Tetragrammaton

Four letters

The letters, properly written and read from right to left (in Biblical Hebrew), are:

Etymology

The Hebrew Bible explains it by the formula אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה ('ehye 'ăšer 'ehye pronounced [ʔehˈje ʔaˈʃer ʔehˈje] transl. I Am that I Am), the name of God revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14. The phrase 'ehye 'ăšer 'ehye in Exodus 3:14 can be understood not as the revelation of a name, but as an etymological explanation of its meaning. This would frame Y-H-W-H as an imperfective aspect of the Hebrew triconsonantal root היה (h-y-h), "to be, become, come to pass", with a third person masculine י (y-) prefix, equivalent to English "he", in place of the first person א ('-), thereby affording translations as "he who causes to exist", "he who is", etc.; although this would elicit the form Y-H-Y-H (יהיה), rather than Y-H-W-H. To rectify this, some scholars propose that the Tetragrammaton derived instead from the triconsonantal root הוה (h-w-h)—itself an archaic doublet of היה—with the final form eliciting translations similar to those derived from the same.

As such, the consensus among modern scholars considers that YHWH represents a verbal form. In this, the y- prefix represents the third masculine verbal prefix of the verb hyh or hwh, "to be", as indicated in the Hebrew Bible.

Vocalisation

Jews do not pronounce God's four-letter name out of extreme reverence for its holiness and to prevent accidental desecration due an interpretation of Leviticus 24:16. While the exact historical transition is debated, the practice became firmly established during the Second Temple period.

First Temple Era (Before 586 BCE): The name was used more frequently in daily life, greetings, and blessings.

Second Temple Era (516 BCE – 70 CE): Uttering the name became restricted to the Jerusalem Temple. Only the High Priest said it aloud, strictly on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

Post-Temple Era (70 CE – Present): After the Temple was destroyed, the correct pronunciation was entirely withheld from speech. Over centuries, the original vowels were lost.

YHWH and Hebrew script

Like all letters in the Hebrew script, the letters in YHWH originally indicated consonants. In unpointed Biblical Hebrew, most vowels are not written, but some are indicated ambiguously, as certain letters came to have a secondary function indicating vowels (similar to the Latin use of I and V to indicate either the consonants /j, w/ or the vowels /i, u/). Hebrew letters used to indicate vowels are known as אִמּוֹת קְרִיאָה (imot kri'a) or matres lectionis ("mothers of reading"). Therefore, it can be difficult to deduce how a word is pronounced from its spelling, and each of the four letters in the Tetragrammaton can individually serve as a mater lectionis.

Several centuries later, some time in the 5th through 10th centuries CE, the original consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible was provided with vowel marks by the Masoretes to assist reading. In places where the word to be read (the qere) differed from that indicated by the consonants of the written text (the ketiv), they wrote the qere in the margin as a note showing what was to be read. In such a case the vowel marks of the qere were written on the ketiv. For a few frequent words, the marginal note was omitted: these are called qere perpetuum.

One of the frequent cases was the Tetragrammaton, which according to later Rabbinite Jewish practices should not be pronounced but read as אֲדֹנָי (Adonai, lit. transl. My Lords, Pluralis majestatis taken as singular), or, if the previous or next word already was Adonai, as "Elohim" (אֱלֹהִים/"God").

Writing the vowel diacritics of these two words on the consonants YHVH produces יְהֹוָה and יֱהֹוִה respectively, ghost-words that would spell "Yehovah" and "Yehovih" respectively.

The oldest complete or nearly complete manuscripts of the Masoretic Text with Tiberian vocalisation, such as the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, both of the 10th or 11th century, mostly write יְהוָה (yəhwāh), with no pointing on the first h. It could be because the o diacritic point plays no useful role in distinguishing between Adonai and Elohim and so is redundant, or it could point to the qere being שְׁמָא (šəmâ), which is Aramaic for "the Name".

Yahweh

The scholarly consensus since the work of German orientalist Heinrich Ewald in the 1840s is that the original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton was likely Yahweh (יַהְוֶה). Reasons that favor this vocalization are the Samaritan form Iabé quoted by church fathers Theodoret and Epiphanius, the infixes -yahu and yeho- in compound personal names, and the contracted form yah (as in hallelujah).

The pronunciation Jehovah was unknown until 1520, when it was introduced by Galatinus. The adoption at the time of the Protestant Reformation of "Jehovah" in place of the traditional "Lord" in some new translations, vernacular or Latin, of the biblical Tetragrammaton stirred up dispute about its correctness. In 1711, Adriaan Reland published a book containing the text of 17th-century writings, five attacking and five defending it. As critical of the use of "Jehovah" it incorporated writings by Johannes van den Driesche (1550–1616), known as Drusius; Sixtinus Amama (1593–1629); Louis Cappel (1585–1658); Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629); Jacob Alting (1618–1679). Defending "Jehovah" were writings by Nicholas Fuller (1557–1626) and Thomas Gataker (1574–1654) and three essays by Johann Leusden (1624–1699). The opponents of "Jehovah" said that the Tetragrammaton should be pronounced as "Adonai" and in general do not speculate on what may have been the original pronunciation, although mention is made of the fact that some held that Jahve was that pronunciation. Thomas Worthington, likely author of the annotations to the Catholic Douay Old Testament (1609–1610), expressing the general Catholic view, wrote, "Iehouah is not the right name of God" and "Only certaine late writers haue framed a new word, by putting the points of Adonai, to the proper letters of this vnknowen name, which are Iod, He, Vau, He, and ſo ſound it Iehouah: which was ſcarſe heard of before an hundred yeares."

In 1869, Smith's Bible Dictionary, a collaborative work of scholars of the time, declared: "Whatever, therefore, be the true pronunciation of the word, there can be little doubt that it is not Jehovah." Almost two centuries after the 17th-century works reprinted by Reland, 19th-century Wilhelm Gesenius reported in his Thesaurus Philologicus on the main reasoning of those who argued either for יַהְוֹה/Yah[w]oh or יַהְוֶה/Yahweh as the original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, as opposed to יְהֹוָה/Yehovah. He explicitly cited the 17th-century writers mentioned by Reland as supporters of יְהֹוָה, as well as implicitly citing Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) and Johann Friedrich von Meyer (1772–1849), the latter of whom Johann Heinrich Kurtz described as the last of those "who have maintained with great pertinacity that יְהֹוָה was the correct and original pointing". Edward Robinson's translation of a work by Gesenius, gives Gesenius' personal view as: "My own view coincides with that of those who regard this name as anciently pronounced [יַהְוֶה/Yahweh] like the Samaritans."

Yaho

In 1925, F. C. Burkitt reports that a deity named Yaho or Yeho may have been recognized before the divine revelation to Moses. G. H. Parke-Taylor (1975) states that "of the various alternative forms that have been proposed, the most probable is Yaho or Yahu". He further notes, "Although Yahweh seems to be a probable pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, since Yahu does not fully account for the final he, there cannot be complete certainty about it.… We can only surmise that Yahweh is the correct pronunciation."

Frank Moore Cross says in 1997: "It must be emphasized that the Amorite verbal form is of interest only in attempting to reconstruct the proto-Hebrew or South Canaanite verbal form used in the name Yahweh. We should argue vigorously against attempts to take Amorite yahwi and yahu as divine epithets." Thomas Römer holds in 2020 that "the original pronunciation of Yhwh was 'Yahô' or 'Yahû'". According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the name Yahweh originally may have been in its short form Yo, Yah, or Yahu.

Kristin De Troyer argues that ΙΑΩ is likely a Greek transcription of the Hebrew form יהו (Yahu) and that its presence in the first-century BCE manuscript 4Q120 indicates that this form of the divine name was used in some Jewish circles at that time. Max Reisel, in The Mysterious Name of YHWH (1957), says that the "vocalisation of the Tetragrammaton must originally have been YeHūàH or YaHūàH".

Non-biblical texts

Texts with Tetragrammaton

Current overviews begin with the Egyptian epigraphy. A hieroglyphic inscription of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III (1402–1363 BCE) at Soleb mentions a group of Shasu whom it calls "the Shasu of Yhwꜣ" (read as: ja-h-wi or ja-h-wa). James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson suggested that the Amenhotep III inscription may indicate that worship of Yahweh originated in an area to the southeast of Israel. A later inscription from the time of Ramesses II (1279–1213 BCE) in West Amara associates the Shasu nomads with S-rr, interpreted as Mount Seir, spoken of in some texts as where Yahweh comes from. Egyptologist Thomas Schneider argued for the existence of a theophoric name in a Book of the Dead papyrus dating to the late 18th or early 19th dynasty which he translated as 'adōnī-rō'ē-yāh, meaning "My lord is the shepherd of Yah".

The Tetragrammaton is found in the inscription on the Mesha Stele, dating from around 840 BCE, in which the king of Moab boasts of having conquered a territory belonging to the Kingdom of Israel and of having brought the vessels of 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄‎ (YHWH) from there to offer them to the Moabite god Chemosh.

Roughly contemporary pottery sherds and plaster inscriptions found at Kuntillet Ajrud mention "Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah" and "Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah". A tomb inscription at Khirbet el-Qom also mentions Yahweh. Dated slightly later (7th century BCE) there are an ostracon from the collections of Shlomo Moussaieff, and two tiny silver amulet scrolls found at Ketef Hinnom that mention Yahweh. Also a wall inscription, dated to the late 6th century BCE, with mention of Yahweh had been found in a tomb at Khirbet Beit Lei.

Yahweh is mentioned also in the Lachish letters (587 BCE) and the slightly earlier Tel Arad ostraca, and on a stone from Mount Gerizim (3rd or the beginning of the 2nd century BCE).

The theonyms YHW and YHH are found in the Elephantine papyri of about 500 BCE. One ostracon with YH is thought to have lost the final letter of an original YHW. These texts are in Aramaic, not the language of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (YHWH) and, unlike the Tetragrammaton, are of three letters, not four. However, because they were written by Jews, they are assumed to refer to the same deity and to be either an abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton or the original name from which the name YHWH developed.

Hebrew Bible

Masoretic Text

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia it occurs 5,410 times in the Hebrew scriptures. In the Hebrew Bible, the Tetragrammaton occurs 6828 times, as can be seen in Kittel's Biblia Hebraica and the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. In addition, the marginal notes or masorah indicate that in another 134 places, where the received text has the word Adonai, an earlier text had the Tetragrammaton. which would add up to 142 additional occurrences. Even in the Dead Sea Scrolls practice varied with regard to use of the Tetragrammaton. According to Brown–Driver–Briggs, יְהֹוָה (qere אֲדֹנָי) occurs 6,518 times, and יֱהֹוִה (qere אֱלֹהִים) 305 times in the Masoretic Text.

The first appearance of the Tetragrammaton is in the Book of Genesis 2:4. The only books it does not appear in are Ecclesiastes, the Book of Esther, and Song of Songs.

In the Book of Esther the Tetragrammaton does not appear, but it has been distinguished acrostic-wise in the initial or last letters of four consecutive words, as indicated in Est 7:5 by writing the four letters in red in at least three ancient Hebrew manuscripts.

The short form יָהּ/Yah (a digrammaton) occurs 50 times if the phrase hallellu-Yah is included": 43 times in the Psalms, once in Exodus 15:2; 17:16; Isaiah 12:2; 26:4, and twice in Isaiah 38:11. It also appears in the Greek phrase Ἁλληλουϊά (Alleluia, Hallelujah) in Revelation 19:1, 3, 4, 6.

Other short forms are found as a component of theophoric Hebrew names in the Bible: jô- or jehô- (29 names) and -jāhû or -jāh (127 jnames). A form of jāhû/jehô appears in the name Elioenai (Elj(eh)oenai) in 1Ch 3:23–24; 4:36; 7:8; Ezr 22:22, 27; Neh 12:41.

The following graph shows the absolute number of occurrences of the Tetragrammaton (6828 in all) in the books in the Masoretic Text, without relation to the length of the books.

Leningrad Codex

Six presentations of the Tetragrammaton with some or all of the vowel points of אֲדֹנָי (Adonai) or אֱלֹהִים (Elohim) are found in the Leningrad Codex of 1008–1010, as shown below. The close transcriptions do not indicate that the Masoretes intended the name to be pronounced in that way (see qere perpetuum).

ĕ is hataf segol; ǝ is the pronounced form of plain shva.

Dead Sea Scrolls

In the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Hebrew and Aramaic texts the Tetragrammaton and some other names of God in Judaism (such as El or Elohim) were sometimes written in paleo-Hebrew script, showing that they were treated specially. Most of God's names were pronounced until about the 2nd century BCE. Then, as a tradition of non-pronunciation of the names developed, alternatives for the Tetragrammaton appeared, such as Adonai, Kurios and Theos. The 4Q120, a Greek fragment of Leviticus (26:2–16) discovered in the Dead Sea scrolls (Qumran) has ιαω ("Iao"), the Greek form of the Hebrew trigrammaton YHW. The historian John the Lydian (6th century) wrote: "The Roman Varro [116–27 BCE] defining him [that is the Jewish God] says that he is called Iao in the Chaldean mysteries" (De Mensibus IV 53). Van Cooten mentions that Iao is one of the "specifically Jewish designations for God" and "the Aramaic papyri from the Jews at Elephantine show that 'Iao' is an original Jewish term".

The preserved manuscripts from Qumran show the inconsistent practice of writing the Tetragrammaton, mainly in biblical quotations: in some manuscripts is written in paleo-Hebrew script, square scripts or replaced with four dots or dashes (tetrapuncta).

The members of the Qumran community were aware of the existence of the Tetragrammaton, but this was not tantamount to granting consent for its existing use and speaking. This is evidenced not only by special treatment of the Tetragrammaton in the text, but by the recommendation recorded in the 'Rule of Association' (VI, 27): "Who will remember the most glorious name, which is above all [...]".

The table below presents all the manuscripts in which the Tetragrammaton is written in paleo-Hebrew script, in square scripts, and all the manuscripts in which the copyists have used tetrapuncta.

Copyists used the 'tetrapuncta' apparently to warn against pronouncing the name of God. In the manuscript number 4Q248 is in the form of bars.

Septuagint

Editions of the Septuagint Old Testament are based on the complete or almost complete fourth-century manuscripts Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus and consistently use Κ[ύριο]ς, "Lord", where the Masoretic Text has the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew. This corresponds with the Jewish practice of replacing the Tetragrammaton with "Adonai" when reading the Hebrew word.

However, five of the oldest manuscripts now extant (in fragmentary form) render the Tetragrammaton into Greek in a different way.

Two of these are of the first century BCE: Papyrus Fouad 266 uses יהוה in the normal Hebrew alphabet in the midst of its Greek text, and 4Q120 uses the Greek transcription of the name, ΙΑΩ. Three later manuscripts use 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄‎, the name יהוה in Paleo-Hebrew script: the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3522 and Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5101.

Other extant ancient fragments of Septuagint or Old Greek manuscripts provide no evidence on the use of the Tetragrammaton, Κύριος, or ΙΑΩ in correspondence with the Hebrew-text Tetragrammaton. They include the oldest known example, Papyrus Rylands 458.

Scholars differ on whether in the original Septuagint translations the Tetragrammaton was represented by Κύριος, by ΙΑΩ, by the Tetragrammaton in either normal or Paleo-Hebrew form, or whether different translators used different forms in different books.

Frank Shaw argues that the Tetragrammaton continued to be articulated until the second or third century CE and that the use of Ιαω was by no means limited to magical or mystical formulas, but was still normal in more elevated contexts such as that exemplified by Papyrus 4Q120. Shaw considers all theories that posit in the Septuagint a single original form of the divine name as merely based on a priori assumptions. Accordingly, he declares: "The matter of any (especially single) 'original' form of the divine name in the LXX is too complex, the evidence is too scattered and indefinite, and the various approaches offered for the issue are too simplistic" to account for the actual scribal practices (p. 158). He holds that the earliest stages of the LXX's translation were marked by diversity (p. 262), with the choice of certain divine names depending on the context in which they appear (cf. Gen 4:26; Exod 3:15; 8:22; 28:32; 32:5; and 33:19). He treats of the related blank spaces in some Septuagint manuscripts and the setting of spaces around the divine name in 4Q120 and Papyrus Fouad 266b (p. 265), and repeats that "there was no one 'original' form but different translators had different feelings, theological beliefs, motivations, and practices when it came to their handling of the name" (p. 271). His view has won the support of Anthony R. Meyer, Bob Becking, and (commenting on Shaw's 2011 dissertation on the subject) D.T. Runia.

Manuscripts of the Septuagint and later Greek renderings

The great majority of extant manuscripts of the Old Testament in Greek, complete or fragmentary, dated to the ninth century CE or earlier, employ Κύριος to represent the Tetragrammaton of the Hebrew text. The following do not. They include the oldest now extant.

Manuscripts of the Septuagint or recensions thereof

1st century BCE

4QpapLXXLevb – fragments of the Book of Leviticus, chapters 1 to 5. In two verses: 3:12; 4:27 the Tetragrammaton of the Hebrew Bible is represented by Greek ΙΑΩ.

Papyrus Fouad 266b (848) – fragments of Deuteronomy, chapters 10 to 33. The Tetragrammaton appears in square Hebrew/Aramaic script. According to a disputed view, the first copyist left a blank space marked with a dot, and another inscribed the letters.

1st century CE

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3522 – contains parts of two verses of chapter 42 of the Book of Job and has the Tetragrammaton in paleo-Hebrew letters.

Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever – in three fragments whose contents were published separately.

Se2grXII (LXXIEJ 12) has the Tetragrammaton in 1 place.

8HevXII a (LXXVTS 10a) in 24 places, in whole or part.

8HevXII b (LXXVTS 10b) in 4 places.

1st to 2nd century

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5101 – contains fragments of the Book of Psalms. It has YHWH in Paleo-Hebrew script.

Patristic writings

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) and B. D. Eerdmans:

Diodorus Siculus (1st century BCE) writes Ἰαῶ (Iao);

Irenaeus (d. c. 202) reports that the Gnostics formed a compound Ἰαωθ (Iaoth) with the last syllable of Sabaoth. He also reports that the Valentinian gnostics use Ἰαῶ (Iao);

Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 215) reports: "the mystic name of four letters which was affixed to those alone to whom the adytum was accessible, is called Ἰαοὺ" (Iaoú); printed variants made in the 1800s say ἰαοῦε (Iaoúe) and ἰὰ οὐὲ.

Origen (d. c. 254), Ἰαώ (Iao);

Porphyry (d. c. 305) according to Eusebius (died 339), Ἰευώ (Ieuo);

Epiphanius (died 404), who was born in Palestine and spent a considerable part of his life there, gives Ἰά (Ia) and Ἰάβε (pronounced at that time /ja'vε/) and explains Ἰάβε as meaning He who was and is and always exists.

Jerome (died 420) speaks of certain Greek writers who misunderstood the Hebrew letters יהוה (read right-to-left) as the Greek letters ΠΙΠΙ (read left-to-right), thus changing YHWH to pipi.

Theodoret (d. c. 457) writes Ἰαώ (Iao); he also reports that the Samaritans say Ἰαβέ or Ἰαβαί (both pronounced at that time /ja'vε/), while the Jews say Ἀϊά (Aia). (The latter is probably not יהוה but אהיה Ehyeh = "I am " or "I will be", Exod. 3:14 which the Jews counted among the names of God.)

(Pseudo-)Jerome (4th/5th or 9th century),: IAHO. This work was traditionally attributed to Jerome and, in spite of the view of one modern writer who in 1936 said it is "now believed to be genuine and to be dated before CE 392" is still generally attributed to the 9th century and to be non-authentic.

Peshitta

The Peshitta (Syriac translation), probably in the second century, uses the word "Lord" (ܡܳܪܝܳܐ, pronounced māryā or moryo (Western pronunciation) for the Tetragrammaton.

Vulgate

The Vulgate (Latin translation) made from the Hebrew in the 4th century CE, uses the word Dominus ("Lord"), a translation of the Hebrew word Adonai, for the Tetragrammaton.

The Vulgate translation, though made not from the Septuagint but from the Hebrew text, did not depart from the practice used in the Septuagint. Thus, for most of its history, Christianity's translations of the Scriptures have used equivalents of Adonai to represent the Tetragrammaton. Only at about the beginning of the 16th century did Christian translations of the Bible appear combining the vowels of Adonai with the four (consonantal) letters of the Tetragrammaton.

Usage in religious traditions

Judaism

Especially due to the existence of the Mesha Stele, the Jahwist tradition found in Exodus 3:15, and ancient Hebrew and Greek texts, biblical scholars widely hold that the Tetragrammaton and other names of God were spoken by the ancient Israelites and their neighbours.

By at least the 3rd century BCE, the name was not pronounced in normal speech, but only in certain ritual contexts. The Talmud relays this change occurred after the death of Simeon the Just (either Simon I or his great-great-grandson Simon II). Philo calls the name ineffable, and says that it is lawful only for those "whose ears and tongues are purified by wisdom to hear and utter it in a holy place", that is, the priests in the Temple. In another passage, commenting on Leviticus 24:15, Philo writes, "If any one [...] should even dare to utter his name unseasonably, let him expect the penalty of death." Some time after the destruction of the Second Temple, the spoken use of God's name as it was written ceased altogether, though knowledge of the pronunciation was perpetuated in rabbinic schools.

Rabbinic sources suggest that the name of God was pronounced only once a year, by the high priest, on the Day of Atonement. Others, including Maimonides, claim that the name was pronounced daily in the liturgy of the Temple in the priestly blessing of worshippers, after the daily sacrifice; in synagogues, though, a substitute (probably "Adonai") was used. According to the Talmud, in the last generations before the fall of Jerusalem, the name was pronounced in a low tone so that the sounds were lost in the chant of the priests. Since the destruction of Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Tetragrammaton has no longer been pronounced in the liturgy. However the pronunciation was still known in Babylonia in the latter part of the 4th century.

The vehemence with which the utterance of the name is denounced in the Mishnah suggests that use of the name Yahweh was unacceptable in rabbinical Judaism. "He who pronounces the Name with its own letters has no part in the world to come!" Such is the prohibition of pronouncing the Name as written that it is sometimes called the "Ineffable", "Unutterable", or "Distinctive Name", or "Explicit Name" (Shem HaMephorash in Hebrew).

Halakha prescribes that although the Name is written Hebrew: יהוה, romanized: yodh he waw he, if not preceded by (אֲדֹנָי, Adonai) then it is only to be pronounced "Adonai" and if preceded by "Adonai" then it is only to be pronounced as "Our God" (אֱלֹהֵינוּ, Eloheinu), or, in rare cases, as a repetition of Adonai, e.g., the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy (שְׁלוֹשׁ־עֶשְׂרֵה, Shelosh-'Esreh) in Exodus 34:6–7; the latter names too are regarded as holy names, and are only to be pronounced in prayer. Thus when someone wants to refer in third person to either the written or spoken Name, the term HaShem ('the Name') is used; and this handle itself can also be used in prayer. The Masoretes added vowel points (niqqud) and cantillation marks to the manuscripts to indicate vowel usage and for use in ritual chanting of readings from the Bible in Jewish prayer in synagogues. To יהוה they added the vowels for אֲדֹנָי (Adonai, lit. transl. My Lords, Pluralis majestatis taken as singular), the word to use when the text was read. While "HaShem" is the most common way to reference "the Name", the terms "HaMaqom" (lit. 'The Place', i.e. "The Omnipresent") and "Raḥmana" (Aramaic, "Merciful") are used in the mishna and gemara, still used in the phrases HaMaqom y'naḥem ethḥem ("may The Omnipresent console you"), the traditional phrase used in sitting Shiva and Raḥmana l'tzlan ("may the Merciful save us" i.e. "God forbid").

Samaritans

The Samaritans shared the taboo of the Jews about the utterance of the name, and there is no evidence that its pronunciation was common Samaritan practice. However Sanhedrin 10:1 includes the comment of Rabbi Mana II, "for example those Kutim who take an oath" would also have no share in the world to come, which suggests that Mana thought some Samaritans used the name in making oaths. (Their priests have preserved a liturgical pronunciation "Yahwe" or "Yahwa" to the present day.) As with Jews, Shema (שמא, "the Name") remains the everyday usage of the name among Samaritans, paralleling the Jewish use of HaShem (השם, "the Name") in Hebrew. This reading of the tetragrammaton by Samaritans dates back to at least the 4th century CE, as evidenced in two poems by the Samaritan author Marqah.

Christianity

It is assumed that early Jewish Christians inherited from Jews the practice of reading "Lord" where the Tetragrammaton appears in the Hebrew text (and where a few Greek manuscripts use it in the midst of their Greek translation). Gentile Christians, primarily non-Hebrew speaking and using Greek Scripture texts, may have read Κύριος ("Lord"), as in the Greek text of the New Testament and in their copies of the Greek Old Testament. This practice continued into the Latin Vulgate where Dominus ("Lord") represented the Tetragrammaton in the Latin text. At the Reformation, the Luther Bible used all-caps HERR ("LORD") in the German text of the Old Testament to represent the Tetragrammaton.

In Christianity, when the Tetragrammaton is vocalized, the forms Yahweh or Jehovah are used. Jah or Yah is an abbreviation of Jahweh/Yahweh, and often sees usage by Christians in the interjection "Hallelujah", meaning "Praise Jah", which is used to give God glory.

The Septuagint (Greek translation), the Vulgate (Latin translation), and the Peshitta (Syriac translation) use the word "Lord" (κύριος, kyrios, dominus, and ܡܳܪܝܳܐ, moryo respectively).

Use of the Septuagint by Christians in polemics with Jews led to its abandonment by the latter, making it a specifically Christian text. From it Christians made translations into Coptic, Arabic, Slavonic and other languages used in Oriental Orthodoxy and the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose liturgies and doctrinal declarations are largely a cento of texts from the Septuagint, which they consider to be inspired at least as much as the Masoretic Text. Within the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Greek text remains the norm for texts in all languages, with particular reference to the wording used in prayers.

The Septuagint, with its use of Κύριος to represent the Tetragrammaton, was the basis also for Christian translations associated with the West, in particular the Vetus Itala, which survives in some parts of the liturgy of the Latin Church, and the Gothic Bible.

Christian translations of the Bible into English commonly use "LORD" in place of the Tetragrammaton in most passages, often in all caps to refer to Jehovah God. This distinguishes the Tetragrammaton LORD from references to Jesus Christ as "Lord". The distinction is necessary to understand King James Psalm 110:1 "The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool."

Islam

While the Qur'an does not explicitly mention the tetragrammaton, it appears to be well-aware of the name reflecting knowledge of its meaning, paralleling interpretations from early rabbinic traditions. The absence of the tetragrammaton may point to the Qur'an's oral transmission, especially since it sometimes replaces the tetragrammaton with "Lord" (Arabic: رب, romanized: Rabb) when it re-articulates passages in the Hebrew Bible that contain the tetragrammaton. Thus, the Qur'an appears to also avoid the vocalization of the tetragrammaton no differently than the Jewish communities with whom it was in conversation during Late Antiquity.

Usage in art

Since the 16th century, artists have been using the tetragrammaton as a symbol for God, or for divine illumination. Protestant artists avoided to allegorize God in human form, but rather wrote the Hebrew name of God. This was done in book illustrations since 1530, then on coins and medals as well. Since the 17th century, both Protestant and Catholic artists have used the tetragrammaton in church decoration, on top of altars, or in center of frescos, often in rays of light or in a triangle.