The Name of God

The Tetragrammaton

Tetragrammaton, meaning “four letters” in Greek, is a reference to the four consonants that form God’s name.

The Hebrew spelling is יהוה, which can be transliterated as YHWH.

Pronunciation

As for the pronunciation, “Yahweh” is considered the correct way to say it, but it is not known for certain if this is how it was originally pronounced such as in the era of the Hebrew Bible being written.

Other ways to say it would be “Jehovah”, “Elohim”, or “Adonai”. The latter was used specifically as an alternative to saying God’s sacred name in some contexts.

In Other Media

In Indiana Jones - The Last Crusade, Indy makes the mistake of trying to spell out Jehovah with the first letter being “J”, whereas the original Latin spelling would start with an “I”, as in “Iehovah”.

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