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 “Catholic WORD of the Week – For Those Who Read to the end…Just like the credits at the movies"

Jehovah – In the time (c. the third century B.C.E.), out of reverence and in part out of fear, the Jews refrained from enunciating God’s proper name, Yahweh.  In its stead they read and said “Adonai” (my Lord).  As a prompter to this usage, they pointed the consonants of the word “Yahweh” with the vowels of the word “Adonai.”  Hence, the hybrid word found in earlier English versions and elsewhere, viz., “Jehovah,” grew out of a combination of the consonants YHWH with the vowels of “Adonai”, i.e., a-o-a.  The first “a” was modified to “e,” since it was to be pronounced with the first consonant “y,” which is not a guttural.  The word is not authentic, deriving as it does from a completely mistaken notion.”  Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Encyclopedia, pages 530