tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 17 11:55:05 1995
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Re: KBTP: "Tetragrammaton"
- From: "Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KBTP: "Tetragrammaton"
- Date: Mon, 17 Apr 95 14:58:38 EDT
- In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 17 Apr 1995 14:20:46 -0400. <[email protected]>
Alan Anderson <[email protected]> writes:
The Tetragrammaton is the four Hebrew letters yod-hey-vav-hey, which
\ is pronounced "Adonai" in TOTAL disregard for the spelling, used often
\ when referring to the Lord.
\ Disclaimer: I'm not a Bible scholar either.
Apologies for the off-topic nature of this response.
The Tetragrammaton is supposed to phonetically represent the True Name of
God, inasmuch as ancient Hebrew ever represented anything phonetically (that
is, sans vowels). Only the highest cleric (priest? rabbi?) of Judaism was
taught the pronunciation, and he passed it down to his successors. At some
point, one died before passing on the name, and the pronunciation was lost
to history.
It is always pronounced "Adonai" which means "my Lord". I imagine the KBTP
used something like that (joHwI'?) when translating it, just as has been done
when translating it into English, but I'm sure one of the KBTP folks will
give a definite answer.
The Tetragrammaton is sometimes written with vowel points, by the way -
the vowels from "Adonai" are inserted, to remind readers about the
pronuncation. If the resulting form is pronounced as it appears, the
result is "Ya-ho-vah"; this is the origin of the Latin "Jehovah".
The name is considered sacred by Jews. Any attempt to pronounce the true
name is considered blasphemous; any medium containing the written form of the
name may not be destroyed. Some Jews carry these restrictions over to other
representations of God, which is why you will frequently see, for instance,
"G-d" instead of "God" in Jewish publications.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled tlhIngan Hol, already
in progress.
-marqoS
--
Mark J. Reed
Email: [email protected] - Voice: +1 404 315 6296 x158 - Fax: +1 404 315 0293
SecureWare, Inc. / 2957 Clairmont Rd Suite 200 / Atlanta GA 30329-1647