An Adonaist is a sect or party who maintain that the
Hebrew language
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language unti ...
vowel points ordinarily annexed to the consonants of the word "
Jehovah
Jehovah () is a Romanization, Latinization of the Hebrew language, Hebrew , one Tiberian vocalization, vocalization of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), the proper name of the God in Judaism, God of Israel in the Hebrew BibleOld Testament. The Tetr ...
", are not the natural points belonging to that word, and that they do not express the true pronunciation of it; but that they are vowel points belonging to the words,
Adonai
Judaism has different names given to God in Judaism, God, which are considered sacred: (), (''Adonai'' ), (''El (deity), El'' ), ( ), (''El Shaddai, Shaddai'' ), and ( ); some also include I Am that I Am.This is the formulation of Josep ...
and
Elohim
''Elohim'' ( ) is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is plural in form, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly but not always the Go ...
, applied to the ineffable name Jehovah, which the Jews were forbidden to utter, and the true pronunciation of which was lost; they were therefore always to pronounce the word ''Adonai'', instead of Jehovah.http://1828.mshaffer.com/d/word/adonists Webster's 1828 Dictionary
''Adonai''
Jews also call God ''Adonai'', Hebrew for "Lord" (Hebrew: ). Formally, this is plural ("my Lords"), but the plural is usually construed as a respectful, and not a
syntactic
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency ...
plural. (The singular form is ''Adoni'', "my lord". This was used by the Phoenicians for the god Tammuz and is the origin of the Greek name
Adonis
In Greek mythology, Adonis (; ) was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity.
The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip ...
. Jews only use the singular to refer to a distinguished person: in the plural, "rabotai", literally, "my masters", is used in both Mishnaic and modern Hebrew.)
Since pronouncing
YHWH
The TetragrammatonPronounced ; ; also known as the Tetragram. is the four-letter Hebrew-language theonym (transliterated as YHWH or YHVH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four Hebrew letters, written and read from right to left, a ...
is avoided out of reverence for the holiness of the name, Jews use ''Adonai'' instead in prayers, and colloquially would use ''
Hashem
Hashem ( Hebrew: ''haššēm'')
People with the given name
* Hashem Aghajari (born 1957), Iranian historian
* Hashem Akbari (born 1949), Iranian-American professor at Concordia University
* Hashem Akbarian (1897–1971), Iranian wrestler
* ...
'' ("the Name"). When the
Masoretes
The Masoretes (, lit. 'Masters of the Tradition') were groups of Jewish scribe- scholars who worked from around the end of the 5th through 10th centuries CE, based primarily in the Jewish centers of the Levant (e.g., Tiberias and Jerusalem) an ...
added vowel pointings to the text of the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" . '' Ferrara Bible go further and substitute ''Adonai'' with ''A.''