Tetragrammaton

Tetragrammaton: what was it used for?

Invoked and written, first among the “holie names of God,” in the conjurations of Christian ritual magic, as on the conjurer’s hazel wand.

Tetragrammaton: what does modern science say?

Modern scholars generally read it Yahweh.

Tetragrammaton: what did the older authorities say?

The Second Temple

On the Day of Atonement, the Mishnah says, when the priests and the people in the Temple court heard the Explicit Name from the mouth of the high priest, they knelt, bowed down, and fell on their faces. Maimonides, as the Catholic Encyclopedia reports, held that the true name was used only by the priests giving the blessing in the sanctuary and by the high priest on that day; it seems not to have been spoken after the Temple was destroyed, and Adonai, “Lord,” is read in its place.

Cornelius Agrippa

In the Occult Philosophy sets it apart from all God’s other names, citing “Moses the Egyptian”: it signifies “the substance of the Creator in a pure signification,” and “is called the separated name, which is written and not read”; yet after Christ, he holds, “the name of four letters is no further necessary, the whole vertue thereof being translated into the name of Jesus.”

The Catholic Encyclopedia

The Catholic Encyclopedia states that “the Fathers and the Rabbinic writers agree in representing Jehovah as an ineffable name,” that the Septuagint translators “always substitute Kyrios (Lord) for Jehovah,” and that “according to a Rabbinic tradition the real pronunciation of Jehovah ceased to be used at the time of Simeon the Just.” By the Mishna “Abba Shaul refuses any share in the future world to those who pronounce it as it is written,” and the true name “was used only by the priests in the sanctuary who imparted the blessing, and by the high-priest on the Day of Atonement.” Leusden “could not induce a certain Jew, in spite of his poverty, to pronounce the real name of God, though he held out the most alluring promises.”