And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them.
Exodus 6:3 (KJV)
Jehovah – When we talk about God, we seldom use His name. In fact, it could be said that the name “Yehovah” isn’t known to us either. But there’s a reason for this. The pronunciation of the tretragrammaton “YHVH” was hidden away long ago.
But there have been new findings in the last several centuries that have brought to light the proper pronunciation of YHVH.
One of the 1000 Hebrew manuscripts currently known to contain the vowels of God’s holy name “Yehovah” is this manuscript which is now held in the Vatican Library and dated to c.1300.
See the circled word in the Hebrew? That’s God’s name, Yehovah with the proper vowel inflections. This manuscript is from the Digital Vatican Library, https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Ross.1169.pt.C/0028. The survival of this manuscript is a miracle in it’s own right. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church routinely confiscated books from the Jews and most were burned. However, this Hebrew Bible was cut into pieces so that pages could be used to reinforce the binding of a Christian book. The folds where the pages were wrapped around the smaller Christian book to reinforce its binding are still visible. The first scribe of this document wrote the vowels with God’s name clearly denoting “Yehovah,” however, the second scribe who copied this document, circled the name (this is how Jews “erased” the words from the Tanakh) and then wrote “Adonai” in the sidebar as a correction. The so called mistake, is the correct version of God’s name!
Another document is one of at least 7 sightings of “Yehovah” in the Aleppo Codex. The Aleppo Codex is a medieval bound manuscript of the Tanakh which Maimonides endorsed for it’s accuracy. View the actual document here.
Do you see the smudge mark on the 3rd line down? That smudge is directly over God’s name, Yehovah, with the vowel pronunciations. This verse is from 1 Samuel.
Samuel also said unto Saul, YHVH sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the YHVH. 1 Samuel 15:1
The 1000th discovery of the pronunciation was just found on January 21, 2018! This manuscript comes from the Cairo Genizah and is now housed at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University: http://genizah.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/fragment/MS_Heb_b_9/9b
These findings are occurring more with each new exploration into the libraries of manuscripts throughout the world. Despite the desire to not pronounce God’s name on part of the Jews, we’ve been blessed to see the truth. Thanks to over 1000 Hebrew manuscripts, God can now be known to us all as Yehovah.
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