tetragrammaton

plural tetragrammata · plural tetragrammatons

1. Alternative letter-case form of Tetragrammaton.

   Dahood, Psalms, 201, reads a tricolon based on reading עַל as a divine epithet paralleling the two tetragrammata.

   2012, Simon P. Stocks, The Form and Function of the Tricolon in the Psalms of Ascents: Introducing a New Paradigm for Hebrew Poetic Line-form, Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock, →ISBN, page 79

   5 more examples

   One was to make Elohim the principal predicate,—Hear, O Israel: Jehovah is our God, Jehovah is one; the other was to give the two tetragrammatons different meanings, making one the proper name and the other the appellative, as if one should read, Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is the one Universe-Sustainer.

   1874, M[atthew] R. Miller, The Luminous Unity, or Letters Addressed to the Rev. A. Guinzburg, a Rabbi of Boston, Mass., from the Rev. M. R. Miller, on the Question, Is Unitarianism, as Opposed to Trinitarianism, a Principle of Heathenism Rather than of Specific Judaism?, Philadelphia, Pa.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott & Co., page 73

   The fifty engravings were crowned with the forty-two sacred letters of the holy name⁴³³ with which heaven and earth were created, and eight gates were engraved with their engravings, and these are the eight letters of Mercy, as it is written “YHVH YHVH God, merciful and gracious” (Exodus 34: 6), which emerged from Atika Kadisha to Ze’ir and were united with these holy crowns, the supernal and exalted Ḥokhmah and Binah.⁴³⁴ […] ⁴³³ There are fifty engravings to match the fifty gates of Binah, namely, the forty-two-lettered name, which consists basically of the initial letters of the prayer ana ba-koaḥ, but which can also be represented by the first forty-two letters of Genesis, which form the name derived from the account of Creation, together with the eight letters of the two tetragrammata at the beginning of the thirteen attributes of Mercy.

   1989, Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization), volume I, Liverpool University Press, →ISBN, page 349

   Written vertically from top to bottom, the JHVH tetragrammaton stands for the human body, the image of God. The other three tetragrammatons are secondary, being ‘by-names’ of God, three of the 72 ‘explicatory names’ known as ‘Shem ha-mephorash’ or ‘Shemaham-phorash’.

   1991, Nigel Pennick, The Secret Lore of Runes and Other Ancient Alphabets, Rider, →ISBN, page 28

   In order to illustrate this, I shall address an interesting passage from Abulafia’s commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed, entitled H̲ayyei ha-Nefesh: / [a] But their issue⁴⁶ is YHWH—in the world of the angels, which are the first Hawayah according to the secret of necessity⁴⁷ YHWH—in the world of the spheres, which are the second Hawayah according to the secret of necessity, YHWH—in the lower world, which is the third Hawayah, the last according to the secret of necessity, in those according to their degree and in those according to their degree. […] 46 Namely of the three tetragrammata, which he mentions beforehand, where he refers to both the Talmud and to Maimonides’ Guide i, ch. 61.

   2015, Moshe Idel, ““Higher than Time”: Observations on Some Concepts of Time in Kabbalah and Hasidism”, in Brian Ogren, editor, Time and Eternity in Jewish Mysticism: That Which is Before and That Which is After (Studies in Jewish History and Culture →ISSN; 48), Leiden; Boston, Mass.: Brill, →ISBN, part 6 (Conclusion Beyond Time), page 193

   Triangles enclosing tetragrammatons can also be found in the frontispieces of many non-religious works from the same period.

   2018, Quentin Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 295

plural Tetragrammata · plural Tetragrammatons · alternative tetragrammaton

1. JudaismThe word in four Hebrew letters יהוה (in transliteration as YHWH or JHVH) used as the ineffable name of God in the Hebrew Bible, variously rendered as Yahweh or Jehovah.

   The Tetragrammatons are written out in such a way that the names of single letters are inscribed.

   1982, Judaica Bohemiae, page 103

   3 more examples

   The starting point of this discussion was Origen’s much-debated comment to Psalm 2:2 concerning the Tetragrammaton in “ancient” Hebrew characters. A very approximate terminus a quo for this practice in LXX texts is the first century b. c. e., the date of the Cairo Papyrus Fouad 266, a revision of the Greek Torah from the second century b. c. e., in which the Tetragrammata are written in square Hebrew characters.

   1971, Jonathan P. Siegel, “The Employment of Palaeo-Hebrew Characters for the Divine Names at Qumran in the Light of Tannaitic Sources”, in Hebrew Union College Annual, volume 42, page 160

   According to R. Nehemiah, the double Tetragrammaton is one of Metatron’s 70 names: In gematria the consonants YHWH WHYH amount to 52. The two Tetragrammata do not leave any doubt as to the divine nature of the entities referenced here.

   2007, Moshe Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism, Bloomsbury Academic, →ISBN, page 202

   A few coins and medals with Tetragrammata are found from the Netherlands at the end of the 16th century, but most are from the 17th century, with examples from Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland, as well as proud towns in the Holy Roman Empire (Nuremberg, Hamburg, Magdeburg) and several from Saxony.

   2015, Robert J. Wilkinson, “The Tetragrammaton in Vernacular Bibles, Popular Print, and Illustration”, in Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God: From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century, Leiden, S.H.; Boston, Mass.: Brill, →ISBN, part 3 (The Rediscovery of the Name), page 377