Translating the Divine Name

It is of special interest to note how Alfonso de Zamora, a learned man of Hebrew background, transliterated the divine name. As can be seen in the accompanying photograph, a marginal note in his Hebrew-Latin interlinear translation of Genesis contains God’s name written as “jehovah.”

Evidently, Zamora accepted this translation of the divine name into Latin. During the 16th century, when the Bible was translated into principal European languages, this spelling or a very similar one was adopted by many Bible translators, including William Tyndale (English, 1530), Sebastian Münster (Latin, 1534), Pierre-Robert Olivétan (French, 1535) and Casiodoro de Reina (Spanish, 1569).

Thus Zamora became one of the first of many 16th-century Bible scholars who helped shed light on the divine name.

[Picture]

Close-up view of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton translated “jehovah” by Zamora