Spelling the Tetragrammaton: V or W?
What are the four letters that make up the Tetragrammaton or Sacred Name—YHVH or YHWH?
"Here’s the answer from Hebrew scholars, linguists, lexicographers, and historians. OUR HEAVENLY FATHER REVEALED Himself to us in the Hebrew Scriptures. But what exactly is His Name? The more knowledgeable say that in English is should be to Yahweh, some claim Yahvah, and others Yahveh. Bear in mind that the Old Testament was first written in Hebrew, using the Hebrew alphabet. It is through this ancient language, then, that we find the true Name of the Creator. We have the advantage of the preservation of the Old Testament in the Hebrew. The Hebrew copies of the Scriptures were meticulously made through the years; the scribes carefully counting each letter and word to ensure accuracy. The Almighty revealed to us His personal, memorial Name in Exodus 3:15, which is preserved in the Hebrew as h w h y (read from right to left). Known as the Tetragrammaton, meaning “four letters,” His Name is represented by our English YHWH, or as some believe, YHVH.
Names Remained Unchanged
Whenever mankind was spoken to from the heavens, it was to those who understood Hebrew. Conversations between humans and celestial beings recorded for us in the New Testament were to those who spoke Hebrew, such as the annunciation to Miriam, or to Paul on the Damascus road. There is reason to believe that Hebrew was spoken by Adam and Eve and is the heavenly language, which survived the confusion of tongues at Babel. In order for English-speaking peoples to pronounce correctly the Heavenly Father’s name, it is necessary to bring the phonetic sounds from the Hebrew language into the English. Bringing the exact sounds across to another language is known as “transliteration.” Names are transliterated, not translated. Translation means to bring across the meaning of the word or phrase.
Proper nouns of persons and places are seldom translated, but are transliterated and sound the same the world over. One can listen to a foreign newscast and note the names like “Bush,” “Saddam,” “Yeltsin,” “Kohl,” “Moscow,” “Washington,” and “London” are easily discernible. Proper nouns simply do not change from language to language, but remain the same, allowing for ethnic accents. Our Bible has many names transliterated from the Hebrew, such as Adam, Reuben, Ruth, Esther, and Daniel. Yet the most important Name of all—Yahweh—was purposely, wrongfully changed!
Equivalent Letter Necessary
If a foreign language uses an alphabet of Latin letters like English, French, Spanish, or German; the transliteration is much easier. If, however, the language uses another alphabet such as found in Russian, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese or Hebrew, then we must employ letters from our English alphabet to express the same sound. Therefore, to go from Hebrew to English it is necessary to seek the equivalent letter that best expresses or approximates a given sound. Linguists have already done that for us, and we can readily ascertain from many available charts the correct Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton and then “transliterate” these into English.
Bible scholars agree that the personal Name of the Mighty One of Israel is best-expressed in Hebrew today as ” hwhy “. The letters are written and read from right to left as they are in most Semitic languages. The Tetragrammaton is most often represented in English as YHWH. The question before us is, what is the exact English equivalent of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (yothe, he, waw, he), hwhy?.........................."
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