Some Christians, reading the Hebrew scriptures as handed down by the rabbis, did not understand that this vowel-consonant arrangement meant to substitute “Adonai” for “Yahweh” when reading the text. So they tried to pronounce the consonants of the Hebrew word “Yahweh” with the vowels of the Hebrew word “Adonai” and came up with a nonexistent name for God, Jehovah. Actually, “Jehovah” did get into translations of the Bible, once as early as William Tyndale’s translation of 1530,24 but frequently in the Revised Version of the nineteenth century. But now that the misunderstanding has been recognized, it is of course no longer used (except by Jehovah’s Witnesses). - JAMES ROBINSON