Nomina Sacra in Latin means “sacred names.” It refers to the abbreviated writing of divine names or titles in Greek manuscripts of the Bible since the first century. Nomina sacra were formed by taking the first one or two letters of the name or word, omitting the intervening letters, and drawing a line over the whole.

Bruce Metzger’s book Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, lists 15 such expressions from Greek papyri: the Greek counterparts of God, Lord, Jesus, Christ, Son, Spirit, David, cross, Mother, Father, Israel, Savior, Man, Jerusalem, and Heaven. Initially this masking was done specifically for “names” and references to the Father and Son.

This practice is of special interest to the Believer. The case is strong that it is but a continuation of the effort begun by Jewish scribes to hide the Sacred name through manipulation or substitution of its letters.

From the Nomina Sacra we see that a manipulation on the “sacred names” was also done in the Greek. No wonder that most translations today lack the revealed, personal names of Father and Son in both testaments. And from the Nomina Sacra we can also show that neither are the words “God,” “Lord,” “Jesus,” and “Christ” found in the Greek New Testament.

The believer should find these facts quite eye-opening.

 

In the Hebrew, the Yod, Hay, Waw, and Hay of the four-lettered Tetragrammaton are pronounced ee-ah-oo-eh. These letters represent vowel-consonants, the only Hebrew letters besides the aleph that can perform as either vowel or consonant. (See “How the Hebrew Language Grew,” by Edward Horowitz.)

Because these letters of Yahweh’s Name serve as both vowels and consonants, we can know which English vowels come closest in sound to the Hebrew letters. Furthermore, the Hebrew Masorete scribes put vowel points in and around the Hebrew letters to preserve their proper pronounciation.

These facts obliterate the argument that we cannot pronounce ancient Hebrew. After all, if we cannot pronounce the Hebrew “because it has no vowels,” then the entire Hebrew Old Testament is unpronounceable. What’s more, the Hebrews themselves would have been unable to pronounce their language!

The ancient Hebrews simply grew accustomed to pronouncing their words with the vowels implicitly supplied. It was not unlike modern teaching techniques in which pupils learn how to read by sight recognition of letter groups rather than phonetically sounding those letters out.

   The v is a consonant that some have used for the sound of the Hebrew waw in Yahweh’s Name (Yahveh). The problem is, the waw in His Name was considered a vowel anciently. In fact, all the letters of the Tetragrammaton are called vowels by Josephus (Wars of the Jews, 5.5.556) as well as by Hebrew grammars.Bagster’s Helps to Bible Study also says these are vowel-letters in the sacred Name, “as having been originally used to represent vowels, and they still frequently serve as vowels in combination with the points.”Bagsters says the waw represents the letters o or u.

Another authority says, “The sound of waw a long time ago wasn’t ‘vav’ at all but ‘w’ and ‘w’ is weak. The Yemenite Jews of Arabia who retain an ancient, correct, and pure pronunciation of Hebrew still pronounce the waw as ‘w,’ as does Arabic, the close sister language of Hebrew,” How the Hebrew Language Grew, Edward Horowitz, pp. 29-30.

A response to a query about the proper pronunciation of waw/ vav, EKS Publishing responded, “In modern Hebrew it is pronounced VAV. Since our materials are geared for a predominantly Jewish audience, we give this pronunciation in our wall charts and most other publications. However, in Biblical times the letter was pronounced WAW. Because our book, A Simple Approach to O.T. Hebrew, is written for a Christian audience, we have given this Biblical Hebrew pronunciation for WAW and for a few other letters.”

Since the turn of the century the Jews returning to Palestine have hailed mostly from Eastern Europe. It is evident that the heavy influence of Ashkenazic or Germanic (German influenced) pronunciation of the vav instead of the Sephardic or biblical waw has become dominant in present-day Judaism and is referred to as “Modern-Sephardic.” However, the Temple or Biblical Hebrew uses WAW as the ancient and more correct pronunciation.

The English name “Jehovah” or “Yehovah” was invented by Roman Catholics sometime in the Middle Ages, based on a misunderstanding of Masoretic Hebrew texts. It is a hybrid word consisting of the Tetragrammaton YHWH (“J” used to be pronounced as “Y”) and the vowels for the word “Adonai.” Though “Jehovah” is used a few times in the 1611 King James Version (e.g.,Gen 22:14; Exod 6:3; Isa 12:2; Ps 83:18) and is found in many older Christian hymns, it is not the authentic biblical pronunciation of the sacred Name (For a discussion of the “Jehovah or Yahweh” question see “God, Names of” inEncyclopædia Judaica, vol. 7, col. 680, or George F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim (3 vols., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1927-30), vol. 1, p. 219 and note 1, p. 427. Most modern Bible translations have notes on this issue in their introductions, agreeing that the true Name of the Heavenly Father is Yahweh.

For an explanation on the ending of the name “eh or “ah” >>

  Although Yahwah is a close variation, the mistake is establishing a pronunciation by using Strong’s 1933 as well as 1961, although 1933 is related in meaning (existence) it is however a different word. The Hebrew of 1961, hay-yod-hay, is not the same as the 1933 cognate, hay-wa-hay. The first is pronounced hayah, the second hawah. The error is in fusing these two different words to make Yahwah without any linguistic basis or evidence to do so.Another argument for the “ah” ending is that if the sound of the first hay is “ah,” the second hay must be the same sound. The same letter often takes on a different sound when appearing twice in the same word. For example, the “a” in always is not the same sound at the beginning of the word as it is at the end. Just because words are related in their roots is no justification for manufacturing a word or name by combining variations and should be disregarded as poor scholarship. The Berlitz Hebrew Self-Teacher on page 73 reveals: “There are, however, four letters which can be used as vowels. h and a may have the vowel sound of ah or eh, w that of oo or oh, and y of ee or eh.”

The Greek shows that the last syllable is pronounced with a short “e” sound: ee-ah-oo-eh. The name Yahweh is shown on various Greek transcriptions, such as ιαβε, dating from the first centuries CE.

In actuality, “Yahweh” with a “w” is Hebrew, while the “u” in the name Yahueh is Greek. The Tetragrammaton YHWH, found 6,823 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, is rendered Iaoue in the Greek Septuagint. This is an attempt to transliterate the four Hebrew letters, including the waw, which is the transliterated “w” in the Tetragrammaton. Not having a “w” in its alphabet, the Greek uses the closest letter to it: the upsilon, or “u.”

In a letter to Biblical Archaeology Review (Sept.-Oct 1994), Dr. Anson R. Rainy, professor of Ancient and Near Eastern Cultures and Semitic Linguistics at Tel Aviv University, wrote this about the pronunciation of Yahweh in the Greek alphabet, “I mentioned the evidence from Greek transcriptions in religious papyri found in Egypt. The best of these is Iaouee.”

He goes on to explain the correct Hebrew rendition of the name: “Yahweh is from the verbal root *hwy*, ‘to be.’ This root usually shows up in Hebrew as *hyy*.  It is a verbal root developed from the third person pronoun, *huwa/*hiya.”

From the book, How the Hebrew Language Grew by Edward Horowitz, we find, “The Yemenite Jews of Arabia who retain an ancient, correct and pure pronunciation of Hebrew still pronounce the (waw) as ‘w’ – as does Arabic, the close sister language of Hebrew.”

Pronunciation varies little between the “u” and the “w” name forms. It is the written form, however, that causes confusion, and nearly all credible scholars and references use “Yahweh.”