An Adonaist is a sect or party who maintain that the
Hebrew language vowel points ordinarily annexed to the consonants of the word "
Jehovah
Jehovah () is a Latinization of the Hebrew , one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament. The Tetragrammaton is considered one of the seven names of God in Judais ...
", 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 considers some names of God so holy that, once written, they should not be erased: YHWH, Adonai, El ("God"), Elohim ("God," a plural noun), Shaddai ("Almighty"), and Tzevaot (" fHosts"); some also include Ehyeh ("I Will Be").This is th ...
and
Elohim
''Elohim'' (: ), the plural of (), is a Hebrew word meaning "gods". Although the word is plural, in the Hebrew Bible it usually takes a singular verb and refers to a single deity, particularly (but not always) the God of Israel. At other times ...
, 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. 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 is avoided out of reverence for the holiness of the name, Jews use ''Adonai'' instead in prayers, and colloquially would use ''
Hashem'' ("the Name"). When the
Masoretes added vowel pointings to the text of the
Hebrew Bible around the eighth century CE, they gave the word YHWH the vowels of ''Adonai'', to remind the reader to say ''Adonai'' instead. It is thought by some that later Biblical scholars mistook this vowel substitution for the actual spelling of YHWH and interpreted the name of God as "Jehovah".
The Sephardi translators of the
Ferrara Bible go further and substitute ''Adonai'' with ''A.''
References
{{reflist
Tetragrammaton