Yesterday someone posted that the 4 letters of the Divine Name could be vowels.  They are definitely used as consonants, not vowels.  YHWH comes from the root word HWH (to be) by adding a YUD prefix.  So in each case, it is a consonant, and vowels are added to it.

Even when Yud, Hey and VAV are used where long vowels go, they represent the CONSONANT PART of long vowels.  A long "eey" or "ay" typically has a "y" sound at the end of the vowel.  A long "o" or "oo" has a long "w" sound at the end of it.  The HEY represents breath - the ability to hear an "h" sound come out.

It's a Hebrew name, and it needs to be understood through a Hebrew lense.  One can't examine how it was transliterated into Greek and know how the Name is pronounced.  That's simply the wrong way to try and figure it out.  There's no way to write a Hebrew "YUD" in Greek.  Greeks substituted a "IOTA", but the "I" vowel is not the same as the "Y" consonant.  Greek has no way of representing a word where a vowel ends in a HEY ("H") sound.  And Greek lacks a way to write a "W" sound.  OK....the Hebrew Divine Name has 3 letters, all of which are either problematic or impossible to write in Greek......so why do some people consult Greek writings to figure out how to say a Hebrew Name?  Rather illogical really. 

 

Worse yet, the vowels are even harder.  If you see an alpha in Greek, that could be a patach or a patach hataph or a qamats in Hebrew, none of which are the same sound.   If you see an epsilon in Greek, that could be a shwa, or a segul, or a tsere in Hebrew.  You can only APPROXIMATE these vowels in Greek, but you miss out on expressing the differences.

Shalom, Joe