The names of God that, once written, cannot be erased because of their holiness are the
Tetragrammaton (YHWH),
Adonai,
El,
Elohim,
Shaddai,
Tzevaot; some also include I Am that I Am, from which "YHWH" is believed to be derived. The tanna
Jose ben Halafta considered "Tzevaot" a common name in the second century and
Rabbi Ishmael considered "Elohim" to be one. All other names, such as "Merciful", "Gracious" and "Faithful", merely represent attributes that are also common to human beings.
Tetragrammaton ( BCE – 200 CE) or
modern Hebrew scripts silver scrolls with the
Priestly Blessing from the
Book of Numbers ( BCE) Also abbreviated
Jah, the most common name of God in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton, . The
Hebrew script is an
abjad, and thus vowels are often omitted in writing. The Tetragrammaton is sometimes rendered with vowels, though it is not known which vowels were used originally. Direct transliteration is avoided in Jewish custom. Modern Rabbinical Jewish culture forbids pronunciation of this name. In prayers it is replaced by saying the word (, ,
Pluralis majestatis taken as singular), and in discussion by 'The Name'. Nothing in the
Torah explicitly prohibits speaking the name and the
Book of Ruth shows that it continued to be pronounced as late as the 5th century BCE. Mark Sameth argues that only a pseudo name was pronounced, the four letters (YHVH, YHWH) being a cryptogram which the priests of ancient Israel read in reverse as , 'he–she', signifying a dual-gendered deity, as earlier theorized by
Guillaume Postel (16th century) and (19th century). It had ceased to be spoken aloud by at least the 3rd century BCE, during
Second Temple Judaism. The Talmud relates, perhaps anecdotally, that this began with the death of
Simeon the Just.
Vowel points began to be added to the Hebrew text only in the early medieval period. The
Masoretic Text adds to the Tetragrammaton the vowel points of Adonai or Elohim (depending on the context), indicating that these are the words to be pronounced in place of the Tetragrammaton (see
Qere and Ketiv), as shown also by the pronunciation changes when combined with a preposition or a conjunction. This is in contrast to
Karaite Jews, who traditionally viewed pronouncing the Tetragrammaton as a
mitzvah because the name appears some 6800 times throughout the Tanakh; however, most modern Karaites, under pressure and seeking acceptance from mainstream Rabbinical Jews, now also use the term
Adonai instead. The
Beta Israel pronounce the Tetragrammaton as
Yahu, but also use the
Geʽez term . The Tetragrammaton appears in
Genesis and occurs 6,828 times in total in the
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia edition of the
Masoretic Text. It is thought to be an archaic third-person singular of the
imperfective aspect of the verb "to be" (i.e., "[He] is/was/will be"). This agrees with the passage in
Exodus where God names himself as "
I Will Be What I Will Be" using the first-person singular imperfective aspect, open to interpretation as present tense ("I am what I am"), future ("I shall be what I shall be"), or imperfect ("I used to be what I used to be").
Rabbinic Judaism teaches that the name is forbidden to all except the
High Priest of Israel, who should only speak it in the
Holy of Holies of the
Temple in Jerusalem on
Yom Kippur. He then pronounces the name "just as it is written." As each blessing was made, the people in the
temple's courtyard were to
prostrate themselves completely as they heard it spoken aloud. As the Temple has not been rebuilt since its destruction in 70 CE, most modern Jews never pronounce YHWH but instead read (, , ,
Pluralis majestatis taken as singular) during prayer and while reading the
Torah and as
HaShem 'The Name' at other times. Most
English translations of the Bible write "the " for YHWH, and "the God" or "the Lord " for Adonai YHWH instead of transcribing the name. The
Septuagint may have originally used the Hebrew letters themselves amid its Greek text, but there is no scholarly consensus on this point.
Adonai explanation of the
Priestly Blessing with
Adonai inscribed (, , ,
pluralis majestatis taken as singular) is the possessive form of ('Lord'), along with the
first-person singular pronoun
enclitic. As with , Adonai's grammatical form is usually explained as a form akin to the "
royal we". In the
Hebrew Bible, the word is nearly always used to refer to God (approximately 450 occurrences). As the pronunciation of the
Tetragrammaton came to be avoided in the
Hellenistic period, Jews may have begun to drop the Tetragrammaton when presented alongside Adonai and subsequently to expand it to cover for the Tetragrammaton in the forms of spoken prayer and written scripture. Owing to the expansion of
chumra, the idea of 'building a fence around the
Torah', the word itself has come to be too holy to say for Orthodox Jews outside of prayer, leading to its replacement by ('The Name'). The singular forms and ('my lord') are used in the Hebrew Bible as royal titles, as in the
First Book of Samuel, and for distinguished persons. The
Phoenicians used it as a title of
Tammuz (the origin of the
Greek god's name
Adonis). It is also used very occasionally in Hebrew texts to refer to God (e.g. Psalm 136:3).
Deuteronomy 10:17 has the Tetragrammaton alongside the superlative constructions "God of gods" (, literally, "the gods of gods") and "Lord of lords" (, "the lords of lords": ; JPS 2006: "For your God יהוה is God supreme and Lord supreme"). The final syllable of Adonai uses the vowel rather than , which would be expected from the Hebrew for 'my lord(s)'. Professor Yoel Elitzur explains this as a normal transformation when a Hebrew word becomes a name, citing other examples such as
Nathan,
Yitzhak, and
Yigal. As became the most common reverent substitute for the Tetragrammaton, it too became considered un-erasable due to its holiness. As such, most prayer books avoid spelling out the word , and instead write two () in its place. The forms , , and represent
Ashkenazi Hebrew variant pronunciations of the word .
El El appears in
Ugaritic, Phoenician and other
late Bronze and
Iron Age Levant texts both as generic "god" and as the head of the
divine pantheon. In the Hebrew Bible, El (, ) appears very occasionally alone (e.g. Genesis 33:20, , 'Mighty God of Israel', and Genesis 46:3, , 'El the God of thy father'), but usually with some epithet or attribute attached (e.g. , 'Most High El', ,
El Shaddai, 'Everlasting El', , 'Living El', 'El my Shepherd', and 'El of Strength'). In these cases, it can be understood as the generic "god". In
theophoric names such as
Gabriel ("Strength of God"),
Michael ("Who is like God?"),
Raphael ("God healed"),
Ariel ("My lion is God"),
Daniel ("My judgment is God"),
Ezekiel ("God shall strengthen"),
Israel ("one who has struggled with God"),
Immanuel ("God is with us"), and
Ishmael ("God hears/ will hear / listens/ will listen") it is usually interpreted and translated as "God". El also appears in the form ().
Elohim A common name of God in the Hebrew Bible is Elohim (, ), the plural of (). When Elohim refers to God in the Hebrew Bible, singular verbs are used. The word is identical to meaning gods and is cognate to the found in
Ugaritic, where it is used for the pantheon of Canaanite gods, the children of El and conventionally vocalized as "Elohim" although the original Ugaritic vowels are unknown. When the Hebrew Bible uses not in reference to God, it is plural (for example,
Exodus 20:2). There are a few other such uses in Hebrew, for example
Behemoth. In
Modern Hebrew, the singular word ('owner') looks plural, but likewise takes a singular verb. A number of scholars have traced the etymology to the Semitic root , 'to be first, powerful', despite some difficulties with this view. is thus the plural construct 'powers'.
Hebrew grammar allows for this form to mean "He is the Power (singular) over powers (plural)", just as the word means 'owner' (see above). "He is lord (singular) even over any of those things that he owns that are lordly (plural)". Theologians who dispute this claim cite the hypothesis that plurals of majesty came about in more modern times. Richard Toporoski, a classics scholar, asserts that plurals of majesty first appeared in the reign of
Diocletian (CE 284–305). Indeed,
Gesenius states in his book
Hebrew Grammar the following: The Jewish grammarians call such plurals ... or ; later grammarians call them , , or . This last name may have been suggested by the
we used by kings when speaking of themselves (compare
1 Maccabees 10:19 and 11:31); and the plural used by God in
Genesis 1:26 and 11:7;
Isaiah 6:8 has been incorrectly explained in this way. It is, however, either
communicative (including the attendant
angels: so at all events in Isaiah 6:8 and Genesis 3:22), or according to others, an indication of
the fullness of power and might implied. It is best explained as a plural of
self-deliberation. The use of the plural as a form of respectful address is quite foreign to Hebrew.
Mark S. Smith has cited the use of plural as possible evidence to suggest an evolution in the formation of early Jewish conceptions of
monotheism, wherein references to "the gods" (plural) in earlier accounts of verbal tradition became either interpreted as multiple aspects of a single monotheistic God at the time of writing, or subsumed under a form of
monolatry, wherein the god(s) of a certain city would be accepted after the fact as a reference to the God of Israel and the plural deliberately dropped. The plural form ending in can also be understood as denoting abstraction, as in the Hebrew words (, 'life') or (, 'virginity'). If understood this way, means 'divinity' or 'deity'. The word is similarly syntactically singular when used as a name but syntactically plural otherwise. In many of the passages in which occurs in the Bible, it refers to non-Israelite deities, or in some instances to powerful men or judges, and even angels (Exodus 21:6, Psalms 8:5) as a simple plural in those instances.
Shaddai (, , ) is one of the names of God in Judaism, with its
etymology coming from the influence of the
Ugaritic religion on modern Judaism. is
conventionally translated as "God Almighty". While the translation of as '
god' in
Ugaritic/
Canaanite languages is straightforward, the literal meaning of is the subject of debate.
Tzevaot Tzevaot, Tzevaoth, Tsebaoth or Sabaoth (, , , "Armies"), usually translated "Hosts", appears in reference to armies or armed hosts of men but is not used as a divine epithet in the
Torah,
Joshua, or
Judges. Starting in the
Books of Samuel, the term "Lord of Hosts" appears hundreds of times throughout the
Prophetic books, in
Psalms, and in
Chronicles. The Hebrew word was also absorbed in
Ancient Greek (, ) and
Latin (, with no declension).
Tertullian and other
Fathers of the Church used it with the meaning of "Army of angels of God".
Ehyeh () is the first of three responses given to
Moses when he asks for God's name in the
Book of Exodus. Accordingly, can be rendered in English not only as "I am that I am" but also as "I will be what I will be" or "I will be who I will be", or "I shall prove to be whatsoever I shall prove to be" or even "I will be because I will be". Other renderings include: Leeser, "I Will Be that I Will Be"; Rotherham, "I Will Become whatsoever I please", Greek, (), "I am Being/the Existing One" in the
Septuagint, and
Philo, and
Revelation;
Latin, , "I am Who I am." The word is a
relative pronoun whose meaning depends on the immediate context, so that "that", "who", "which", or "where" are all possible translations of that word. ==Other names and titles==