Entertainment / Literature / Tetragrammaton: The four Hebrew consonant letters corresponding to yhwh (or in German transliteration, jhvh). The oldest Hebrew writers referred to God in a variety of ways: El (God), Elohim (God, but in a plural form as was common in other Ugaritic and Semitic traditions), or by a personal name containing the letters yhwh, usually rendered as Yahweh in modern transcription. Over time, given certain Kabbalistic and mystical leanings, Hebrew scribes began to add extra semantic weight to this combination of written letters. It is as if the holiness of God spilled over into the inky strokes signifying the Divine on parchment. Scribes and priests treated the tetragrammaton as spiritually charged by its use in prayers, curses, and blessings. Divine help, after all, is triggered by invocation or calling upon the name of a deity. The tetragrammaton often became personified--almost like a separate entity from its referent. Thus, the Deuteronomic writers customarily referred to the Temple in Jerusalem as the place where Yahweh's 'name' dwelled rather than (or in addition to) being the residence of Yahweh himself (Gabel and Wheeler 269).
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