 63 (1944), pp. 161-63.

Francesco Spadafora

@incollection{ec7_jahweh, author = {Spadafora, Francesco}, title = {Jahweh}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {552--553}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/jahweh} }

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Yahweh

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