Aspects of rendering the sacred Tetragrammaton in Greek

Abstract This article recounts the persistent use of the sacred Tetragrammaton through the centuries as an „effable,“ utterable name at least in some circles, despite the religious inhibitions against its pronunciation. A more systematic investigation of the various Greek renderings of the biblical name of God is provided. These renderings are found in amulets, inscriptions, literary works, etc., dating from the last few centuries B.C.E. until today. It will be illustrated that some forms of the Tetragrammaton were actually accepted and used more widely within the Greek religious and secular literature since the Renaissance and especially since the Modern Greek Enlightenment. Furthermore, it is asserted that for various reasons there is no unique or universally “correct” rendering of the Hebrew term in Greek. Of special note are two Greek transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton, one as it was audible and written down by a Greek-speaking author of a contra Judaeos work in the early 13th century in South Italy and another one written down at Constantinople in the early 17th century—both of them presented for the first time in the pertinent bibliography.


Introduction The name of God
The sacred Tetragrammaton (Heb. ‫,)יהוה‬ commonly pronounced Yahweh ‫ֶה(‬ ‫ְו‬ ‫ַה‬ ‫)י‬ or Jehovah ‫ָה(‬ ‫ְהֹו‬ ‫,)י‬ "has always been regarded as the most sacred and the most distinctive name of God," it is "His proper name par excellence." This name holds the most prominent status within the Hebrew Scriptures in comparison to other appellations or titles attributed to God. While the Bible mentions several epithets of God, "it also speaks of the name of God in the singular." In theological terms, the "names of God" are considered "not of human invention, but of divine origin, though they are all borrowed from human language, and derived from human and earthly relations."2 They are regarded of special value because it is God himself that made them known to humankind and, as a result, "they contain in a measure a revelation of the Divine Being."3 community that appeared in the second half of the second century B.C.E.14 First in the oral speech and then within their writings, conservative rabbinic, priestly and scribal cycles promoted the use of metonymic terms so as to avoid any mention of the Tetragrammaton, even of other divine names as well. The reference to God was mostly made by various forms of anonymous address such as "God" and "Lord" and subsequently by circumlocutional substitutes as "Heaven," "the Holy One," "the Place," and "the Name."15 These appellations were by no means innovative ways of addressing God but they came up as part of a Jewish reverential nomenclature towards the end of the Second Temple period.
The Christian understanding of God carries the fundamental notion that He is the one and same in both the HB/OT and the NT texts.16 However, in the subsequent post-Nicene trinitarian contemplation on the definition and the interrelation of theo-ontological terms such as φύσις (nature), οὐσία (essence), ὑπόστασις (substance), and πρόσωπον (person), there was an attempt to reconcile the biblical deus revelatus and the philosophical deus absconditus. Any name used to describe the essence of God would not be acceptable-a philosophical dilemma not found in the Hebrew Scriptures.17 Basil of Caesarea, writing in the mid fourth century C.E., inferred that God's "operations (or, energies) come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach."18 Early in the sixth century C.E., a more thorough theology of the name of God is explicated in the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus and especially in the work On the Divine Names. Two centuries later, John of Damascus tried a quite more balanced approach to this theology.19 Eventually, the Christian God could be described at the same time as God with no name, God with many names,20 and God with all the names.21 In fact, church fathers and Christian writers in general seem to have been constantly attracted to the discussion of the divine names and especially of the Tetragrammaton.22 Virtually all systematic discourses on theology contain a chapter dedicated to reflection on this issue. The earliest Christian use of the divine name (third-to-fifth centuries C.E.) was made in reference to the deity worshiped by the quasi-Jewish and quasi-Christian Gnostic movements, by Christian "sects," and by the Jews and the Samaritans. Only a few times is the divine name explicitly connected with the God of the Bible. Influential theological trends developed within a range varying between an apophatic, distanced, Platonic/Middle Platonic deity (mainly the Father) and a historical, revealed, of the "old dispensation" God (usually meant the Son). Inside Judaism, the so-called "paganization of Iao" that was spread among Gnostic religious currents and non-Jewish magicians seems to have also influenced some Jews who were ignorant of the biblical identity of the God of their forefathers. 23 Regarding the silence imposed on the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, despite "the recurrent Jewish claim that the Name was ineffable" the indications denote that it was "still being pronounced by some Hellenistic Jews" and also by non-Jews as late as the third century C.E.24 However, the impact of dominant rabbinic conceptions and proto-orthodox Christian theologies made the Tetragrammaton virtually inaudible inside both Jewish and Christian communities.25 It became an amassingly settled position that it is impossible for God to have a personal name. 26 Nevertheless, one way or another, the proper name of God never ceased from use. This is also implied by the fact that more than 60 different utterable renderings of the sacred Tetragrammaton in Greek are attested during the previous twenty centuries (see Appendix A).27 The monopoly of the longstanding and widely-applied "official" substitution practice ended in the Latin-speaking world at the beginning of the second millennium C.E. when Renaissance humanism and especially the studies on the Hebrew language provided the qualifications so that the Hebraica veritas was rediscovered by Christians. First the Roman Catholics, then the Protestants, and, not long after, Eastern Orthodox Christianity became acquainted to differing degrees with the proper name of God. Similar was the case among the Jews and especially the Jewish converts to Christianity. Gradually the name was used more widely among the English-and Germanspeaking peoples and later on among the Greeks and the Slavs.

Rendering the sacred Tetragrammaton in Greek: A long-standing quest A unique, universal rendering of the Tetragrammaton is not possible
Having a history as a written language of more than 3,000 years, Hebrew has been manifoldly transformed.28 Throughout this period, Jewish populations living both in the Palestine and throughout the Diaspora had been speaking distinct varieties of the Hebrew language. Also, there had been periods that Hebrew seriously declined as a spoken language. Furthermore, fundamental, inherent differences exist between the Indo-European and the Afroasiatic language families.29 Moreover, the methods used for rendering terms from one language to another have varied. Keeping all these parameters in mind, two questions are posed: (a) May we assume that a Hebrew term would have one, and only one, pronunciation spanning across all Palestinian and diasporic Jewish populations throughout this long period? (b) If this were the case for the term in its source language, would there be a basis for the possibility of a unique rendering in the target languages? The answer to both questions is obviously negative for any term, the sacred Tetragrammaton included. J. Krašovec apposes with clarity the most important factors concerning the complexities in the translation of the Hebrew biblical names: "The uniformity or the variety of the forms of biblical proper names are both attributable to several factors in the original and in translations: uniform prototypes, different linguistic backgrounds, the existence of different dialects, phonetic variation in the course of transmission, multiple textual traditions, the more or less extensive use of the names in communities constituting living traditions, active and intentional alterations, different Bible translators, and different approaches among the original translators.
[…] More important seems to be the individuality of phonetic systems of the most influential ancient languages in the transmission of the biblical texts, i.e., of Hebrew/Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. On the one hand, the Greco-Latin alphabets are inadequate for rendering some Semitic sounds, insofar as these alphabets do not have exact equivalents for Semitic gutturals or sibilants.
[…] On the other hand, the pre-Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible caused translators many phonological problems, because originally it did not contain vowel sounds. Concerning the incredible number of variant forms of biblical proper names, the situation is similar in the LXX. Orthography and phonetics in Hellenistic Greek and in late classical Latin are beset with the difficulty that consonants and especially vowels were subject to widespread changes.

Attempting to translate the Tetragrammaton
As it will become more obvious in the following paragraphs, the rendering of Hebrew terms into Greek has proved to be a rather complicated task depending on a number of factors. This fact is adequately observable in the history of the translation of the Tetragrammaton within the Greek biblical text.
The original Greek translation of the divine name has proved to be a heavily debated subject.31 A constantly great amount of scholarly effort has been put in this question, especially as a result of more recent discoveries that challenged previously long-held assumptions.32 More specifically, W. G. von Baudissin (1929) maintained that right from its origins the LXX had rendered the Tetragrammaton by κύριος, and that in no case was this latter a mere substitute for an earlier αδωναι. Based on more recent evidence that had became available, P. Kahle (1960) supported that the Tetragrammaton written with Hebrew or Greek letters was retained in the OG and it was the Christians who later replaced it with κύριος. S. Jellicoe (1968) concurred with Kahle. H. Stegemann (1969 argued that Ιαω /i.a.o/ was used in the original LXX. G. Howard (1977Howard ( /1992 suggested that κύριος was not used in the pre-Christian OG. P. W. Skehan (1980) proposed that there had been a textual development concerning the divine name in this order: Ιαω, the Tetragrammaton in square Hebrew characters, the Tetragrammaton in paleo-Hebrew characters and, finally, κύριος. M. Hengel (1989) offered a similar scheme for the use of κύριος for the divine name in the LXX tradition. Evolving R. Hanhart's position ( /1986( ), A. Pietersma (1984 regarded κύριος as the original Greek rendering of the Tetragrammaton in the OG text. This view was supported later by J. W. Wevers (2005) and M. Rösel (2007). Moreover, Rösel argued against the Ιαω being the original LXX rendering of the Tetragrammaton. G. Gertoux (2002) proposed that the replacement of the Tetragrammaton by ‫אדני‬ was 30 Krašovec,"Transmission",2,[9][10][11]26). 31 For a recent approach and an overview of the renderings of the Tetragrammaton in the OG/LXX tradition, see Eidsvåg,[86][87][88]De Troyer,"The Pronunciation of the Names of God", 152-163. 32 "Recent textual discoveries cast doubt on the idea that the compilers of the LXX translated the tetragrammaton YHWH by kyrios. The oldest LXX MSS (fragments) now available to us have the tetragrammaton written in Heb characters in the Gk text. This custom was retained by later Jewish translators of the OT in the first centuries A.D." (H. Bietenhard, "Lord," in the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, C. Brown (gen. ed.), Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986, Vol. 2, p. 512).
Brought to you by | University of California -Santa Cruz Authenticated Download Date | 2/10/15 3:38 PM gradual between 300 B.C.E. to 100 C.E. and that Ιαω was an Aramaic substitute for the Tetragrammaton used from 200 B.C.E. until the middle of the second century C.E., at a time when the scribal practice of the nomina sacra appeared. K. De Troyer (2008) argued that θεός was the original rendering of the Tetragrammaton in Greek and only later κύριος became the standard rendering following the more extensive use of ‫;אדני‬ obviously some Jews read Ιαω in their Greek Bible at least until the first century B.C.E. L. Perkins (2008) suggested that Ιαω was a secondary change to the original κύριος. G. D. Kilpatrick (1985), E. Tov (1998), J. Joosten (2011), and A. Meyer (201433 concluded that Pietersma's arguments are unconvincing. More particularly, Tov has supported that the original translators used a pronounceable form of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (like Ιαω), which was later replaced by κύριος, while Greek recensions replaced it with transliterations in paleo-Hebrew or square Hebrew characters. R. Furuli (2011), after comparing the various proposals, argued that κύριος did not replace the Tetragrammaton before the Common Era and the LXX autographs included the Tetragrammaton in some form of Ιαω. Truly, the hard evidence available supports this latter thesis.
Tracing back the available renderings of the Hebrew term in Greek, four major practices may be identified: i. non-translation, ii. translation, iii. transliteration, and iv. transcription.

(i) Non-translation
The term "non-translation" is used to describe the use of original Hebrew terms within the text of the Greek translations. Concerning the divine name, this practice was applied (a) out of extreme reverence towards the proper name of God, (b) as a result of the conception that the "iconic" representation of the divine names actually embodies the deity's power,34 or (c) as a blind reproduction of existing manuscripts that included such distinguishable terms.35 An early evidence of such a practice is the use of the Tetragrammaton written in the paleo-Hebrew script within the Hebrew text written with Aramaic ("square") letters. Such cases are found in the Qumran Psalms Scroll (11QPs a , first half of the first century C.E.) and in biblical passages cited in the Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll (1QpHab, second half of the first century B.C.E.).36 This characteristic of the Qumran community is attested in Aramaic37 and Greek texts. In particular, the Greek Minor Prophets scroll (8ḤevXII), an "early Jewish revision of the OG"38 found at the Judean Desert and dated to the end of the first century B.C.E., contains 28 Tetragrammata (fully or partially preserved) written in paleo-Hebrew letters. It is attested also in Oxyrhynchus papyri and other revisions of the OG, like the versions made by Aquila, Symmachus, 33 Meyer, "Reassessment of spacing features in early Greek MSS". 34 Janowitz, "Theories of Divine Names". 35 Gallagher, "Religious provenance", 304. 36 See Appendix B, image 01. This feature "is shared with another twenty-three Qumran texts, mainly nonbiblical" and with biblical scrolls that include 2QExod b , 4QExod j , 4QLev g , 4QDeut k2 , 4QIsa c (Tov,Hebrew Bible,55,142,143;idem,Scribal Practices,239,240,(261)(262)(263)(264)(265)(266)(267)(268)(269)(270)(271)(272)(273)idem,Textual Criticism,56,103,205;Ulrich,Dead Sea Scrolls,(117)(118)(119)(120). Tov explains: "The Qumran scribes had a special approach towards the writing of divine names, especially the Tetragrammaton" (Tov,Hebrew Bible,119,(421)(422)(423)(424)(425)(426)(427). Also, Capes, "YHWH texts", 121. 37 4QpsDan a ar (4Q243) (Tov,Scribal Practices,240). 38 More precisely, 8ḤevXII "attests the recension commonly referred to as Proto-Theodotion or καιγε" (Ulrich,Dead Sea Scrolls,231;Tov,Hebrew Bible,342,343,363).
Brought to you by | University of California -Santa Cruz Authenticated Download Date | 2/10/15 3:38 PM and Theodotion.39 In the fourth century C.E. it was still well known the existence of such manuscripts.40 Furthermore, the use of the Tetragrammaton written in the square Aramaic script within the Greek biblical text is attested in a magnificent papyrus roll of Deuteronomy (P.Fouad 266 b ).41 The text of this papyrus is an early Jewish revision of the OG that originated in Fayum, Egypt, and is dated to the middle of the first century B.C.E.42 The first scribe left spaces indicating where the divine name was to be filled in and the second scribe wrote these Tetragrammata. Following this scribal practice, the Tetragrammaton in the Hexapla was probably written in Aramaic script, rather than translated or written in paleo-Hebrew script. Whether out of incompentence or on purpose, the divine name was written in Greek sources as πιπι, representing graphically the square script form of the Tetragrammaton. Such examples are the Milan Palimpsest (Rahlfs 1098, dated to the ninth century C.E.)43 that preserves the Hebrew form ‫,יהוה‬ whereas the Cairo Genizah Palimpsest T-S 12.182 (Ralhfs 2005, dated to the seventh century C.E.) already uses the graecised form πιπι.44 Moreover, it is attested that in the fourth century C.E. some Greek-speaking readers, who were not acquainted with the Hebrew, even pronounced as /pi.pi/ the square script Tetragrammata found at their Bible copies.45 Eventually, this graecised term was transliterated in the Syriac script within the Syro-Hexapla that was prepared in the early seventh century C.E.46
Brought to you by | University of California -Santa Cruz Authenticated Download Date | 2/10/15 3:38 PM Within the Bible, Hebrew names in many cases have a meaning attached to them. The biblical writers follow the use of a proper name with an explanation of its meaning in support of their narrative.47 Etymology is neither the main nor the sole source of providing the meaning. Other factors like punning, paronomasia, assonance, etc. play major roles. Nevertheless, the personal names are kept untranslated.48 For example, if the name Jesus was not transcribed but translated according to its meaning it would be uttered in English "Saviour" or, according to its fuller form, "Yeho[wah] Is Salvation." This practice is not followed by the biblical translators except only for prophetical names-names that are not essentially proper but convey a special message regarding the named person.
Furthermore, the history of the transmission of the Greek nomina divina found transcribed within the LXX text shows that their usage have never been uniform nor consistent owing to various reasons. Scarce remainings of such inconsistencies can still be found within the editions of the LXX.49 The most prominent cases of the sacred Tetragrammaton's translation are discussed below: (a) κύριος /ˈki.ri.os/, pronounced /ˈku.ri.os/ in the early Hellenistic Greek.
Strictly speaking, the Greek term κύριος (also δεσπότης /ðe.ˈspo.tis/) is neither a translation nor an exact synonym of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton.50 It is a substitute term, an epithet that became noun, functioning in the late copies of the LXX as a proper name.51 The term κύριος is not a Greek equivalent of the ‫יהוה‬ because it lies outside of the semantic domain of the Hebrew term and is not related to any of its possible etymologies. It is obvious that if κύριος had actually been used in the original LXX translation, this was not a welcomed translational choice for more than two or three centuries. In all extant OG/LXX manuscripts as late as the middle of the first century C.E. the term κύριος is not used but rather Hebrew and Greek forms of the Tetragrammaton.52 Either the original translators themselves or the revisers/recensionists/scribes of the OG/LXX preferred to utilize terms and scribal practices that singularised the reference to the God of Israel, who was at the same time the universal Dominator. It is evident that this practice was reversed very early in the Christian era at the latest. Moreover, if κύριος was the original choice of the Alexandrian Bible then this metonymic term would be part of a syncretistic attempt to reconcile the notion of the personal (aka "tribal") God of the Hebrew Scriptures with the Hellenistic concepts of the supreme deity. In a functionalist approach, it is evident that in such a case the LXX successfully served a considerably different Skopos than the original biblical text, it constituted a marked theological shift.
Did Jesus, his early movement, and consequently the NT authors follow this practice? During the last decades this question comes again increasingly frequently in the research foreground. The answer is not as obvious as it may seem.55 Bearing in mind that κύριος in the late LXX copies is used to render more than twenty corresponding Hebrew terms or term combinations of the HB,56 in a similar manner the term κύριος does comprise richer information in the Greek NT.

(b) ὁ Ὢν /o on/.
Philo was the first to declare about God that 'in the sacred scriptures is called "He that Is" as his proper name.'57 Actually, these two words used by the LXX do not render the sacred Tetragrammaton. The text in Exodus reads: «Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ Ὢν [MT: Ex 3:14,15). This appellation is an hapax legomenon in the LXX. In this verse the Alexandrian translators did not translate the original text literally as «Ἐγώ Εἰμι ὅ/ὅς Εἰμι … Ὁ Εἰμί» or «Ἐγώ Ἔσομαι ὅ/ὅς Ἔσομαι … Ὁ Ἐσόμενος».58 The Platonizing LXX rendering attempts to explain the text as a reference to God's aseity, that is, his underived existence, and his eternity and unchangeableness.59 Few centuries later, during the second century C.E., the translations of Aquila and Theodotion tried to overcome this inadequacy by rendering literally this phrase as «Ἔσομαι Ἔσομαι» ("I Will Be I Will Be). Much later, Jewish versions followed this earlier tradition and rendered the phrase as «Ἔσομαι ὃς Ἔσομαι ... Ἔσομαι ... Ὀντωτὴς», that is "I Will Be Who I Will Be … I Will Be … The Existence Giver" (Graecus Venetus, end of 14 th century).60 Similarly, in Medieval Greek it was translated as «Nὰ Eἶμαι ὃς Nὰ Eἶμαι ... ὁ Ἐϊέ ... ὁ Κύριος», that is "I Will Be Who I Will Be … Eie … the Lord"  , 98). Regarding the early text of the Christian Scriptures, Howard supported the thesis that the original texts of the New Testament preserved the Tetragrammaton (either in Hebrew scripts or in a Greek transliteration) in citations and allusions of the OT (Howard, "The Tetragram"; idem, "The Name of God"; idem, "Tetragrammaton"). Shedinger proposed that the Syriac Diatessaron, composed some time after the middle of the second century C.E., may provide additional confirmation of Howard's hypothesis (Tatian and the Jewish Scriptures, 136-140). Additionally, within the Syriac Peshitta is discernible the distinction between κύριος rendered as ‫ܐ‬ ܳ ‫ܪܝ‬ ܳ ‫ܡ‬ (marya, which means "lord" and refers to the God as signified by the Tetragrammaton; see Lu 1:32) and ‫ܢ‬ ܰ ‫ܪ‬ ܳ ‫ܡ‬ (maran, a more generic term for "lord"; see Joh 21:7).  gar"] Greek and Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) translations, the Pentateuch also contains Targum Onkelos and Rashi" ("The Constantinople Pentateuch", 255). It is also noteworthy that the Tetragrammaton is rendered in Greek as κύριος and is written with Hebrew letters as ‫קיריוש‬ /ˈki.ri.os/ (the similar form ‫קיריס‬ /ˈki.ris/ occurs regularly in the Aramaic of the Targums), while in the Ladino column the substitute ‫ֲי‬ ‫י‬ is used, a form already used in rabbinic literature (Aslanov, "The Judeo-Greek and Ladino columns", 391, 396).
Brought to you by | University of California -Santa Cruz Authenticated Download Date | 2/10/15 3:38 PM It has been proposed that the phrasal title «ὁ Ὢν καὶ ὁ Ἦν καὶ ὁ Ἐρχόμενος» found in the Book of Revelation almost five times62 represents an expansive rendering of the Hebrew ‫אהיה‬ ‫אשר‬ ‫.אהיה‬ However, apart from an obvious contextualisation, if the Greek title was to be explained ontotheologically with Platonic overtones this would be far beyond the notion of the active and rigorous God described in the prophetic book.63 From such a perspective, the "I Am" ‫הוא"(‬ ‫)"אני‬ divine declarations in the HB/OT might be preferable not to be understood as references to God's bare existence and static beingness nor Jesus' "I Am" («Ἐγώ εἰμι», not «ὁ Ὢν») sayings as expressions of a blatant divine self-identification.
(c) Ὀντωτής /on.to.ˈtis/, Ὀντουργός /o.ntur.ˈγοs/, Οὐσιωτής /u.si.o.ˈtis/. These terms were selected to render the Tetragrammaton by the author(s) of the Graecus Venetus, published at Constantinople at the end of the 14 th century. In every place where ‫יהוה‬ is found in the HB it is translated consistently by one of these three terms-primarily with Ὀντωτής. The coinage of these neologisms is an indication of an arduous and scrupulous attempt to render the original text into Greek-and more specifically, they are part of renderings that are used to denote the varying nuances between the verbs "be" and "become."64 These names convey to the reader the notion of the One who is creating the living creatures, "the Existence Giver."65 (d) Αὐτοφυής /au.to.fu.ˈes/, pronounced /af.to.fi.ˈis/ since the early centuries C.E. This term had been used earlier to describe Greek deities and it was used subsequently in Greek theological writings to describe God. The Alsatian Reformer Martin Bucer (1491-1551) utilised the transliterated term Autophyis (Autophyes) as a rendering of the Tetragrammaton in his Latin translation of the Psalms.66 Again, the underived existence and being the source of his own existence is denoted by this term.67 Other terms like Ἀόρατος /a.ˈo.ra.tos/ and Αἰώνιος /e.ˈo.ni.os/ have been used occasionally in Christian literature to render the Tetragrammaton as metonymic terms or translational substitutes, especially in onomastica sacra. These terms emphasize aspects of the Divinity, particularly the divine invisibility, transcendence, and eternal living.68

(iii) Transliteration
One method of translating proper names is by transliteration, which is the mapping of a word from one alphabet into another. Transliteration is not concerned with representing the exact sounds (phonemes) of the original-it only strives to represent the characters accurately. B. Kedar-Kopfstein notes that "theory and practice of translation agree on the principle that proper names should be transliterated."69 All the available information from the last few pre-Christian centuries and during the first Christian millennium shows that transliteration was the dominant method adopted. The transliteration of Hebrew names into Greek in the LXX presents a varying degree of fidelity compared to the putative Hebrew pronunciation.70 A major reason for this phenomenon is that the forms of the original terms themselves are usually not stabilised-especially This means, in general, that each of the letters of the Tetragrammaton might be transliterated as being consonant or vowel (including dipthongs) in a number of possible combinations. Using a letter-to-letter correspondence this process could result in forms like Ἰεωέ, Ἰεουέ, Ἰεωά, Ἰαωά, Ἰευέ, Ἰεβέ, Ἰαβά, but also Ἰευά, Ἰεουά, Ἰαουέ, Ἰεβά, Ἰοβά, Ἰαβέ, etc. Some of these forms were used more widely than others, while some of them represent rather conjectural reconstructions. In Latin, during the 12 th century the Sephardic Jew and convert to Christianity scholar Petrus Alphonsus (11 th -12 th cent.) followed by the Italian theologian Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202) and Pope Innocent III (1160/1161-1216) familiarised the transliterated term ieve.73 It is remarkable that according to Ecclesiastes 11:3 (MT) the term /yih.weh/ ‫ֶה(‬ ‫ְו‬ ‫ִה‬ ‫,)י‬ if it is read meaning "He will [prove/come to] be"74 («ἔσται», LXX, meaning "will be"), was actually vocalised /ye.hu.aˈ/ ‫ּֽוא(‬ ‫ְה‬ ‫)י‬ before the Common Era,75 a form very similar to the English /yae.ho.wah/76-as well to the Greek renderings Ιεωα /i.e.o.ˈa/ and Ιεουα/Ιηουα/Ιευα, all of them read /i.e.u.ˈa/.77 It is probable that Josephus might have had this form in his mind when he cites that the sacred name of God consists of "four vowels."78 Compared to the LXX transcription conventions and the Greek renderings of typical theophoric names such as Jesus, this form seems to be a fine candidate to be the current Hebrew pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton during the Second Temple period. In such a case, the earliest nomen sacrum ιη /ie/ could initially apply to 71 For example, four Hebrew forms of the name Jesus found in the Bible are: (a) ‫יהשוע‬ which is transliterated as yhswʿ, (b) ‫יהושע‬ as yhwsʿ, (c) ‫ישוע‬ as yswʿ, and (d) ‫ישו‬ as ysh. 72 All of the three Hebrew letters that compose the sacred four-letter name have a distinct peculiarity: they are consonants that they were gradually used (already testified by the ninth century B.C.E.) to represent vocalic sounds, called matres lectionis. Additionally, two of them ‫ו(‬ /w/ and ‫י‬ /y/, allophones of /u/ and /i/ respectively) are used as semi-vowels (Murtonen, Hebrew in Its West Semitic Setting, 87, 88). "The Greeks correctly assumed that the Phoenician letters were acrophonic: the first sound of the name provided the sound value of the letter. In the case of the very first Phoenician letter, called *ʔalp 'ox,' this led the Greeks, who lacked a phoneme /ʔ/, to assume that the sound value of the letter was /a/. Greek also did not have a phoneme /j/ ([j] was merely an allophone of /i/), so the letter *yɔːd 'hand' was taken as acrophonic for /i/. The vowel /u/ was provided by Phoenician *waw 'hook' (although a doublet letter had to be created for the Greek phoneme /w/). Of the two Phoenician h-like sounds, Greek chose the more marked one (*ħɛːt) to stand for the Greek rough breathing, which made Phoenician *heː 'hey!' (=Greek ᾒ /έː/ 'hey!') available for the vowel /e/. For the final vowel, /o/, no obvious Phoenician model was available, and the Greeks adopted the remaining letter that to them sounded as if it was vowel-initial, [*]ʕɛːn 'eye,' perhaps by default, perhaps because the Greek word for 'eye' (ὀφθαλμός /ophthalmós/) starts with an o-" ("Europe Alphabets, Ancient Classical," in the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2 nd ed., Oxford: Elsevier Pergamon, 2006, Vol. 4, pp. 270, 271). From the Semitic letter ‫ו‬ originated two letters of the Ancient Greek alphabet: the vowel letter υ /u/→/y/→/i/ and its consonantal doublet digamma ϝ /w/, which disappered between the eigth and fourth centuries B.C.E. However, Koiné and Modern Greek has no semi-vowels similar to the Hebrew ‫י‬ and ‫ו‬ or to their English counterparts y and w. Within the Greek language, the majority of the letters that were used for the transcription of the Tetragrammaton-that is, the letters υ, ι, η, ο, ω, β, and γ-had their own historical adventures. 73 See, for example, Petrus' Alphonsus Liber contra Judeos (Abbaye Notre-Dame de Cîteaux, MS. 230, f. 55v), Joachim's of Fiore In Apocalipsim (Venetia, 1537, 33v-38r), and Pope Innocent III's Sermon 4 and a comment in Psalms (PL 217:467-470, 1101 Greek renderings starting with /ie-/ are in accordance with the biblical yhwh-theophoric names, in which y e hô-and yô-are used as prefixed elements and -yāhû and -yāh as suffixed elements (Fowler,Theophoric personal names,(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38). 78 Josephus, Jewish War 5:5.7 (H. Thackeray, Josephus III (The Loeb Classical Library), Harvard University Press, 1961, pp. 272, 273). Although Thackeray in the 'uncertainty' of the identity of the four-vowel word proposes Ἰαυέ (or Ἰαουέ) /i.a.u.ˈe/, a more probable implication is the vocalic form Ἰεωά/Ἰεοά /i.e.o.ˈa/ (very similar to Ἰωά /i.o.ˈa/), or Ἰεουά/Ἰευά /i.e.u.ˈa/ (Ἰεουέ/Ἰευέ /i.e.u.ˈe/ is a letter-to-letter vocalic transcription but it does not follow the usual transcription of the Hebrew names that end with ‫;ה‬ see Gertoux, The Name of God, 214).
Brought to you by | University of California -Santa Cruz Authenticated Download Date | 2/10/15 3:38 PM both the Father and the Son.79 As demonstrated in Appendix A, considering many of the possible transcription combinations we may conclude that a number of words previously characterised as nomina barbara are actually various Greek renderings of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton.80 For the reasons mentioned above, the translational renderings have proven to be quite fluid.81

(iv) Transcription-borrowing
Transcription maps the sounds of one language to the best-matching script of another language. Actually, it is a rather phonological attempt to reconstruct the original pronunciation. Regarding the Tetragrammaton, the attempts to reconstruct an "original" or at least an acceptable form according to grammatical and syntactical rules of the Hebrew language have been numerous. Besides, even today, there are no standardised transliteration methods in Greek.
In ancient times the transcription of the names was not usually uniform-not even the original terms retained a unique stabilised form. For example, Hebrew forms of the common theophoric name Jesus ‫יהשוע‬ were transcribed (or transliterated) in Greek in more than fourteen ways.82 It is obvious that in Hebrew the name Jesus was never pronounced as the Modern Greek Ιησούς /i.i.ˈsus/ or similar. Regarding the Greek rendering, the vowel η was pronounced /e/ in the Koiné Greek, the general Greek dialect used from the third century B.C.E. to the fourth century C.E. Only by the third century C.E. it started to sound like ι /i/. The form Ἰησοῦς was used uniformly by the Christians, while the Jews increasingly reduced the use of this name from the second century C.E. onwards.
Changes in the Greek language affected the transcription options for rendering the Tetragrammaton in Greek. As an example, the pronunciation of the letter χ-that in Ancient Greek was an aspirated velar stop /kʰ/-became gradually a fricative /x/. This transformation allowed the Koiné Greek and later dialects to represent to a certain degree the Hebrew consonant ‫.ה‬ Similarly, in Ancient Greek the letter γ represented a voiced velar stop /ɡ/ but later it developed and became a voiced fricative /j/ [ʝ]. These changes of the Greek language combined with the improvements in the knowledge of the Hebrew led to the appearance of renderings such as Γεχαβά, Ἰεοβάχ/Ἰεωβάχ, Ἰεχβά, Ἰεχωβᾶ, Ἰεχωβάχ, Ἰεωβά/Ἰεοβά, and Γεχοβά. Later forms are including Ἰαχβέ, Γιαχβέ, and Γιαχβὲχ.83 79 See L. Hurtado, "Nomina Sacra in Early Graffiti (and a Mosaic)", August 18, 2011, http://larryhurtado.wordpress. com/2011/08/18/nomina-sacra-in-early-graffiti-and-a-mosaic/; J. R. Wicker's "Pre-Constantinian Nomina Sacra in a Mosaic and Church Graffiti," Southwestern Journal of Theology, Vol. 52, no. 1 (Fall 2009), p. 31 [21-41]; De Troyer, "The Pronunciation of the Names of God", 160; Roberts,Manuscript,society,and belief,36;Stroumsa,"A nameless God",238,239. Eerdman Publ., 1986, Vol. 5, pp. 509, 510. 81 For example, regarding the changes of the Greek language, by the Christian era the sound of the letter β had moved from the voiced bilabial plosive /b/ to the voiced labiodental fricative /v/. Similar was the case with the letter υ when it was inside a diphthong (αυ, ευ, ηυ); despite being a vowel it began to function as consonant /v/ during the same period. The consonantal sound of the voiced palatal fricative /j/ was rendered constantly as ι /i/ (Murtonen, Hebrew in Its West Semitic Setting, 88). Brought to you by | University of California -Santa Cruz Authenticated Download Date | 2/10/15 3:38 PM Furthermore, many transcribed names were graecised, as for example Ἀβραάμης (Ἄβραμος; ‫→אברהם‬Ἀβραὰμ), Ἰάκωβος (‫→יעקב‬Ἰακώβ), and Ἰησοῦς. This graecisation process is aiming to "normalize" foreign terms, that is, to naturalise their transcription by adapting a Greek morphology. Regarding the Tetragrammaton, such normalisation would result in forms like Ἰαβάς, Ἰώβαχος, Γιεχωβάς, Γιαχωβάς, Ἰαχωβάς, Ἰεχωβάς, Ἰαβές, even Ἰάων, etc. However, it is observable that archaic and ancient Bible names are not usually normalised in this way but they keep a more "primitive" transcriptional form that is usually indeclinable.84 This is true for the majority of the Greek renderings of the Tetragrammaton.
(a) The forms Ιαω /i.a.o/ and Ιαου /i.a.u/. The Greek rendering Ιαω /i.a.o/ (Lat. Iao /ja.o/ and Iaho /ja.ho/) had been the most common, wide-spread, and ancient pronunciation of the Hebrew/Aramaic divine name that is evidenced in Greek and Latin sources.85 It has been suggested that this form of the divine name was: (a) an approximate vocalic transliteration of the original four-letter ‫יהוה‬ as /yae.ho.w/ having the final ‫ה‬ dropped as being inaudible,86 (b) a literal transliteration of the late three-letter divine name ‫יהו‬ (/yae.ho/ or /yae.hu/)87 and thus only "part of the Tetragrammaton"88 (and, also, later on as the reborrowing term ‫98,)יאו‬ or (c) a translational equivalent that originated or was "fueled" from other semantic domains.90 The last two cases would allow the use of Ιαω as a substitute name in place of the fully spelled Tetragrammaton, aiming to "protect" the sacredness of the complete name.
Texts within literature produced by pagan writers, church fathers and Gnostic writers, magic amulets, and apotropaic formulas make by far the most extensive use of this form of the divine name. As F. E. Shaw adequately proved, Ιαω was widely used already during the last few centuries B.C.E. in a non-mystical manner.91 However, the most outstanding appearance of the form Ιαω is in the text of Leviticus (3:12;4:27) in the 4QpapLXXLev b , an OG fragment dated from the first century B.C.E.92 There is evidence indicating that the use of this phonetic rendering within the Bible copies may have lasted for the next few centuries.93 As a result, this form is found predominantly in Greek writers of the patristic period.94 Moreover, it is deduced that the divine name was still effable, that is pronounceable, during the first century C.E.95 However, there is scarcity of extant Bible copies that include the Greek translation of the Tetragrammaton, probably as a result primarily of the intolerance shown during the centuries of the Common Era towards whatever was considered heretical and deviating by the Jewish and Christian authorities and in the earlier times by their opponents or persecutors.96 84 McDonough referred to "the tendency to treat divine names conservatively and preserve the archaic form" (YHWH at Patmos,117). 85 See Appendix B, images 04 and 06-10. Also, Vasileiadis, «Το ιερό Τετραγράμματο», 95, 96; W. Fauth, Jao-Jahwe und seine Engel. 86 McDonough mentions Yahô a h and Yahû a h as "possible vocalizations" and Ιαω as their "Greek transliteration" (YHWH at Patmos, 119, 120). 87 De Troyer, "The Pronunciation of the Names of God", 153. Gertoux proposes that the Aramaic yaw was translated in Greek as iau→iao→iaue→iave (The Name of God, 90-92, 105). As a matter of fact, a few "archaically"-spelled proper names that are ending with ‫,ה‬ such as Solomon ‫שלמה‬ and Shiloh ‫,שלה‬ have their last letter pronounced [ˈo]. 88 Urbach, The Sages, 126. J. Joosten observed: "À la différence des formes Ιαβε ou Ιαουε, Ιαω ne semble pas refléter une vocalisation possible du tétragramme" ("Le dieu Iaô", 114). 89 Bohak, "The Impact of Jewish Monotheism", 8. 90 Such a case had been the paretymology of Ιαω from the Greek verb ἰάομαι (imper. ἰῶ, aor. ἰηοάμην, that means to "heal, cure, in pres. and impf., attempt to cure, treat, of persons or bodies, etc" (LSJ Lexicon:51090). For an extensive discussion on this paretymology-pun, see J. Moles, "Jesus the Healer in the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and Early Christianity," in Histos, Florida State University, Vol. 5 (2011), pp. 127-131 [117-182]. 91 Shaw, The Earliest Non-mystical Jewish Use of Iαω. 92 See Appendix B, image 04. The text of 4QpapLXXLev b "belongs unquestionably in the OG tradition" and 'reflects the OG better than the manuscript tradition contained in the later uncial manuscripts,' that is "it probably reflects a version antedating the text of the main manuscript tradition of the LXX" (Ulrich,Dead Sea Scrolls,231;Tov,Hebrew Bible,345,363

(b) Using the vocalic pattern /e|o|ø-a|e|o|u|ø-a/.
There is a distinct group of vocalisations of the Tetragrammaton that use a /e|o|ø-a|e|o|u|ø-a/ pattern that includes either vowels or vowels combined with consonants. Typical examples are the "traditional" forms Ἰεοβά /i.e.o.ˈva/ and Ἰεχωβᾶ /i.e.xo.ˈva/.97 Across the centuries, no development in the knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures appears within Byzantine theology, "except for a small number of outstanding scholars who nourished their interest in Jewish Scripture and exegesis."98 During the 12 th and 13 th centuries, in a time when the knowledge of the Hebrew language among Christian theologians was yet uncommon, there survive some rare indications of contemporary pronunciations of the Tetragrammaton. These were attempts to render the Tetragrammaton phonetically and more accurately according to the Masoretic vocalisation system.99 Below, two Greek renderings of the divine name make their debut in the field of the Tetragrammaton studies.
The form Γεχαβά /je.xa.ˈva/ in the early 13 th century C.E. Nikolaos Hydrountinos (Nicholas of Otranto) at South Italy (1155/1160-1235) was a Greek Orthodox Christian learned figure who actively participated as an interpreter in the dialogues for the union of the Greek and Latin churches. He became abbot of the monastery of Casole under the name of Nektarios from 1219/20 onwards. He was well-acquainted with Latin and Hebrew languages, instrumental in his theological discussions with learned Jews while travelling through major Greek cities such as Constantinople, Thebes and Thessaloniki. The scholia he wrote in the biblical codex MS. Paris. gr. 3 demonstrate that he could read the Bible in the light of the Jewish exegesis. Nikolaos is perhaps the only Byzantine author of a dialogue contra Judaeos-a kind of religious literature that was quite common in Byzantium-which was based on real-life disputations, a ponderous treatise against the Jews (Διάλεξις κατὰ Ἰουδαίων), composed in South Italy and dated c. 1220.100 It is extant as a monograph in the MS. Paris. gr. 1255, of which the main unit dates from the 14 th century and was copied in the region of Otranto. It is consisted of 101 folios and contains the only known witness to the Dialogue of Nikolaos. The end of the text, which used to be on the mutilated part of the original manuscript, is now lost.101 In this oral disputation between a Christian and a Jew, a reference is made to the sacred name of God rendered in Greek as Γεχαβά /je.xa.ˈva/.102 This three-syllable word uses pairs of a consonant and a vowel each to render the original Hebrew four-consonant divine name. The last letter of the Tetragrammaton is considered voiceless. It is of interest to note that during the same period Herbert of Bosham (died c. 1194), an English Hebraist who used Jewish interpretations of the Bible to further 97 Regarding the pronunciation of the four-syllable Ἰεχωβά, the first two syllables are not contracted into one by uniting in pronunciation the two adjacent vowels ι and ε (called synizesis; in that case it would read /je.xo.ˈva/, a form almost identical to Γιεχωβά and Γεχωβά). See, also, Vasileiadis,«Το ιερό Τετραγράμματο»,[97][98][99]"Τὸ ἰουδαϊκόν",91. 99 Taking into account the current consensus, it would seem daring to note that it sounds quite odd the common explanation that the Masoretes vocalised the Tetragrammaton within the biblical text in a way so as to remind the reader not to pronounce the name "according to its letters" but to utter another word, commonly regarded to have been the term "Lord." This would imply two things: (a) at the time of Masoretes (7 th -11 th century C.E.) the "correct" pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton was available and known to a wide extent among the Jews, and (b) if the oral substitution of the Tetragrammaton had already been a practice for about eight or nine centuries then there would be no reason for such a scribal device-at least the Tetragrammaton might have been left unvocalised as had already been the case for such a long time. Additionally, the Masoretic manuscript tradition is not uniform either in the "apparatus" used to denote non-pronunciation or in the terms that are supposed to serve as substitutes for the Tetragrammaton. I think that such reasoning casts additional doubts on the hypothetical "qere perpetuum" explanation. See, also, Vasileiadis, «Το ιερό Τετραγράμματο», 95, n. 71; idem, "The pronunciation", 17, 18. 100 The Latin title is Disputatio contra Judaeos. See Fincati, "Τὸ ἰουδαϊκόν", 91, 98, 99; Külzer,Disputationes graecae,[192][193][194][195]Falkenhausen,"Jews",289,290. 101 Andrist, "The physiognomy", 577. 102 See Appendix B, image 11. «Ὑμῖν δὲ [ὦ Ἰουδαῖε] "ἁγιάσατέ μοι τὴν ἑβδόμην" ἐρρέθη, ἣν θαυμασίως πως καὶ σεπτῶς ἁγιάζετε· παντὸς γὰρ ἔργου ἀπέχεις σαυτόν, ὡς ὅτι κάλαμον οὐ λήψῃ πρὸς τὸ γράψαι κἂν "Γεχαβά", ἤγουν θεὸς κύριος, οἷα ἐν τῷ πετάλῳ τοῦ Ἀαρὼν ἐγέγραπτο, ἢ "κῶδες λὰ ἀδωνά", τοὐτέστιν ἅγιον τοῦ κυρίου» ( 13. The title in the cover page of the first printed edition in Greek is Ὀρθόδοξος ὁμολογία τῆς καθολικῆς καὶ ἀποστολικῆς ἐκκλησίας τῆς ἀνατολικῆς, without any further publication information. Inside the book (p. 15), at the title is included «τῆς πίστεως» after «ὁμολογία». In the original Latin text the divine name is found within the phrase: "Ipse Iehoua per Prophetam dicens innuit" (Malvy & Viller,La Confession Orthodoxe de Pierre Moghila,7). The Greek text mentions: «Τὸ μαρτυρᾷ ὁ αὐτὸς Θεὸς, ὀνομαζόμενος Ἰεχωβᾶ, διὰ τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος»; the Latin back-translation from Greek reads: "Deus ipsemet, cui Jehovae nomen est, per Prophetam testificatur"; the English translation reads: "As God, whose name is Jehovah, doth himself testify" (transl. Ph. Lodvill, London 1762, p. 17). For an up-to-date overview of the information regarding the date and place of the Greek publication, see Mîrşanu, "Old News Concerning Peter Mogila's Orthodox Confession." For a comprehensible presentation of the historical circumstances under which the Orthodox Christian confessions appeared, see Heith-Stade, "Eastern Orthodox Ecclesiologies." The term Ἰεχωβά is already mentioned in the manuscript of the commentary on the Book of Revelation composed by the Artan Metropolitan Zacharias Gerganos in 1622/1623 (Ἐξήγησις εἰς τήν τοῦ Ἰωάννου τοῦ Ὑψηλοτάτου Θεολόγου Ἀποκάλυψιν, MS. Laud. gr. 77, fol. 112r). 108 Karmiris, Δογματικά και συμβολικά μνημεία, 2:582-592, 597; Maloney, A history of Orthodox theology since 1453, 34; Vasileiadis, "The pronunciation", 15, 16.
Brought to you by | University of California -Santa Cruz Authenticated Download Date | 2/10/15 3:38 PM Isaac Lowndes (c. 1791-c. 1873), utilised the form Ἰεοβά in his translation of the book of Psalms.109 As happened with the well-established Authorised King James Version (1611), Vamvas followed the practice of the sporadic use of the divine name within the subsequent editions of the Greek OT. The official church confession, numerous works written by theologians and clergymen, and especially the numerous copies of the Vamva's Bible translation were the primary factors that made the Greek form of the Tetragrammaton widely known among the Greek-speaking public.
(c) Using the vowels /a-a|e|o|u|ø-e/. Another group of vocalisations of the Tetragrammaton follow a vocalic pattern of the form /a-a|e|o|u|ø-e/. The forms Ἰαβέ /i.a.ˈve/ and Γιαχβέ /jax.ˈve/ are among the most characteristic ones.110 The vocalisation Yahweh corresponds to a supposed Hebrew hiphil form of the root ‫,היה‬ that means "he causes to become."111 It is a two-syllable word and usually no vowel accompanies the middle h ‫)ה(‬ of the rendered name. In contrast to the use of consonants (j and v, as in the Latin-originating Jahve or Jahveh), the common English term has been standardised in the form Yahweh that includes two semivowels (y, w) where the Greek Γιαχβέ uses, instead, a combination of a consonant and a vowel and a sole consonant (γι, β).

(d) Other forms.
Many more rare renderings of the Tetragrammaton follow neither of the above mentioned vocalic patterns. Such examples are Ιευω, Ιαυω, Ιαουω, Ιαεω, and Ιαχω.
The noteworthy form Ιωα /i.o.a/ is not an exact transliteration of the Hebrew term, as it seems to omit the second letter ‫.ה‬ However, the renderings of theophoric names show that this elimination was rather usual. For example, names such as ‫→יהודה‬Ἰούδας and ‫‪→Ἰωάννης‬יהוחנן/יוחנן‬ are rendering after ι the Hebrew ‫ו‬ and not ‫.ה‬ This means that Ιωα may represent a rendering that follows the /ø-o-a/ vocalic pattern, which is very close to forms such as Ιεωα /i.e.o.a/ and Ιεουα /i.e.u.a/.

Conclusions
In this article it was attempted to demonstrate that, (a) Despite the various reasons that led to the silencing of the sacred Tetragrammaton, it long remained an utterable name, at least in some circles; (b) A more systematic investigation of the various Greek renderings of the Tetragrammaton provides a better understanding of the methods that were used; (c) There is no unique or universally "correct" rendering of the Hebrew name in Greek; (d) The two Greek renderings of the Tetragrammaton presented for the first time here, namely Γεχαβά (early 13 th century) and Ἰεοβάχ (early 17 th century) are both following the /e-a|o-a/ vocalic pattern; and (e) According to the available indications, a vocalic rendering pronounced /i.e.o.ˈa/ (/i.o.ˈa/), or /i.e.u.ˈa/ might probably have been the proper pronunciation of the full Tetragrammaton in Greek during the Second Temple period.
Further systematic investigation based on the provided transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton in Greek collated with specific Hebrew and Greek linguistic information may produce interesting conclusions that will enrich our understanding of the remarkable historic route of the divine name par excellence.