Judaism Especially due to the existence of the
Mesha Stele, the
Jahwist tradition found in , and ancient Hebrew and Greek texts, biblical scholars widely hold that the Tetragrammaton and other names of God were spoken by the ancient
Israelites and their neighbours. By at least the 3rd century BCE, the name was not pronounced in normal speech, but only in certain ritual contexts. The Talmud relays this change occurred after the death of
Simeon the Just (either
Simon I or his great-great-grandson
Simon II).
Philo calls the name
ineffable, and says that it is lawful only for those "whose ears and tongues are purified by wisdom to hear and utter it in a holy place", that is, the priests in the Temple. In another passage, commenting on , Philo writes, "If any one... should even dare to utter his name unseasonably, let him expect the penalty of death." Some time after the destruction of the
Second Temple, the spoken use of God's name as it was written ceased altogether, though knowledge of the pronunciation was perpetuated in rabbinic schools. Rabbinic sources suggest that the name of God was pronounced only once a year, by the high priest, on the
Day of Atonement. Others, including
Maimonides, claim that the name was pronounced daily in the
liturgy of the
Temple in the
priestly blessing of worshippers, after the daily sacrifice; in
synagogues, though, a substitute (probably "Adonai") was used. According to the
Talmud, in the last generations before the fall of
Jerusalem, the name was pronounced in a low tone so that the sounds were lost in the chant of the priests. Since the destruction of
Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Tetragrammaton has no longer been pronounced in the liturgy. However the pronunciation was still known in
Babylonia in the latter part of the 4th century.
Spoken prohibitions The vehemence with which the utterance of the name is denounced in the
Mishnah suggests that use of the name Yahweh was unacceptable in rabbinical Judaism. "He who pronounces the Name with its own letters has no part in the world to come!" Such is the prohibition of pronouncing the Name as written that it is sometimes called the "Ineffable", "Unutterable", or "Distinctive Name", or "Explicit Name" ("
Shem HaMephorash" in Hebrew).
Halakha prescribes that although the Name is written "yodh he waw he", if not preceded by (, ) then it is only to be pronounced "Adonai" and if preceded by "Adonai" then it is only to be pronounced as "Our God" (, ), or, in rare cases, as a repetition of Adonai, e.g., the
Thirteen Attributes of Mercy (, ) in Exodus 34:6–7; the latter names too are regarded as holy names, and are only to be pronounced in prayer. Thus when someone wants to refer in third person to either the written or spoken Name, the term
HaShem "the Name" is used; and this handle itself can also be used in prayer. The
Masoretes added vowel points (
niqqud) and
cantillation marks to the manuscripts to indicate vowel usage and for use in ritual chanting of readings from the
Bible in
Jewish prayer in
synagogues. To they added the vowels for (, ,
Pluralis majestatis taken as singular), the word to use when the text was read. While "HaShem" is the most common way to reference "the Name", the terms "HaMaqom" (lit. "The Place", i.e. "The Omnipresent") and "Raḥmana" (Aramaic, "Merciful") are used in the mishna and
gemara, still used in the phrases "HaMaqom y'naḥem ethḥem" ("may The Omnipresent console you"), the traditional phrase used in sitting
Shiva and "Raḥmana l'tzlan" ("may the Merciful save us" i.e. "God forbid").
Written prohibitions The written Tetragrammaton, as well as six other names of God, must be treated with special sanctity. They cannot be disposed of regularly, lest they be desecrated, but are usually put in
long-term storage or buried in Jewish cemeteries in order to retire them from use. Similarly, writing the Tetragrammaton (or these other names) unnecessarily is prohibited, so as to avoid having them treated disrespectfully, an action that is forbidden. To guard the sanctity of the Name, sometimes a letter is substituted by a different letter in writing (e.g.
יקוק), or the letters are separated by one or more hyphens, a practice applied also to the English name "God", which some Jews write as "G-d". Most Jewish authorities say that this practice is not obligatory for the English name.
Kabbalah Kabbalistic tradition holds that the correct pronunciation is known to a select few people in each generation, it is not generally known what this pronunciation is. There are two main schools of Kabbalah arising in 13th century Spain. These are called Theosophic Kabbalah represented by Rabbi Moshe De Leon and the Zohar, and the Kabbalah of Names or Prophetic Kabbalah whose main representative is Rabbi Abraham Abulafia of Saragossa. Rabbi Abulafia wrote many wisdom books and prophetic books where the name is used for meditation purposes from 1271 onwards. Abulafia put a lot of attention on Exodus 15 and the Songs of Moses. In this song it says "Yehovah is a Man of War, Yehovah is his name". For Abulafia the goal of prophecy was for a man to come to the level of prophecy and be called "Yehovah a man of war". Abulafia also used the tetragrammaton in a spiritual war against his spiritual enemies. For example, he prophesied in his book "The Sign", "Therefore, thus said YHWH, the God of Israel: Have no fear of the enemy" (See Hylton, A The Prophetic Jew Abraham Abulafia, 2015).
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, says that the tree of the Tetragrammaton "unfolds" in accordance with the intrinsic nature of its letters, "in the same order in which they appear in the Name, in the mystery of ten and the mystery of four." Namely, the upper cusp of the
Yod is
Arich Anpin and the main body of
Yod is and
Abba; the first
Hei is
Imma; the
Vav is
Ze`ir Anpin and the second
Hei is
Nukvah. It unfolds in this aforementioned order and "in the mystery of the four expansions" that are constituted by the following various spellings of the letters: :'
ע"ב/`AV''''' : יו"ד ה"י וי"ו ה"י, so called "`AV" according to its
gematria value ע"ב=70+2=72. :'
ס"ג/SaG''''': יו"ד ה"י וא"ו ה"י, gematria 63. :'
מ"ה/MaH''''': יו"ד ה"א וא"ו ה"א, gematria 45. :'
ב"ן/BaN''''': יו"ד ה"ה ו"ו ה"ה, gematria 52. Luzzatto summarises, "In sum, all that exists is founded on the mystery of this Name and upon the mystery of these letters of which it consists. This means that all the different orders and laws are all drawn after and come under the order of these four letters. This is not one particular pathway but rather the general path, which includes everything that exists in the
Sefirot in all their details and which brings everything under its order." Another parallel is drawn between the four letters of the Tetragrammaton and the
Four Worlds: the
י is associated with
Atziluth, the first
ה with
Beri'ah, the
ו with
Yetzirah, and final
ה with
Assiah. . There are some who believe that the
tetractys and its mysteries influenced the early
kabbalists. A Hebrew tetractys in a similar way has the letters of the Tetragrammaton (the four lettered name of God in Hebrew scripture) inscribed on the ten positions of the tetractys, from right to left. It has been argued that the Kabbalistic
Tree of Life, with its ten spheres of emanation, is in some way connected to the tetractys, but its form is not that of a triangle. The occult writer
Dion Fortune says: (The first two-dimensional figure is the
triangle, and the first three-dimensional solid is the
tetrahedron.) The relationship between geometrical shapes and the first four
Sephirot is analogous to the geometrical correlations in the tetractys, and unveils the relevance of the Tree of Life with the tetractys.
Samaritans The
Samaritans shared the taboo of the Jews about the utterance of the name, and there is no evidence that its pronunciation was common Samaritan practice. However
Sanhedrin 10:1 includes the comment of
Rabbi Mana II, "for example those Kutim who take an oath" would also have no share in the
world to come, which suggests that Mana thought some Samaritans used the name in making oaths. (Their priests have preserved a liturgical pronunciation "Yahwe" or "Yahwa" to the present day.) As with Jews,
Shema (, "the Name") remains the everyday usage of the name among Samaritans, paralleling the Jewish use of
HaShem (, "the Name") in Hebrew. This reading of the tetragrammaton by Samaritans dates back to at least the 4th century CE, as evidenced in two poems by the Samaritan author
Marqah.
Christianity : "The Name of God", YHWH in triangle, detail from fresco
Adoration of the Name of God, 1772 It is assumed that early
Jewish Christians inherited from Jews the practice of reading "Lord" where the Tetragrammaton appears in the Hebrew text (and where a few Greek manuscripts use it in the midst of their Greek translation). Gentile Christians, primarily non-Hebrew speaking and using Greek Scripture texts, may have read Κύριος ("Lord"), as in the Greek text of the
New Testament and in their copies of the
Greek Old Testament. This practice continued into the Latin
Vulgate where
Dominus ("Lord") represented the Tetragrammaton in the Latin text. At the Reformation, the
Luther Bible used all-caps
HERR ("LORD") in the German text of the Old Testament to represent the Tetragrammaton. In Christianity, when the Tetragrammaton is vocalized, the forms
Yahweh or
Jehovah are used.
Jah or Yah is an abbreviation of Jahweh/Yahweh, and often sees usage by Christians in the interjection "
Hallelujah", meaning "Praise Jah", which is used to give God glory.
Christian translations The
Septuagint (Greek translation), the
Vulgate (Latin translation), and the
Peshitta (
Syriac translation) use the word "Lord" (,
kyrios, , and ,
moryo respectively). Use of the Septuagint by Christians in polemics with Jews led to its abandonment by the latter, making it a specifically Christian text. From it Christians made translations into
Coptic,
Arabic,
Slavonic and other languages used in
Oriental Orthodoxy and the
Eastern Orthodox Church, whose liturgies and doctrinal declarations are largely a cento of texts from the Septuagint, which they consider to be inspired at least as much as the Masoretic Text. Within the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Greek text remains the norm for texts in all languages, with particular reference to the wording used in prayers. The Septuagint, with its use of Κύριος to represent the Tetragrammaton, was the basis also for Christian translations associated with the West, in particular the
Vetus Itala, which survives in some parts of the liturgy of the
Latin Church, and the
Gothic Bible. Christian translations of the Bible into English commonly use "" in place of the Tetragrammaton in most passages, often in all caps to refer to Jehovah God. This distinguishes the Tetragrammaton LORD from references to Jesus Christ as "Lord". The distinction is necessary to understand King James Psalm 110:1 "The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool."
Eastern Orthodoxy The
Eastern Orthodox Church considers the Septuagint text, which uses Κύριος (Lord), to be the authoritative text of the Old Testament, and in its liturgical books and prayers it uses Κύριος in place of the Tetragrammaton in texts derived from the Bible.
Catholicism of the Roman Catholic
Basilica of St. Louis, King of France in Missouri In the
Catholic Church, the first edition of the official Vatican
Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio, editio typica, published in 1979, used the traditional
Dominus when rendering the Tetragrammaton in the overwhelming majority of places where it appears; however, it also used the form
Iahveh for rendering the Tetragrammaton in three known places: • Exodus 3:15 • Exodus 15:3 • Exodus 17:15 In the second edition of the
Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio, editio typica altera, published in 1986, these few occurrences of the form
Iahveh were replaced with
Dominus, in keeping with the long-standing Catholic tradition of avoiding direct usage of the Ineffable Name. On 29 June 2008, the
Holy See reacted to the then still recent practice of pronouncing, within Catholic
liturgy, the name of God represented by the Tetragrammaton. As examples of such vocalisation it mentioned "Yahweh" and "Yehovah". The early Christians, it said, followed the example of the Septuagint in replacing the name of God with "the Lord", a practice with important theological implications for their use of "the Lord" in reference to Jesus, as in and other New Testament texts. It therefore directed that, "in liturgical celebrations, in songs and prayers the name of God in the form of the
Tetragrammaton YHWH is neither to be used or pronounced"; and that translations of Biblical texts for liturgical use are to follow the practice of the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, replacing the divine name with "the Lord" or, in some contexts, "God". The
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops welcomed this instruction, adding that it "provides also an opportunity to offer catechesis for the faithful as an encouragement to show reverence for the Name of God in daily life, emphasizing the power of language as an act of devotion and worship".
Lutheranism and Anglicanism In the
Lutheran and
Anglican psalters, the word in
small capital letters is used to represent the personal name of the deity. However, the Psalter of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer used by the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America uses
Yahweh in two places, Psalms 68:4 and Psalms 83:18. Also the Hymnal 1982 as used by the Episcopal Church uses the hymn, "Guide me, O thou great
Jehovah", Hymn 690 The Christian Life. Aside from those instances, is typically used in the Liturgy of the Episcopal Church.
Translations preserving Hebraic form of Tetragrammaton Since 1950, there are a number of
Sacred Name Bibles that have been translated with the conviction that Hebraic forms for the Tetragrammaton and other divine names should be preserved in translating both Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. They have done this by transliteration or the use of Hebrew letters in the text. At least one even uses
Paleo-Hebrew letters to write these names, such as
The Besorah.
Islam While the
Qur'an does not explicitly mention the tetragrammaton, it appears to be well-aware of the name reflecting knowledge of its meaning, paralleling interpretations from early rabbinic traditions. The absence of the tetragrammaton may point to the Qur'an's oral transmission, especially since it sometimes replaces the tetragrammaton with "
Lord" when it re-articulates passages in the Hebrew Bible that contain the tetragrammaton. Thus, the Qur'an appears to also avoid the vocalization of the tetragrammaton no differently than the Jewish communities with whom it was in conversation during Late Antiquity. ==Usage in art==