Pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton

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.

It would be possible to fill this space with the scholarly reconstruction and to note that it is disputed. That is not the position taken, and the reasoning is worth setting out because it applies to the other closed entries in this collection.

The reconstructions are published. They are in reference works, in academic Hebrew grammars, and in a great many popular books. Nothing here is secret in the sense of being unavailable. The question is not whether a reader could find a proposed vocalisation but whether this collection should be the thing that hands it to them, and the answer taken is that the tradition's refusal is the substantive fact about the subject, and reproducing what the refusal exists to prevent would replace that fact with a footnote to it.

The same reasoning governs the other restricted entries here. Where a lineage transmits a formula personally at initiation and instructs that it not be disclosed, this collection records that the practice exists, records the reasons the tradition gives, and supplies nothing. Where a formula is public in the tradition, and most are, including the great majority of what is collected here, it is given in full.

The distinction being drawn is not between important and unimportant material, and it is not a judgement about whether the restrictions are justified. It is a distinction between describing a practice and performing it.

A reader who wants the reconstruction will have no difficulty finding it, and will find it presented with the philological caveats it needs, which is the right place for it.