TNDL: "WHAT DOES THE NAME ADONAI MEAN?"

Names of God in Judaism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The name of God most often used in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton (YHWH יהוה). It is frequently anglicized as Jehovah and Yahweh and written in most English editions of the Bible as "the Lord" owing to the Jewish tradition increasingly viewing the divine name as too sacred to be uttered. It was thus replaced vocally in the synagogue ritual by the Hebrew word Adonai (“My Lords”), which was translated as Kyrios (“Lord”) in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures.[1]
Rabbinic Judaism describes seven names which are so holy that, once written, should not be erased: YHWH and six others which can be categorized as titles are El ("God"), Eloah ("God"), Elohim ("Gods"), Shaddai (“Almighty"), Ehyeh ("I Will Be"), and Tzevaot ("[of] Hosts").[2] Other names are considered mere epithets or titles reflecting different aspects of God,[3] but chumrah sometimes dictates special care such as the writing of "G-d" instead of "God" in English or saying Ṭēt-Vav (טו, lit. "9-6") instead of Yōd-Hē (יה, lit. "10-5" but also "Jah") for the number fifteen in Hebrew.[4]

The documentary hypothesis proposes that the Torah was compiled from various original sources, two of which (the Jahwist and the Elohist) are named for their usual names for God (YHWH and Elohim respectively).