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The Formula That Consists of Not Saying It

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The Formula That Consists of Not Saying It

This entry records something that is not transmitted, and there is nothing here for an article to supply because the tradition itself has not held the information for nearly two thousand years.

The four-letter name of God is written throughout the Hebrew Bible, some six thousand times, and is not pronounced. In reading, Adonai is substituted in prayer and Hashem, simply "the Name", in ordinary speech. The Masoretic vocalisation points attached to the consonants in the manuscripts are those of the substituted word, a scribal instruction to the reader rather than a record of the sound.

The Mishnah describes the high priest pronouncing the name in the Temple on the Day of Atonement, with the people prostrating themselves when they heard it, and records that outside the sanctuary a substitute was used. That the Mishnah has to explain the practice indicates it had already become exceptional. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the occasion on which it was pronounced no longer existed, and the pronunciation ceased to be transmitted.

The forms current in Christian usage are reconstructions. One of them is a straightforward artefact: combining the consonants of the name with the vowels of the substituted word produces a hybrid that was never anyone's pronunciation, and this was recognised by Christian Hebraists themselves by the sixteenth century. Another is a scholarly reconstruction from Greek transcriptions in patristic sources and from theophoric elements in personal names. It is a hypothesis, and it is a reasonable one.

This atlas supplies no vocalisation.

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