The pentagrammaton (Greek: πενταγράμματον) or Yahshuah (Hebrew: יהשוה) is an allegorical form of the Hebrew name of Jesus, constructed from the Biblical Hebrew form of the name, Yeshua (a Hebrew form of Joshua), but altered so as to contain the letters of the Tetragrammaton.[1] Originally found in the works of Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1531), Athanasius Kircher, Johann Baptist Grossschedel (1619) and other late Renaissance esoteric sources.
The essential idea of the pentagrammaton is of an alphabetic consonantal framework Y-H-Sh-W-H, which can be supplied with vowels in various ways. (Also, the "W" can be converted into a "U" or "V", since the Hebrew letter ו waw writes either a [w] consonant sound—later on, pronounced [v]—or a long [u] vowel sound: see Mater Lectionis.)
- ^ Ilan, Tal (2002). Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity Part I: Palestine 330 BCE-200 CE (Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 91). Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr. p. 129.