title: Nile Rodgers

text: The success of Chic's first singles led Atlantic to offer Rodgers and Edwards the opportunity to produce any act on its roster. They chose Sister Sledge, whose 1979 album, "We Are Family", peaked at No. 3 and remained on the charts well into 1980. The first two singles, "He's the Greatest Dancer" and the title cut "We Are Family" both reached No. 1 on the R&B chart, and No. 6 and No. 2, respectively on the Pop chart. In April 2018, "We Are Family" was selected to be preserved in the Library of Congress.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: The 1979 disco backlash derailed Chic, and Edwards retreated from work, while Rodgers' drug use accelerated. Rodgers and Edwards delivered their final Atlantic album under contract, "Believer", in 1982. They completed one of their last projects together in 1980, writing and producing the album "Diana" for Diana Ross, which yielded the hits "Upside Down" and "I'm Coming Out". They produced Deborah Harry's 1981 solo album "Koo Koo", and produced the hit "Spacer" for the French disco act Sheila and B. Devotion. During the same time period, Chic's song "Good Times" was sampled on The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", the first multiple-platinum hip hop single. The song continued to influence the sounds of others, including Queen, (with the 1980 hit "Another One Bites the Dust") and Blondie, who had a #1 hit with "Rapture". Following Chic's breakup, Rodgers released his first solo album, "Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove".


title: Nile Rodgers

text: With Chic no longer occupying most of his time, Rodgers was free to focus on working with other artists. He produced David Bowie's biggest selling album "Let's Dance", which yielded the hit singles "Let's Dance", "China Girl", and "Modern Love". He produced the single "Original Sin" by INXS, and in 1984, he produced Madonna's album "Like a Virgin", which scored three hit singles including its title track, "Material Girl", and "Dress You Up". He worked extensively with Duran Duran, remixing their biggest-selling single, "The Reflex", producing "Wild Boys" on their 1984 live album, "Arena", and co-producing the album "Notorious".


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In 1985, Rodgers produced albums for Sheena Easton, Jeff Beck, Thompson Twins, Mick Jagger, and others, and performed at Live Aid with Madonna and the Thompson Twins. He was named the #1 Singles Producer in the World by "Billboard" at the end of the year. To complete the decade, he produced albums for Grace Jones, Al Jarreau ("L is for Lover"), Earth Wind and Fire's vocalist Philip Bailey, and performed on "Higher Love" with Steve Winwood, as well as on records for Cyndi Lauper, and others. In 1989, he co-produced the B-52's multi-platinum album "Cosmic Thing"; it reached No. 4 on the "Billboard 200" album chart, and yielded the singles "Love Shack", and "Roam". He produced "Workin' Overtime", Diana Ross' return to Motown, and the soundtracks for "Alphabet City", "Gremlins", "White Nights", and "The Fly". He later composed an orchestral soundtrack, his first, for the film "Coming to America".


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers formed the short-lived experimental band Outloud in 1987, with David Letterman's guitarist, composer, and vocalist Felicia Collins and French session musician, producer, composer, and keyboardist Philippe Saisse; the trio released a single album, "Out Loud", on Warner Bros. Records.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In September 1990, shortly after the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Rodgers-produced Vaughan Brothers album, "Family Style" was released. He also produced projects for David Bowie, Eric Clapton, The B-52s, David Lee Roth, Ric Ocasek, The Stray Cats and others early in the decade, and worked on the soundtracks for "Thelma and Louise", "Cool World", and "The Beavis and Butt-head Experience".


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In 1996 they released a Japan-only album consisting of old Chic material rerecorded with guest vocalists, "Chic Freak and More Treats". Edwards and Rodgers performed with Sister Sledge, Steve Winwood, and Slash in a series of commemorative concerts in Japan. Edwards died following a concert on April 17, 1996. Rodgers discovered his body. He later said that when Edwards died he "cried like a baby and suffered intensely but eventually realised the best tribute to him would be to carry on and be the best I could be." A year later, Rodgers returned to Japan to pay homage to his fallen partner, and in 1999, Rodgers released "Live at the Budokan", a live recording of Edwards' final performance. The album was not overdubbed or changed in order to keep the recording pure.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers started playing live concerts again while composing and producing music for film soundtracks: "Beverly Hills Cop III", "Blue Chips", "The Flintstones" and "Feeling Minnesota", working with Bob Dylan, among others.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In 1997, Notorious BIG released "Mo Money Mo Problems" sampling Rodgers and Edwards' song "I'm Coming Out" from Diana Ross's platinum album, "Diana". "Mo Money, Mo Problems" topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 for two weeks and was nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In 1998, Rodgers founded Sumthing Else Music Works record label and Sumthing Distribution, an independent music label distributor. Sumthing focused on distributing video game soundtracks, and released the world's first 5.1 surround DVD game-soundtrack album. Its titles include the "Halo", "Resident Evil", "Gears of War" and "Borderlands" series.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In the early 2000s, Rodgers worked extensively on film and video game soundtracks, including "Halo 2", "Rush Hour 2", "Snow Dogs", and "Semi-Pro" starring Will Ferrell, who co-wrote the title song "Love Me Sexy" with Rodgers.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In 2002, Rodgers returned to work again with the original five members of Duran Duran when he co-produced "Astronaut". The album rose to No. 3 in the UK.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Following the September 11 attacks, to start the healing process, Rodgers brought together more than 200 musicians and celebrities to record "We Are Family". It was recorded in New York at Avatar Studios (previously The Power Station, where the original recording of "We Are Family" took place in 1978), and in Los Angeles at the Record Plant. The accompanying music video was directed by Spike Lee. An 80-minute documentary, "The Making and Meaning of We Are Family", directed by Danny Schechter, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002. In a collaboration between Disney, Nickelodeon and PBS, more than 100 children's television characters participated in a "We Are Family" children's music video, and on March 11, 2002, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and PBS aired the video to promote tolerance and diversity on the 6-month anniversary of 9/11. In July 2002, Rodgers co-founded the We Are Family Foundation with his


title: Nile Rodgers

text: life partner, Nancy Hunt. A non-profit organization that promotes "cultural diversity while nurturing and mentoring the vision, talents, and ideas of young people who are positively changing the world," it is dedicated to the vision of a global family.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In 2010, Rhino Records released a four-CD box set, "Nile Rodgers Presents The Chic Organization, Volume 1: Savoir Faire", which for the first time collected tracks from all of the acts produced by The Chic Organization up to their original break-up in 1983. Rodgers provided sleevenotes for the set, which was also reissued in 2013. Rodgers' critically acclaimed autobiography, "Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny" was published by Spiegel & Grau, a Random House imprint, in late 2011. It was named one of the top 10 of the 25 Greatest Rock Memoirs of All Time by "Rolling Stone".


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In February 2012, Rodgers announced that he was collaborating with electronic band Daft Punk for their latest album, "teasing out their R&B influences". The record, "Random Access Memories" was released in 2013. Rodgers co-wrote and played guitar on three tracks: "Give Life Back to Music", "Lose Yourself to Dance", and "Get Lucky". In April, "Get Lucky" entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 3, only 24 hours after its release, and two weeks later rose to No. 1. In an interview with Official Charts Company, Rodgers said, "I've had big records and Number 1s; I have had records that were Number 1 in the United States but nowhere else ... I've had records which have done well [in the UK], but not in the States. But to have this ubiquitous record, that is a hit everywhere ... It's amazing to me! I'm out on the road and I can hear it wherever I go. I'm flabbergasted!" "Get Lucky" became one of the UK's biggest-selling singles of all time.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rhino Records released "Nile Rodgers Presents The Chic Organization Up All Night (The Greatest Hits)", a compilation album featuring songs written, played or produced by Rodgers and Bernard Edwards for Chic and various artists, including Diana Ross, Sister Sledge, Carly Simon, Debbie Harry, Johnny Mathis, Sheila & B. Devotion and Norma Jean Wright. "Up All Night" reached No. 2 on the UK Compilation Album Chart for the week ending July 13, 2013. In October 2013, Rhino released "Nile Rodgers Presents The Chic Organization Up All Night (The Greatest Hits Disco Edition)", which included a medley taken from Chic ft. Nile Rodgers' live performance at the 2013 Glastonbury Festival.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were nominated to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in October 2013. In January 2014, Rodgers performed "Get Lucky" with Daft Punk on the Grammy Awards, along with Pharrell Williams and Stevie Wonder, with a medley including elements of Chic's "Le Freak" and Wonder's "Another Star". Rodgers won three Grammy Awards for his work with Daft Punk and "Random Access Memories", including Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, Record of the Year and Album of the Year. In March, "Rolling Stone" named Nile Rodgers one of the 50 Most Important People in EDM, stating, "The full scope of Nile Rodgers' career is still hard to fathom, and it's not just ongoing, it's in overdrive." In December, NARAS announced that "Le Freak" would be inducted into The Grammy Hall of Fame.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers' solo single "Do What You Wanna Do (IMS Anthem)" was released on August 10, 2014 to benefit the We Are Family Foundation. A year later, in March 2015, Rodgers released Chic's first single in more than 23 years, "I'll Be There", with a live streamed concert from The Roundhouse in London. The song, created by Rodgers from original Chic outtake tapes from the 70s, with Bernard Edwards, Tony Thompson, and vocalists Alfa Anderson and Luci Martin. The song went to #1 on Billboard's Dance Music Chart, June 20, 2015. In August, Rodgers launched FOLD Festival (FreakOut! Let's Dance), A multi-day event with a diverse line-up of artists including Beck, Duran Duran, Chaka Khan, Keith Urban, Janelle Monáe, Ginger Minj, Chic and many others.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers collaborated with Lady Gaga to remake Chic's hit, "I Want Your Love" for Tom Ford's Spring/Summer 2016 collection video in lieu of a fashion show.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 9, 2016. In 2017, after 11 nominations for Chic, Rodgers was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with an award for Musical Excellence. "It's sort of bittersweet," says Rodgers. "I'm quite flattered that they believed that I was worthy, but my band Chic didn't win. They plucked me out of the band and said, 'You're better than Chic.' That's wacky to me ... I am flattered and I think it's cool, but I feel like somebody put me in the lifeboat and told my family they can't get in."


title: Nile Rodgers

text: On the evening of June 2017 Rodgers and Chic returned to the Glastonbury Festival, as headliners on the Pyramid Stage, for an audience of close to 100,000. In September of the same year, a version of George Michael's song "Fantasy" was released, credited to "George Michael featuring Nile Rodgers." The track, released as a B-side by Michael's label in 1990, was reworked by Rodgers and featured him prominently on guitar. It was Michael's only posthumous release.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In June 2018, "Till the World Falls", the first single from Nile Rodgers & Chic's first album since 1992, "It's About Time", was released. The song featured Mura Masa, Cosha and Vic Mensa. The album was released in September 2018, and hit the Top 10 in the UK. It was the first Chic record to hit the Top 10 in 25 years. Two singles from the album were subsequently released: "Sober" featuring Craig David and Stefflon Don, and "Do You Wanna Party" featuring LunchMoney Lewis. In December 2018, Nile Rodgers & Chic began their first UK arena tour. They were nominated for a Brit Award in the "Best International Group Category", in January 2019.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In November 2018, to mark the 40th anniversary of "Le Freak", Rhino/Atlantic released "The Chic Organisation 1977-79", a 6-CD box set containing Chic's first three albums, Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" and a collection of rarities, including a facsimile of Chic's first single – a 12″ promo for "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yosah, Yosah)" released by Buddah Records in 1977.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In January 2019, Rodgers offered 600 free tickets to furloughed US Federal workers during the US Government Shutdown to the Nile Rodgers & Chic concert at the MGM National Harbor in Washington, DC.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Nile Rodgers played Cardiff Castle Wales on July 12, 2019, and on February 17, 2020, he participated in Eric Clapton's tribute concert for Ginger Baker.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: On November 13, 2020, Rodgers was featured on "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" as part of the BBC Radio 2's Allstars' Children in Need charity single. The single debuted at number 7 on the Official UK Singles Chart and number 1 on both the Official UK Singles Sales Chart and the Official UK Singles Download Chart.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Among other artists, in 2021, Rodgers worked with Jack Savoretti and Keith Urban. "Who's Hurting Who ft. Nile Rodgers", the first single from Savoretti's "Europiana" album was released in May. In April 2021 he teamed with Urban and Breland on the music video for "The Cage", a track from Urban's 2020 album "The Speed of Now Part 1."


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In the summer of 2021, Rodgers, with Constellation Immersive, launched DiscOasis, an ongoing 1970s-themed disco and roller skating pop-up party at the South Coast Botanic Garden in Rancho Palos Verdes. Developed in part to provide an outside experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, DJs select music from crates of records that Rodgers hand picked from his personal collection.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: On 4 June 2022, Rodgers performed with Duran Duran at the Platinum Party at the Palace. He co-wrote the track "Cuff It", which appeared on the Beyoncé album, "Renaissance" released in July 2022. It debuted at #1 on the Apple Music charts.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers performed "Modern Love" and "Let's Dance" with Josh Homme, Omar Hakim and Gaz Coombes at the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium on September 3, 2022.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Since his 1978 debut with Chic on "American Bandstand", Rodgers has performed on more than 150 television programs. He has been the subject of documentaries including the BBC's "Nile Rodgers: The Hitmaker", "Front and Center: Songwriters Hall of Fame: Nile Rodgers" on PBS, Arte France's "Nile Rodgers: Secrets of a Hitmaker", and the short film "Composing America: The Musical Talents of Nile Rodgers". The BBC also broadcast "Nile Rodgers: How To Make It in the Music Business", a three-hour, three part special. In 2018, "Once in a Lifetime Sessions with Nile Rodgers" premiered on Netflix.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers has appeared in documentaries about David Bowie, Diana Ross, Elton John, Michael Jackson, Rick James, George Michael, Duran Duran, Daft Punk, Public Enemy, Madonna, Avicii, Studio 54, the Seventies, the Eighties, the Nineties, recorded music, girl groups, the disco era, disco, house music, funk, and soul music.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers plays a 1960 Fender Stratocaster with a 1959 neck, nicknamed The Hitmaker, which he acquired as a trade-in at a shop in Miami Beach, Florida. Exceptionally light, it has a maple fingerboard and a worn white finish. Rodgers claims it has a unique sound. After Rodgers purchased the guitar, Edwards taught him how to play it in a chop chord style, which he called "chucking". In his autobiography, Rodgers wrote: "He fingered the chords with his left hand, and his right hand would continuously play sixteen notes to the bar while accenting the main parts of the rhythm ... One lesson was all I needed. For the next few nights straight, while my roommate pursued all manner of trysts, I was having a love affair in the bathroom with my new ax. In just a few days, I'd emerge as a chucking funk guitarist who knew more jazz chord inversions than most of my R&B counterparts."


title: Nile Rodgers

text: The Fender Custom Shop introduced a limited edition Nile Rodgers Hitmaker Stratocaster, a recreation of Rodgers' guitar, in January 2014.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In 2018, Rodgers founded the music IP investment and song management company Hipgnosis Songs Fund along with Merck Mercuriadis.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: In the early 1990s, Rodgers woke up in the hospital to learn that his heart had stopped eight times, and he was alive only due to the actions of the doctor who was filling out his death certificate. He stopped using drugs and alcohol in 1994 after a friend showed him a tape of a poor performance. In the mid-1990s, Rodgers was in a relationship with Kenyan singer Lamya.


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer in October 2010. He documented his illness on a blog called "Walking on Planet C". He was given the all-clear in 2013. In 2017, a growth on his right kidney was diagnosed as two different cancers within one mass. The mass was surgically removed in November 2017. He said he expected a 100% recovery. At his performance at the Hollywood Bowl, on July 4, 2019, Rodgers announced that he was "100% cancer-free."


title: Nile Rodgers

text: Rodgers lived in Westport, Connecticut until July 2021 when he moved to Miami, Florida, with his life partner, Nancy Hunt. Rodgers also owns an apartment in New York City.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are "yodh", "he", "waw", and "he". The name may be derived from a verb that means "to be", "to exist", "to cause to become", or "to come to pass". While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form "Yahweh" is now accepted almost universally, though the vocalization "Jehovah" continues to have wide usage.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The books of the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, Ecclesiastes, and (with a possible instance of the short form in verse 8:6) the Song of Songs contain this Hebrew name. Observant Jews and those who follow Talmudic Jewish traditions do not pronounce nor do they read aloud proposed transcription forms such as "Yahweh" or "Yehovah"; instead they replace it with a different term, whether in addressing or referring to the God of Israel. Common substitutions in Hebrew are Adonai ("My Lord") or Elohim (literally "gods" but treated as singular when meaning "God") in prayer, or "HaShem" ("The Name") in everyday speech.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The Tetragrammaton is not attested other than among the Israelites, and seems not to have any plausible etymology. The Hebrew Bible explains it by the formula "Ehye ašer ehye" ("I Am that I Am"), the name of God revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14. This would frame Y-H-W-H as a derivation from the Hebrew triconsonantal root היה ("h-y-h"), "to be, become, come to pass", with a third person masculine "y-" prefix, equivalent to English "he", thereby affording translations as "he who causes to exist", "he who is", etc.; although this would elicit the form Y-H-Y-H (יהיה), "not" Y-H-W-H. To rectify this, some scholars proposed that the Tetragrammaton represents a substitution of the medial "y" for "w", an occasionally attested practice in Biblical Hebrew as both letters represented "matres lectionis"; others proposed that the Tetragrammaton derived instead from the triconsonantal root הוה ("h-w-h"), "to be, constitute", with the final form eliciting similar translations as those derived from "h-y-h".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Modern scholarly consensus, however, considers "Ehye ašer ehye" to be a folk etymology; a later theological gloss invented at a time when the original meaning of the Tetragrammaton had been forgotten.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Like all letters in the Hebrew script, the letters in YHWH originally indicated consonants. In unpointed Biblical Hebrew, most vowels are not written, but some are indicated ambiguously, as certain letters came to have a secondary function indicating vowels (similar to the Latin use of I and V to indicate either the consonants /j, w/ or the vowels /i, u/). Hebrew letters used to indicate vowels are known as "" "(imot kri'a)" or "matres lectionis" ("mothers of reading"). Therefore, it can be difficult to deduce how a word is pronounced from its spelling, and each of the four letters in the Tetragrammaton can individually serve as a "mater lectionis".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Several centuries later, between the 5th through 10th centuries CE, the original consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible was provided with vowel marks by the Masoretes to assist reading. In places where the word to be read (the "qere") differed from that indicated by the consonants of the written text (the "ketiv"), they wrote the "qere" in the margin as a note showing what was to be read. In such a case the vowel marks of the "qere" were written on the "ketiv". For a few frequent words, the marginal note was omitted: these are called qere perpetuum.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: One of the frequent cases was the Tetragrammaton, which according to later Rabbinite Jewish practices should not be pronounced but read as "Adonai" (/"my Lord"), or, if the previous or next word already was Adonai, as "Elohim" (/"God").


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Writing the vowel diacritics of these two words on the consonants YHVH produces and respectively, ghost-words that would spell "Yehovah" and "Yehovih" respectively.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The oldest complete or nearly complete manuscripts of the Masoretic Text with Tiberian vocalisation, such as the "Aleppo Codex" and the "Leningrad Codex", both of the 10th or 11th century, mostly write ("yhwah"), with no pointing on the first "h". It could be because the "o" diacritic point plays no useful role in distinguishing between "Adonai" and "Elohim" and so is redundant, or it could point to the "qere" being ("šmâ"), which is Aramaic for "the Name".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The scholarly consensus is that the original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton was "Yahweh" (): "The strong consensus of biblical scholarship is that the original pronunciation of the name YHWH ... was Yahweh." R. R. Reno agrees that, when in the late first millennium Jewish scholars inserted indications of vowels into the Hebrew Bible, they signalled that what was pronounced was "Adonai" (Lord); non-Jews later combined the vowels of Adonai with the consonants of the Tetragrammaton and invented the name "Jehovah". Paul Joüon and Takamitsu Muraoka state: "The Qre is "the Lord", whilst the Ktiv is probably (according to ancient witnesses)", and they add: "Note 1: In our translations, we have used "Yahweh", a form widely accepted by scholars, instead of the traditional "Jehovah."" Already in 1869, when, as shown by the use of the then traditional form "Jehovah" as title for its article on the question, the present strong consensus that the original pronunciation was "Yahweh" had not yet attained full force, "Smith's Bible Dictionary", a collaborative work of noted scholars of the time, declared: "Whatever, therefore, be the true pronunciation of the word, there can be little doubt that it is not "Jehovah"." Mark P. Arnold remarks that certain conclusions drawn from the pronunciation of as "Yahweh" would be valid even if the scholarly consensus were not correct. Thomas Römer holds that "the original pronunciation of Yhwh was 'Yahô' or 'Yahû.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The adoption at the time of the Protestant Reformation of "Jehovah" in place of the traditional "Lord" in some new translations, vernacular or Latin, of the biblical Tetragrammaton stirred up dispute about its correctness. In 1711, Adriaan Reland published a book containing the text of 17th-century writings, five attacking and five defending it. As critical of the use of "Jehovah" it incorporated writings by Johannes van den Driesche (1550–1616), known as Drusius; Sixtinus Amama (1593–1629); Louis Cappel (1585–1658); Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629); Jacob Alting (1618–1679). Defending "Jehovah" were writings by Nicholas Fuller (1557–1626) and Thomas Gataker (1574–1654) and three essays by Johann Leusden (1624–1699). The opponents of "Jehovah" said that the Tetragrammaton should be pronounced as "Adonai" and in general do not speculate on what may have been the original pronunciation, although mention is made of the fact that some held that "Jahve" was that pronunciation.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Almost two centuries after the 17th-century works reprinted by Reland, 19th-century Wilhelm Gesenius reported in his "Thesaurus Philologicus" on the main reasoning of those who argued either for /"Yah[w]oh" or /"Yahweh" as the original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, as opposed to /"Yehovah", citing explicitly as supporters of the 17th-century writers mentioned by Reland and implicitly Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) and Johann Friedrich von Meyer (1772–1849), the latter of whom Johann Heinrich Kurtz described as the last of those "who have maintained with great pertinacity that was the correct and original pointing". Edward Robinson's translation of a work by Gesenius, gives Gesenius' personal view as: "My own view coincides with that of those who regard this name as anciently pronounced [/Yahweh] like the Samaritans."


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The oldest known inscription of the Tetragrammaton dates to 840 BCE: the Mesha Stele mentions the Israelite god "Yahweh".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Of the same century are two pottery sherds found at Kuntillet Ajrud with inscriptions mentioning "Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah" and "Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah". A tomb inscription at Khirbet el-Qom also mentions Yahweh. Dated slightly later (7th century BCE) there are an ostracon from the collections of Shlomo Moussaieff, and two tiny silver amulet scrolls found at Ketef Hinnom that mention Yahweh. Also a wall inscription, dated to the late 6th century BCE, with mention of Yahweh had been found in a tomb at Khirbet Beit Lei.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Yahweh is mentioned also in the Lachish letters (587 BCE) and the slightly earlier Tel Arad ostraca, and on a stone from Mount Gerizim (3rd or the beginning of the 2nd century BCE).


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The theonyms YHW and YHH are found in the Elephantine papyri of about 500 BCE. One ostracon with YH is thought to have lost the final letter of an original YHW. These texts are in Aramaic, not the language of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (YHWH) and, unlike the Tetragrammaton, are of three letters, not four. However, because they were written by Jews, they are assumed to refer to the same deity and to be either an abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton or the original name from which the name YHWH developed.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Kristin De Troyer says that YHW or YHH, and also YH, are attested in the fifth and fourth-century BCE papyri from Elephantine and Wadi Daliyeh: "In both collections one can read the name of God as Yaho (or Yahu) and Ya". The name YH (Yah/Jah), the first syllable of "Yahweh", appears 50 times in the Old Testament, 26 times alone (Exodus 15:2; 17:16; and 24 times in the Psalms), 24 times in the expression "Hallelujah".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: An Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III (1402–1363 BCE) mentions a group of Shasu whom it calls "the Shasu of Yhw³" (read as: "ja-h-wi" or "ja-h-wa"). James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson tentatively suggest that the Amenhotep III inscription may indicate that worship of Yahweh originated in an area to the southeast of Palestine. A later inscription from the time of Ramesses II (1279–1213 BCE) in West Amara associates the Shasu nomads with "S-rr", interpreted as Mount Seir, spoken of in some texts as where Yahweh comes from. Frank Moore Cross says: "It must be emphasized that the Amorite verbal form is of interest only in attempting to reconstruct the proto-Hebrew or South Canaanite verbal form used in the name Yahweh. We should argue vigorously against attempts to take Amorite yuhwi and yahu as divine epithets." Thomas Schneider argued for the existence of a theophoric name in a Book of the Dead papyrus dating to the late 18th or early 19th dynasty which he translated as "‘adōnī-rō‘ē-yāh", meaning “My lord is the shepherd of Yah”.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: According to De Troyer, the short names, instead of being ineffable like "Yahweh", seem to have been in spoken use not only as elements of personal names but also in reference to God: "The Samaritans thus seem to have pronounced the Name of God as Jaho or Ja." She cites Theodoret (c. 393 – c. 460) as that the shorter names of God were pronounced by the Samaritans as "Iabe" and by the Jews as "Ia". She adds that the Bible also indicates that the short form "Yah" was spoken, as in the phrase "Halleluyah".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The "Patrologia Graeca" texts of Theodoret differ slightly from what De Troyer says. In "Quaestiones in Exodum" 15 he says that Samaritans pronounced the name Ἰαβέ and Jews the name Άϊά. (The Greek term Άϊά is a transcription of the Exodus 3:14 phrase אֶהְיֶה ("ehyeh"), "I am".) In "Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium" 5.3, he uses the spelling Ἰαβαί.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Among the Jews in the Second Temple Period magical amulets became very popular. Representations of the Tetragrammaton name or combinations inspired by it in languages such as Greek and Coptic, giving some indication of its pronunciation, occur as names of powerful agents in Jewish magical papyri found in Egypt. "Iave" and "Yaba" occurs frequently, "apparently the Samaritan enunciation of the tetragrammaton YHWH (Yahweh)".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The most commonly invoked god is Ιαω ("Iaō"), another vocalization of the tetragrammaton YHWH. There is a single instance of the heptagram ("iaōouēe").


title: Tetragrammaton

text: "Yāwē" is found in an Ethiopian Christian list of magical names of Jesus, purporting to have been taught by him to his disciples.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Also relevant is the use of the name in theophoric names; there is a common Hebrew prefix form, Yeho or "Yhō-", and a common suffix form, "Yahū" or "-Yhū". These provide some corroborating evidence of how YHWH was pronounced.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: According to the Jewish Encyclopedia it occurs 5,410 times in the Hebrew scriptures. In the Hebrew Bible, the Tetragrammaton occurs 6828 times, as can be seen in Kittel's "Biblia Hebraica" and the "Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia". In addition, the marginal notes or "masorah" indicate that in another 134 places, where the received text has the word "Adonai", an earlier text had the Tetragrammaton. which would add up to 142 additional occurrences. Even in the Dead Sea Scrolls practice varied with regard to use of the Tetragrammaton. According to "Brown–Driver–Briggs", ("qere" ) occurs 6,518 times, and (qere ) 305 times in the Masoretic Text.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The first appearance of the Tetragrammaton is in the Book of Genesis 2:4. The only books it does not appear in are Ecclesiastes, the Book of Esther, and Song of Songs.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: In the Book of Esther the Tetragrammaton does not appear, but it has been distinguished acrostic-wise in the initial or last letters of four consecutive words, as indicated in Est 7:5 by writing the four letters in red in at least three ancient Hebrew manuscripts.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The short form /Yah (a digrammaton) "occurs 50 times if the phrase hallellu-Yah is included": 43 times in the Psalms, once in Exodus 15:2; 17:16; Isaiah 12:2; 26:4, and twice in Isaiah 38:11. It also appears in the Greek phrase (Alleluia, Hallelujah) in .


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Other short forms are found as a component of theophoric Hebrew names in the Bible: jô- or jehô- (29 names) and -jāhû or -jāh (127 jnames). A form of jāhû/jehô appears in the name Elioenai (Elj(eh)oenai) in 1Ch 3:23–24; 4:36; 7:8; Ezr 22:22, 27; Neh 12:41.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The following graph shows the absolute number of occurrences of the Tetragrammaton (6828 in all) in the books in the Masoretic Text, without relation to the length of the books.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Six presentations of the Tetragrammaton with some or all of the vowel points of (Adonai) or (Elohim) are found in the Leningrad Codex of 1008–1010, as shown below. The close transcriptions do not indicate that the Masoretes intended the name to be pronounced in that way (see "qere perpetuum").


title: Tetragrammaton

text: In the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Hebrew and Aramaic texts the Tetragrammaton and some other names of God in Judaism (such as El or Elohim) were sometimes written in paleo-Hebrew script, showing that they were treated specially. Most of God's names were pronounced until about the 2nd century BCE. Then, as a tradition of non-pronunciation of the names developed, alternatives for the Tetragrammaton appeared, such as Adonai, Kurios and Theos. The 4Q120, a Greek fragment of Leviticus (26:2–16) discovered in the Dead Sea scrolls (Qumran) has ιαω ("Iao"), the Greek form of the Hebrew trigrammaton YHW. The historian John the Lydian (6th century) wrote: "The Roman Varo [116–27 BCE] defining him [that is the Jewish God] says that he is called Iao in the Chaldean mysteries" (De Mensibus IV 53). Van Cooten mentions that Iao is one of the "specifically Jewish designations for God" and "the Aramaic papyri from the Jews at Elephantine show that 'Iao' is an original Jewish term".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The preserved manuscripts from Qumran show the inconsistent practice of writing the Tetragrammaton, mainly in biblical quotations: in some manuscripts is written in paleo-Hebrew script, square scripts or replaced with four dots or dashes ("tetrapuncta").


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The members of the Qumran community were aware of the existence of the Tetragrammaton, but this was not tantamount to granting consent for its existing use and speaking. This is evidenced not only by special treatment of the Tetragrammaton in the text, but by the recommendation recorded in the 'Rule of Association' (VI, 27): "Who will remember the most glorious name, which is above all [...]".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The table below presents all the manuscripts in which the Tetragrammaton is written in paleo-Hebrew script, in square scripts, and all the manuscripts in which the copyists have used tetrapuncta.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Copyists used the 'tetrapuncta' apparently to warn against pronouncing the name of God. In the manuscript number 4Q248 is in the form of bars.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Editions of the Septuagint Old Testament are based on the complete or almost complete fourth-century manuscripts Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus and consistently use Κύριος, "Lord", where the Masoretic Text has the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew. This corresponds with the Jewish practice of replacing the Tetragrammaton with "Adonai" when reading the Hebrew word.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: However, five of the oldest manuscripts now extant (in fragmentary form) render the Tetragrammaton into Greek in a different way.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Two of these are of the first century BCE: Papyrus Fouad 266 uses in the normal Hebrew alphabet in the midst of its Greek text, and 4Q120 uses the Greek transcription of the name, ΙΑΩ. Three later manuscripts use , the name in Paleo-Hebrew script: the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3522 and Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5101.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Other extant ancient fragments of Septuagint or Old Greek manuscripts provide no evidence on the use of the Tetragrammaton, Κύριος, or ΙΑΩ in correspondence with the Hebrew-text Tetragrammaton. They include the oldest known example, Papyrus Rylands 458.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Scholars differ on whether in the original Septuagint translations the Tetragrammaton was represented by Κύριος, by ΙΑΩ, by the Tetragrammaton in either normal or Paleo-Hebrew form, or whether different translators used different forms in different books.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Frank Shaw argues that the Tetragrammaton continued to be articulated until the second or third century CE and that the use of Ιαω was by no means limited to magical or mystical formulas, but was still normal in more elevated contexts such as that exemplified by Papyrus 4Q120. Shaw considers all theories that posit in the Septuagint a single original form of the divine name as merely based on "a priori" assumptions. Accordingly, he declares: "The matter of any (especially single) 'original' form of the divine name in the LXX is too complex, the evidence is too scattered and indefinite, and the various approaches offered for the issue are too simplistic" to account for the actual scribal practices (p. 158). He holds that the earliest stages of the LXX's translation were marked by diversity (p. 262), with the choice of certain divine names depending on the context in which they appear (cf. Gen 4:26; Exod 3:15; 8:22; 28:32; 32:5; and 33:19). He treats of the related blank spaces in some Septuagint manuscripts and the setting of spaces around the divine name in 4Q120 and Papyrus Fouad 266b (p. 265), and repeats that "there was no one 'original' form but different translators had different feelings, theological beliefs, motivations, and practices when it came to their handling of the name" (p. 271). His view has won the support of Anthony R. Meyer, Bob Becking, and (commenting on Shaw's 2011 dissertation on the subject) D.T. Runia.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Mogens Müller says that, while no clearly Jewish manuscript of the Septuagint has been found with Κύριος representing the Tetragrammaton, other Jewish writings of the time show that Jews did use the term Κύριος for God, and it was because Christians found it in the Septuagint that they were able to apply it to Christ. In fact, the deuterocanonical books of the Septuagint, written originally in Greek (e.g., Wisdom, 2 and 3 Maccabees), do speak of God as Κύριος and thus show that "the use of κύριος as a representation of must be pre-Christian in origin".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Similarly, while consistent use of "Κύριος" to represent the Tetragrammaton has been called "a distinguishing mark for any Christian LXX manuscript", Eugen J. Pentiuc says: "No definitive conclusion has been reached thus far." And Sean McDonough denounces as implausible the idea that Κύριος did not appear in the Septuagint before the Christian era.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Speaking of the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever, which is a kaige recension of the Septuagint, "a revision of the Old Greek text to bring it closer to the Hebrew text of the Bible as it existed in ca. 2nd-1st century BCE" (and thus not necessarily the original text), Kristin De Troyer remarks: "The problem with a recension is that one does not know what is the original form and what the recension. Hence, is the paleo-Hebrew Tetragrammaton secondary – a part of the recension – or proof of the Old Greek text? This debate has not yet been solved."


title: Tetragrammaton

text: While some interpret the presence of the Tetragrammaton in Papyrus Fouad 266, the oldest Septuagint manuscript in which it appears, as an indication of what was in the original text, others see this manuscript as "an archaizing and hebraizing revision of the earlier translation κύριος". Of this papyrus, De Troyer asks: "Is it a recension or not?" In this regard she says that Emanuel Tov notes that in this manuscript a second scribe inserted the four-letter Tetragrammaton where the first scribe left spaces large enough for the six-letter word Κύριος, and that Pietersma and Hanhart say the papyrus "already contains some pre-hexaplaric corrections towards a Hebrew text (which would have had the Tetragrammaton). She also mentions Septuagint manuscripts that have Θεός and one that has παντοκράτωρ where the Hebrew text has the Tetragrammaton. She concludes: "It suffices to say that in old Hebrew and Greek witnesses, God has many names. Most if not all were pronounced till about the second century BCE. As slowly onwards there developed a tradition of non-pronunciation, alternatives for the Tetragrammaton appeared. The reading "Adonai" was one of them. Finally, before "Kurios" became a standard rendering "Adonai", the Name of God was rendered with "Theos"." In the Book of Exodus alone, Θεός represents the Tetragrammaton 41 times.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Robert J. Wilkinson says that the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever is also a kaige recension and thus not strictly a Septuagint text.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Origen ("Commentary on Psalms" 2.2) said that in the most accurate manuscripts the name was written in an older form of the Hebrew characters, the paleo-Hebrew letters, not the square: "In the more accurate exemplars the (divine) name is written in Hebrew characters; not, however, in the current script, but in the most ancient." While Pietersma interprets this statement as referring to the Septuagint, Wilkinson says one might assume that Origen refers specifically to the version of Aquila of Sinope, which follows the Hebrew text very closely, but he may perhaps refer to Greek versions in general.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The great majority of extant manuscripts of the Old Testament in Greek, complete or fragmentary, dated to the ninth century CE or earlier, employ Κύριος to represent the Tetragrammaton of the Hebrew text. The following do not. They include the oldest now extant.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The Peshitta (Syriac translation), probably in the second century, uses the word "Lord" (, pronounced "māryā" or "moryo" (Western pronunciation) for the Tetragrammaton.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The Vulgate (Latin translation) made from the Hebrew in the 4th century CE, uses the word ("Lord"), a translation of the Hebrew word "Adonai", for the Tetragrammaton.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The Vulgate translation, though made not from the Septuagint but from the Hebrew text, did not depart from the practice used in the Septuagint. Thus, for most of its history, Christianity's translations of the Scriptures have used equivalents of "Adonai" to represent the Tetragrammaton. Only at about the beginning of the 16th century did Christian translations of the Bible appear combining the vowels of "Adonai" with the four (consonantal) letters of the Tetragrammaton.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Especially due to the existence of the Mesha Stele, the Jahwist tradition found in , and ancient Hebrew and Greek texts, biblical scholars widely hold that the Tetragrammaton and other names of God were spoken by the ancient Israelites and their neighbours.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: By at least the 3rd century BCE, the name was not pronounced in normal speech, but only in certain ritual contexts. The Talmud relays this change occurred after the death of Simeon the Just (either Simon I or his great-great-grandson Simon II). Philo calls the name ineffable, and says that it is lawful for those only whose ears and tongues are purified by wisdom to hear and utter it in a holy place (that is, for priests in the Temple). In another passage, commenting on : "If any one, I do not say should blaspheme against the Lord of men and gods, but should even dare to utter his name unseasonably, let him expect the penalty of death." Some time after the destruction of the Second Temple, the spoken use of God's name as it was written ceased altogether, though knowledge of the pronunciation was perpetuated in rabbinic schools.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Rabbinic sources suggest that the name of God was pronounced only once a year, by the high priest, on the Day of Atonement. Others, including Maimonides, claim that the name was pronounced daily in the liturgy of the Temple in the priestly blessing of worshippers, after the daily sacrifice; in synagogues, though, a substitute (probably "Adonai") was used. According to the Talmud, in the last generations before the fall of Jerusalem, the name was pronounced in a low tone so that the sounds were lost in the chant of the priests. Since the destruction of Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Tetragrammaton has no longer been pronounced in the liturgy. However the pronunciation was still known in Babylonia in the latter part of the 4th century.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The vehemence with which the utterance of the name is denounced in the Mishnah suggests that use of the name Yahweh was unacceptable in rabbinical Judaism. "He who pronounces the Name with its own letters has no part in the world to come!" Such is the prohibition of pronouncing the Name as written that it is sometimes called the "Ineffable", "Unutterable", or "Distinctive Name", or "Explicit Name" ("Shem HaMephorash" in Hebrew).


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Halakha prescribes that although the Name is written "yodh he waw he", if not preceded by "my Lord" (, ) then it is only to be pronounced "Adonai" and if preceded by "Adonai" then it is only to be pronounced as "Our God" (, ), or, in rare cases, as a repetition of Adonai, e.g., the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy (, ) in Exodus 34:6–7; the latter names too are regarded as holy names, and are only to be pronounced in prayer. Thus when someone wants to refer in third person to either the written or spoken Name, the term "HaShem" "the Name" is used; and this handle itself can also be used in prayer. The Masoretes added vowel points (niqqud) and cantillation marks to the manuscripts to indicate vowel usage and for use in ritual chanting of readings from the Bible in Jewish prayer in synagogues. To they added the vowels for "" ("My Lord"), the word to use when the text was read. While "HaShem" is the most common way to reference "the Name", the terms "HaMaqom" (lit. "The Place", i.e. "The Omnipresent") and "Raḥmana" (Aramaic, "Merciful") are used in the mishna and gemara, still used in the phrases "HaMaqom y'naḥem ethḥem" ("may The Omnipresent console you"), the traditional phrase used in sitting Shiva and "Raḥmana l'tzlan" ("may the Merciful save us" i.e. "God forbid").


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The written Tetragrammaton, as well as six other names of God, must be treated with special sanctity. They cannot be disposed of regularly, lest they be desecrated, but are usually put in long-term storage or buried in Jewish cemeteries in order to retire them from use. Similarly, writing the Tetragrammaton (or these other names) unnecessarily is prohibited, so as to avoid having them treated disrespectfully, an action that is forbidden. To guard the sanctity of the Name, sometimes a letter is substituted by a different letter in writing (e.g. יקוק), or the letters are separated by one or more hyphens, a practice applied also to the English name "God", which some Jews write as "G-d". Most Jewish authorities say that this practice is not obligatory for the English name.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Kabbalistic tradition holds that the correct pronunciation is known to a select few people in each generation, it is not generally known what this pronunciation is.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: There are two main schools of Kabbalah arising in 13th century Spain. These are called Theosophic Kabbalah represented by Rabbi Moshe De Leon and the Zohar, and the Kabbalah of Names or Prophetic Kabbalah whose main representative is Rabbi Abraham Abulafia of Saragossa. Rabbi Abulafia wrote many wisdom books and prophetic books where the name is used for meditation purposes from 1271 onwards. Abulafia put a lot of attention on Exodus 15 and the Songs of Moses. In this song it says "Yehovah is a Man of War, Yehovah is his name". For Abulafia the goal of prophecy was for a man to come to the level of prophecy and be called "Yehovah a man of war". Abulafia also used the tetragrammaton in a spiritual war against his spiritual enemies. For example, he prophesied in his book "The Sign", "Therefore, thus said YHWH, the God of Israel: Have no fear of the enemy" (See Hylton, A The Prophetic Jew Abraham Abulafia, 2015).


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, says that the tree of the Tetragrammaton "unfolds" in accordance with the intrinsic nature of its letters, "in the same order in which they appear in the Name, in the mystery of ten and the mystery of four." Namely, the upper cusp of the "Yod" is Arich Anpin and the main body of "Yod" is and Abba; the first "Hei" is Imma; the "Vav" is Ze`ir Anpin and the second "Hei" is Nukvah. It unfolds in this aforementioned order and "in the mystery of the four expansions" that are constituted by the following various spellings of the letters:


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Luzzatto summarises, "In sum, all that exists is founded on the mystery of this Name and upon the mystery of these letters of which it consists. This means that all the different orders and laws are all drawn after and come under the order of these four letters. This is not one particular pathway but rather the general path, which includes everything that exists in the Sefirot in all their details and which brings everything under its order."


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Another parallel is drawn between the four letters of the Tetragrammaton and the Four Worlds: the י is associated with Atziluth, the first ה with Beri'ah, the ו with Yetzirah, and final ה with Assiah.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: There are some who believe that the tetractys and its mysteries influenced the early kabbalists. A Hebrew tetractys in a similar way has the letters of the Tetragrammaton (the four lettered name of God in Hebrew scripture) inscribed on the ten positions of the tetractys, from right to left. It has been argued that the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with its ten spheres of emanation, is in some way connected to the tetractys, but its form is not that of a triangle. The occult writer Dion Fortune says:


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The relationship between geometrical shapes and the first four Sephirot is analogous to the geometrical correlations in tetractys, shown above under Pythagorean Symbol, and unveils the relevance of the Tree of Life with the tetractys.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The Samaritans shared the taboo of the Jews about the utterance of the name, and there is no evidence that its pronunciation was common Samaritan practice. However Sanhedrin 10:1 includes the comment of Rabbi Mana II, "for example those Kutim who take an oath" would also have no share in the world to come, which suggests that Mana thought some Samaritans used the name in making oaths. (Their priests have preserved a liturgical pronunciation "Yahwe" or "Yahwa" to the present day.) As with Jews, the use of "Shema" (שמא "the Name") remains the everyday usage of the name among Samaritans, akin to Hebrew "the Name" (Hebrew השם "HaShem").


title: Tetragrammaton

text: It is assumed that early Jewish Christians inherited from Jews the practice of reading "Lord" where the Tetragrammaton appears in the Hebrew text (and where a few Greek manuscripts use it in the midst of their Greek translation). Gentile Christians, primarily non-Hebrew speaking and using Greek Scripture texts, may have read Κύριος ("Lord"), as in the Greek text of the New Testament and in their copies of the Greek Old Testament. This practice continued into the Latin Vulgate where "Dominus" ("Lord") represented the Tetragrammaton in the Latin text. At the Reformation, the Luther Bible used capitalized "Herr" ("Lord") in the German text of the Old Testament to represent the Tetragrammaton.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: In Christianity, when the Tetragrammaton is vocalized, the forms "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" are used. Jah or Yah is an abbreviation of Jahweh/Yahweh, and often sees usage by Christians in the interjection "Hallelujah", meaning "Praise Jah", which is used to give God glory.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The Septuagint (Greek translation), the Vulgate (Latin translation), and the Peshitta (Syriac translation) use the word "Lord" (, "kyrios", , and , "moryo" respectively).


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Use of the Septuagint by Christians in polemics with Jews led to its abandonment by the latter, making it a specifically Christian text. From it Christians made translations into Coptic, Arabic, Slavonic and other languages used in Oriental Orthodoxy and the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose liturgies and doctrinal declarations are largely a cento of texts from the Septuagint, which they consider to be inspired at least as much as the Masoretic Text. Within the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Greek text remains the norm for texts in all languages, with particular reference to the wording used in prayers.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The Septuagint, with its use of Κύριος to represent the Tetragrammaton, was the basis also for Christian translations associated with the West, in particular the Vetus Itala, which survives in some parts of the liturgy of the Latin Church, and the Gothic Bible.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Christian translations of the Bible into English commonly use "" in place of the Tetragrammaton in most passages, often in small capitals (or in all caps), so as to distinguish it from other words translated as "Lord".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: The Eastern Orthodox Church considers the Septuagint text, which uses Κύριος (Lord), to be the authoritative text of the Old Testament, and in its liturgical books and prayers it uses Κύριος in place of the Tetragrammaton in texts derived from the Bible.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: In the Catholic Church, the first edition of the official Vatican "Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio, editio typica", published in 1979, used the traditional "Dominus" when rendering the Tetragrammaton in the overwhelming majority of places where it appears; however, it also used the form "Iahveh" for rendering the Tetragrammaton in three known places:


title: Tetragrammaton

text: In the second edition of the "Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio, editio typica altera", published in 1986, these few occurrences of the form "Iahveh" were replaced with "Dominus", in keeping with the long-standing Catholic tradition of avoiding direct usage of the Ineffable Name.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: On 29 June 2008, the Holy See reacted to the then still recent practice of pronouncing, within Catholic liturgy, the name of God represented by the Tetragrammaton. As examples of such vocalisation it mentioned "Yahweh" and "Yehovah". The early Christians, it said, followed the example of the Septuagint in replacing the name of God with "the Lord", a practice with important theological implications for their use of "the Lord" in reference to Jesus, as in and other New Testament texts. It therefore directed that, "in liturgical celebrations, in songs and prayers the name of God in the form of the "Tetragrammaton" YHWH is neither to be used or pronounced"; and that translations of Biblical texts for liturgical use are to follow the practice of the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, replacing the divine name with "the Lord" or, in some contexts, "God". The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops welcomed this instruction, adding that it "provides also an opportunity to offer catechesis for the faithful as an encouragement to show reverence for the Name of God in daily life, emphasizing the power of language as an act of devotion and worship".


title: Tetragrammaton

text: In the Lutheran and Anglican psalters, the word in "small capital letters [is used] to represent the tetragrammaton YHWH, the personal name of the deity". However, the Psalter of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer used by the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America uses "Yahweh" in two places, Psalms 68:4 and Psalms 83:18. Also the Hymnal 1982 as used by the Episcopal Church utilizes the hymn, "Guide me, O thou great "Jehovah"", Hymn 690 The Christian Life. Aside from those instances, is typically used in the Liturgy of the Episcopal Church.


title: Tetragrammaton

text: Since the 16th century, artists have been using the tetragrammaton as a symbol for God, or for divine illumination. Protestant artists avoided to allegorize God in human form, but rather wrote the Hebrew name of God. This was done in book illustrations since 1530, then on coins and medals as well. Since the 17th century, both Protestant and Catholic artists have used the tetragrammaton in church decoration, on top of altars, or in center of frescos, often in rays of light or in a triangle.


title: Doge (meme)

text: Doge ( , or ) is an Internet meme that became popular in 2013. The meme typically consists of a picture of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu dog accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English.


title: Doge (meme)

text: The meme is based on a 2010 photograph and became popular in late 2013, being named as "Know Your Meme"s "top meme" of that year. The Shiba Inu had a notable presence in popular culture in late 2013, including a cryptocurrency based on Doge, the Dogecoin, launching in December of that year. Several online polls and media outlets recognized Doge as one of the best Internet memes of the 2010s.


title: Doge (meme)

text: Doge uses two-word phrases in which the first word is almost always one of five modifiers ("so", "such", "many", "much", and "very"), and the departure from correct English is to use the modifier with a word that it cannot properly modify. For example, "Much respect. So noble." uses the Doge modifiers but is not "proper" Doge because the modifiers are used in a formally correct fashion; the Doge version would be "Much noble, so respect." In addition to these phrases, a Doge utterance often ends with a single word, most often "wow" but with "amaze" and "excite" also being used.


title: Doge (meme)

text: Since the inception of the meme, several variations and spin-offs have been created, including "liquified Doge", a variation wherein the dog's shape is morphed into other animals, and "ironic Doge", a version where the Doge character is put into ironic and uncharacteristic situations. The ironic Doge memes have spawned several other related characters, often dogs themselves, one of which is Cheems, another Shiba Inu who is typically characterized by a speech impediment that adds the letter "M" throughout its speech.


title: Doge (meme)

text: Walter, a bull terrier character who is typically portrayed as liking "moster trucks" and firetrucks, is another commonly recurring ironic Doge character. These memes are mostly present on subreddits like r/dogelore. One meme which became popular in 2020 was "Swole Doge vs. Cheems", in which a muscular Doge and a baby Cheems are depicted as something considered better in the past, and its modern version, respectively.


title: Doge (meme)

text: , the female Shiba Inu featured in the original meme, is a pedigree dog who was sent to an animal shelter when her puppy mill shut down. She was adopted in 2008 by Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Satō, and named after the citrus fruit kabosu because Sato thought she had a round face like the fruit. Another Shiba Inu featured in the meme is Suki, a female belonging to photographer Jonathan Fleming from San Francisco. His wife had accidentally put a scarf in the wash, making it shrink. He took a photograph of Suki wearing the scarf outside on a cold night in February 2010.


title: Doge (meme)

text: Kabosu was first pictured in a 2010 blog post by Sato; afterward, variations of the pictures using overlaid Comic Sans text were posted from a Tumblr blog, "Shiba Confessions". However, the use of the intentionally misspelled "Doge" dates back to June 2005, when it was mentioned in an episode of "Homestar Runner"s puppet series. The meme began to grow in popularity after it was used on Reddit in October 2010 in a post titled "LMBO LOOK @ THIS FUKKEN DOGE."


title: Doge (meme)

text: Some of the other characters used in the meme are based on photographs of real dogs. Cheems is based on an image of a dog named Balltze, from Hong Kong; he was adopted at the age of one and was nine years old in 2020. Walter is based on the bull terrier Nelson, who originally became popular in 2018 after his owner, Victoria Leigh, posted a picture of Nelson to Twitter, with the caption "When u open the front-facing camera on accident." In 2020, rumors of Nelson's death began to circulate the internet, although they turned out to be false.


title: Doge (meme)

text: The most common pronunciations of "Doge" are and . In non-English speaking countries, "Doge" is occasionally pronounced "dodge". Those unfamiliar or unacquainted with the meme also use the pronunciations "doggie", , , or simply like the word "dog" itself, i.e. or .


title: Doge (meme)

text: Online searches for the meme began to increase in July 2013. In August 2013, images of the meme were spammed on Reddit's r/MURICA subreddit by 4chan's random imageboard, /b/. The meme was ranked at No. 12 on MTV's list of "50 Things Pop Culture Had Us Giving Thanks For" in 2013. "io9" compared the internal dialog of the Shiba Inu dogs to lolspeak. On December 13, Doge was named the "top meme" of 2013 by Know Your Meme.


title: Doge (meme)

text: In late December 2013, members of the U.S. Congress produced material in the meme's style. "The Huffington Post" commented that Doge was "killed" because of the Congress members' usage of the meme.


title: Doge (meme)

text: In December 2013, the Dogecoin was introduced as a new cryptocurrency, making it the first cryptocurrency to be based on an Internet meme; the viral phenomenon, along with usage of the Comic Sans MS typeface, gave it "the Internet density of a large star" according to Medium writer Quinn Norton.


title: Doge (meme)

text: By early 2014, Doge's popularity was sustained by Internet communities on social media, accompanied by the rapid growth and acceptance of Dogecoin. In April 2014, Doge experienced a second major media resurgence due to revelations of the Dogecoin community's intent to sponsor Josh Wise in NASCAR and place a picture of the Shiba Inu on his vehicle. The car features in downloadable content for the video game "NASCAR '14". Media outlets have embraced the meme while reporting on the cryptocurrency and the car, with titles featuring phrases such as "so wow" and "very vroom".


title: Doge (meme)

text: A report on "The Daily Dot" in December 2016 found that Doge's popularity peaked in 2014 and then fell due to "overexposure and co-option by advertisers and mainstream 'normies'", but remained stable since then and returned to Tumblr's top 10 shared memes of the year in 2016.


title: Doge (meme)

text: For April Fools' Day in 2017, China Central Television published a hoax story of the death of Kabosu.


title: Doge (meme)

text: In 2021, the NFT of the original Doge meme was acquired by PleasrDAO and Doge NFT was fractionalized into $DOG token.


title: Doge (meme)

text: In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an online phenomenon and group dedicated to countering Russian propaganda and Russian disinformation called NAFO (or the North Atlantic Fella Organization), where participants, who refer themselves as "Fellas", use Doge as their avatar. In addition to posting pro-Ukraine memes, or ones mocking Russian war effort and strategy and "shitposting", the group also raises funds for the Ukrainian military and other pro-Ukrainian causes.


title: Doge (meme)

text: In mid-2014, the advertisement agency DDB Stockholm had Doge featured prominently in an advertising campaign for the public transport company SL in Stockholm, Sweden. The advertisement concerned the company's special summer tickets, and featured Doge holding a public transport ticket in his mouth, with phrases such as "many summer", "such cheap" and "very buy".


title: Doge (meme)

text: Google created a Doge Easter egg: when "doge meme" was entered into the YouTube search bar, all the site's text would be displayed in colorful Comic Sans, similar to the kind used by the meme. In January 2014, Sydney-based web developers Katia Eirin and Bennett Wong created "Doge Weather", a weather website and mobile app incorporating the meme. "Doge Weather" reports the temperature and weather conditions based on the user's geographic location. In April 2014, "Doge Weather" became available as a mobile app for iOS 7. Mozilla's Servo project incorporated the meme into the project logo from May 2016 to February 2020.


title: Doge (meme)

text: In the video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's 2014 song "Word Crimes", a song about bad grammar, a Doge tweet is used to illustrate the types of bad grammar referenced in that part of the song.


title: Doge (meme)

text: In the 2015 video game "", a reference to the meme can be found in the North American version only. When examining one of the ancient bookshelves, the text reads "Still, coming here has at least afforded me the rare chance to explore these ancient ruins. So ancient. Such ruin." The reference was met with mixed views from fans of the series.


title: Doge (meme)

text: In 2015, the video game "Just Cause 3" included a special mode that popped up text in the style of the meme in response to certain player actions.


title: Doge (meme)

text: "Doge" was one of several additions to Dictionary.com in November 2015. The website defines it as not just the image macro and its variants, but also the form of "language" that it utilizes.


title: Doge (meme)

text: Several media publications included Doge on a list of memes that helped define Internet culture in the 2010s, and wrote on the meme's influence of further online developments, such as DoggoLingo and WeRateDogs. Evan McMurry of ABC News and Stacey Ritzen of "The Daily Dot" both ranked Doge as the number-one meme of the 2010s. In December 2019, Doge was voted as the best Internet meme of the 2010s on a poll held by "The Tab", gaining 737 votes, or 22 percent of total votes cast. "Vox"s Aja Romano included Doge on a list of 11 memes "that captured the decade," writing that it took "cat memes to new, absurdist heights, an early hallmark of neo-Dadaist millennial humor."


title: Doge (meme)

text: The Japanese perception is remarkably different; Kabosu and Satō are known as pet and owner rather than a meme, and her blog was the fourth-most popular pet-related blog in the country as of December 2013. Reacting to the meme, she explained, "To be honest, some pictures are strange for me, but it's still funny! I'm very impressed with their skills and taste. Around me, nobody knows about the Doge meme. Maybe I don't understand memes very well, because I'm living such an analog life." Satō has also expressed that she had learned that "the risk of the internet is that anyone in the world can see my life on my blog". Fleming stated that in his experience, the Shiba Inu breed has become more recognized due to the meme.


title: Colonialism

text: Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their religion, language, economics, and other cultural practices. The foreign administrators rule the territory in pursuit of their interests, seeking to benefit from the colonised region's people and resources. It is associated with but distinct from imperialism.


title: Colonialism

text: Though colonialism has existed since ancient times, the concept is most strongly associated with the European colonial period starting with the 15th century when some European states established colonising empires.


title: Colonialism

text: At first, European colonising countries followed policies of mercantilism, aiming to strengthen the home-country economy, so agreements usually restricted the colony to trading only with the metropole (mother country). By the mid-19th century, the British Empire gave up mercantilism and trade restrictions and adopted the principle of free trade, with few restrictions or tariffs.


title: Colonialism

text: Christian missionaries were active in practically all of the European-controlled colonies because the metropoles were Christian.


title: Colonialism

text: Historian Philip Hoffman calculated that by 1800, before the Industrial Revolution, Europeans already controlled at least 35% of the globe, and by 1914, they had gained control of 84% of the globe. In the aftermath of World War II colonial powers retreated between 1945 and 1975; over which time nearly all colonies gained independence, entering into changed colonial, so-called postcolonial and neocolonialist relations.


title: Colonialism

text: Postcolonialism and neocolonialism have continued or shifted relations and ideologies of colonialism, justifying its continuation with concepts such as development and new frontiers, as in exploring outer space for colonization.


title: Colonialism

text: "Collins English Dictionary" defines colonialism as "the practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful countries and uses their resources to increase its own power and wealth". "Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary" defines colonialism as "the system or policy of a nation seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories". The "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" offers four definitions, including "something characteristic of a colony" and "control by one power over a dependent area or people". Etymologically, the word "colony" comes from the Latin "colōnia"—"a place for agriculture".


title: Colonialism

text: The "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" uses the term "to describe the process of European settlement and political control over the rest of the world, including the Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia". It discusses the distinction between colonialism, imperialism and conquest and states that "[t]he difficulty of defining colonialism stems from the fact that the term is often used as a synonym for imperialism. Both colonialism and imperialism were forms of conquest that were expected to benefit Europe economically and strategically," and continues "given the difficulty of consistently distinguishing between the two terms, this entry will use "colonialism" broadly to refer to the project of European political domination from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries that ended with the national liberation movements of the 1960s".


title: Colonialism

text: In his preface to Jürgen Osterhammel's "Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview", Roger Tignor says "For Osterhammel, the essence of colonialism is the existence of colonies, which are by definition governed differently from other territories such as protectorates or informal spheres of influence." In the book, Osterhammel asks, "How can 'colonialism' be defined independently from 'colony?'" He settles on a three-sentence definition:


title: Colonialism

text: "The Times" once quipped that there were three types of colonial empire: "The English, which consists in making colonies with colonists; the German, which collects colonists without colonies; the French, which sets up colonies without colonists." Modern studies of colonialism have often distinguished between various overlapping categories of colonialism, broadly classified into four types: settler colonialism, exploitation colonialism, surrogate colonialism, and internal colonialism. Some historians have identified other forms of colonialism, including national and trade forms.


title: Colonialism

text: As colonialism often played out in pre-populated areas, sociocultural evolution included the formation of various ethnically hybrid populations. Colonialism gave rise to culturally and ethnically mixed populations such as the mestizos of the Americas, as well as racially divided populations such as those found in French Algeria or in Southern Rhodesia. In fact, everywhere where colonial powers established a consistent and continued presence, hybrid communities existed.


title: Colonialism

text: Notable examples in Asia include the Anglo-Burmese, Anglo-Indian, Burgher, Eurasian Singaporean, Filipino mestizo, Kristang and Macanese peoples. In the Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia) the vast majority of "Dutch" settlers were in fact Eurasians known as Indo-Europeans, formally belonging to the European legal class in the colony (see also Indos in pre-colonial history and Indos in colonial history).


title: Colonialism

text: Activity that could be called colonialism has a long history, starting at least as early as the Ancient Egyptians. Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans founded colonies in antiquity. Phoenicia had an enterprising maritime trading-culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550 BC to 300 BC; later the Persian empire and various Greek city-states continued on this line of setting up colonies. The Romans would soon follow, setting up "coloniae" throughout the Mediterranean, in Northern Africa, and in Western Asia. Beginning in the 7th century, Arabs colonized a substantial portion of the Middle East, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia and Europe. From the 9th century Vikings (Norsemen) established colonies in Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, North America, present-day Russia and Ukraine, France (Normandy) and Sicily. In the 9th century a new wave of Mediterranean colonisation began, with competitors such as the Venetians, Genovese and Amalfians infiltrating the wealthy previously Byzantine or Eastern Roman islands and lands. European Crusaders set up colonial regimes in Outremer (in the Levant, 1097–1291) and in the Baltic littoral (12th century onwards). Venice began to dominate Dalmatia and reached its greatest nominal colonial extent at the conclusion of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, with the declaration of the acquisition of three octaves of the Byzantine Empire.


title: Colonialism

text: More than a century before the Jamestown, Virginia settlement led by captain Christopher Newport, modern colonialism started with the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), initiating the Age of Exploration and establishing African trading posts (1445 onwards). Spain (initially the Crown of Castile) and soon after Portugal encountered the Americas (1492 onwards) through sea travel and built trading posts or conquered large extents of land. For some people, it is this building of colonies across oceans that differentiates colonialism from other types of expansionism. Madrid and Lisbon divided the areas of these "new" lands between the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire in 1494; other would-be colonial powers paid little heed to the theoretical demarcation.


title: Colonialism

text: The 17th century saw the birth of the French colonial empire and the Dutch Empire, as well as the English overseas possessions, which later became the British Empire. It also saw the establishment of a Danish colonial empire and some Swedish overseas colonies.


title: Colonialism

text: A first wave of independence movements started with the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), initiating a new phase for the British Empire. The Spanish Empire largely collapsed in the Americas with the Latin American wars of independence ( onwards). Empire-builders established several new colonies after this time, including in the German colonial empire and the Belgian colonial empire. In the late-19th century, many European powers became involved in the Scramble for Africa.


title: Colonialism

text: The Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire and Austrian Empire existed at the same time as the above empires but did not expand over oceans. Rather, these empires expanded through the more traditional route of the conquest of neighbouring territories. There was, though, some Russian colonisation of the Americas across the Bering Strait. From the 1860s, the Empire of Japan modelled itself on European colonial empires and expanded its territories in the Pacific and on the Asian mainland. Argentina and the Empire of Brazil fought for hegemony in South America. The United States of America gained overseas territories after the 1898 Spanish–American War – hence the coining of the term "American Empire".


title: Colonialism

text: The world's colonial population at the outbreak of the First World War (1914) – a high point for colonialism – totalled about 560 million people, of whom 70% lived in British possessions, 10% in French possessions, 9% in Dutch possessions, 4% in Japanese possessions, 2% in German possessions, 2% in American possessions, 3% in Portuguese possessions, 1% in Belgian possessions and 0.5% in Italian possessions. The domestic domains of the colonial powers had a total population of about 370 million people. Outside Europe, few areas had remained without coming under formal colonial tutorship – and even Siam, China, Nepal, Japan, Afghanistan, Persia and Abyssinia had felt varying degrees of Western colonial-style influence – concessions, unequal treaties, extraterritoriality and the like.


title: Colonialism

text: Asking whether colonies paid, economic historian Grover Clark (1891–1938) argues an emphatic "No!" He reports that in every case the support cost, especially the military system necessary to support and defend colonies, outran the total trade they produced. Apart from the British Empire, they did not provide favoured destinations for the immigration of surplus metropole populations. The question of whether colonies paid is a complicated one when recognizing the multiplicity of interests involved. In some cases colonial powers paid a lot in military costs while private investors pocketed the benefits. In other cases the colonial powers managed to move the burden of administrative costs to the colonies themselves by imposing taxes.


title: Colonialism

text: After the First World War of 1914–1918, the victorious allies divided up the German colonial empire and much of the Ottoman Empire between themselves as League of Nations mandates, grouping these territories into three classes according to how quickly it was deemed that they could prepare for independence. The empires of Russia and Austria collapsed in 1917–1918. Nazi Germany set up short-lived colonial systems ("Reichskommissariate", "Generalgouvernement") in Eastern Europe in the early 1940s.


title: Colonialism

text: After World War II (1939–1945) decolonisation progressed rapidly, due to a number of reasons. First, the Japanese victories in the Pacific War of 1941–1945 had showed Indians and other subject peoples that the colonial powers were not invincible. Second, World War II had significantly weakened all the overseas colonial powers economically.


title: Colonialism

text: The word "neocolonialism" originated from Jean-Paul Sartre in 1956, to refer to a variety of contexts since the decolonisation that took place after World War II. Generally it does not refer to a type of direct colonisation – rather to colonialism or colonial-style exploitation by other means. Specifically, neocolonialism may refer to the theory that former or existing economic relationships, such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or the operations of companies (such as Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria and Brunei) fostered by former colonial powers were or are used to maintain control of former colonies and dependencies after the colonial independence movements of the post–World War II period.


title: Colonialism

text: The impacts of colonisation are immense and pervasive. Various effects, both immediate and protracted, include the spread of virulent diseases, unequal social relations, detribalization, exploitation, enslavement, medical advances, the creation of new institutions, abolitionism, improved infrastructure, and technological progress. Colonial practices also spur the spread of colonist languages, literature and cultural institutions, while endangering or obliterating those of native peoples. The native cultures of the colonised peoples can also have a powerful influence on the imperial country.


title: Colonialism

text: Economic expansion, sometimes described as the colonial surplus, has accompanied imperial expansion since ancient times. Greek trade networks spread throughout the Mediterranean region while Roman trade expanded with the primary goal of directing tribute from the colonised areas towards the Roman metropole. According to Strabo, by the time of emperor Augustus, up to 120 Roman ships would set sail every year from Myos Hormos in Roman Egypt to India. With the development of trade routes under the Ottoman Empire,


title: Colonialism

text: Aztec civilisation developed into an extensive empire that, much like the Roman Empire, had the goal of exacting tribute from the conquered colonial areas. For the Aztecs, a significant tribute was the acquisition of sacrificial victims for their religious rituals.


title: Colonialism

text: On the other hand, European colonial empires sometimes attempted to channel, restrict and impede trade involving their colonies, funneling activity through the metropole and taxing accordingly.


title: Colonialism

text: Despite the general trend of economic expansion, the economic performance of former European colonies varies significantly. In "Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-run Growth", economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson compare the economic influences of the European colonists on different colonies and study what could explain the huge discrepancies in previous European colonies, for example, between West African colonies like Sierra Leone and Hong Kong and Singapore.


title: Colonialism

text: According to the paper, economic institutions are the determinant of the colonial success because they determine their financial performance and order for the distribution of resources. At the same time, these institutions are also consequences of political institutions – especially how de facto and de jure political power is allocated. To explain the different colonial cases, we thus need to look first into the political institutions that shaped the economic institutions.


title: Colonialism

text: For example, one interesting observation is "the Reversal of Fortune" – the less developed civilisations in 1500, like North America, Australia, and New Zealand, are now much richer than those countries who used to be in the prosperous civilisations in 1500 before the colonists came, like the Mughals in India and the Incas in the Americas. One explanation offered by the paper focuses on the political institutions of the various colonies: it was less likely for European colonists to introduce economic institutions where they could benefit quickly from the extraction of resources in the area. Therefore, given a more developed civilisation and denser population, European colonists would rather keep the existing economic systems than introduce an entirely new system; while in places with little to extract, European colonists would rather establish new economic institutions to protect their interests. Political institutions thus gave rise to different types of economic systems, which determined the colonial economic performance.


title: Colonialism

text: European colonisation and development also changed gendered systems of power already in place around the world. In many pre-colonialist areas, women maintained power, prestige, or authority through reproductive or agricultural control. For example, in certain parts of sub-Saharan Africa women maintained farmland in which they had usage rights. While men would make political and communal decisions for a community, the women would control the village's food supply or their individual family's land. This allowed women to achieve power and autonomy, even in patrilineal and patriarchal societies.


title: Colonialism

text: Through the rise of European colonialism came a large push for development and industrialisation of most economic systems. When working to improve productivity, Europeans focused mostly on male workers. Foreign aid arrived in the form of loans, land, credit, and tools to speed up development, but were only allocated to men. In a more European fashion, women were expected to serve on a more domestic level. The result was a technologic, economic, and class-based gender gap that widened over time.


title: Colonialism

text: Within a colony, the presence of extractive colonial institutions in a given area has been found have effects on the modern day economic development, institutions and infrastructure of these areas.


title: Colonialism

text: European nations entered their imperial projects with the goal of enriching the European metropoles. Exploitation of non-Europeans and of other Europeans to support imperial goals was acceptable to the colonisers. Two outgrowths of this imperial agenda were the extension of slavery and indentured servitude. In the 17th century, nearly two-thirds of English settlers came to North America as indentured servants.


title: Colonialism

text: European slave traders brought large numbers of African slaves to the Americas by sail. Spain and Portugal had brought African slaves to work in African colonies such as Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe, and then in Latin America, by the 16th century. The British, French and Dutch joined in the slave trade in subsequent centuries. The European colonial system took approximately 11 million Africans to the Caribbean and to North and South America as slaves.


title: Colonialism

text: Abolitionists in Europe and Americas protested the inhumane treatment of African slaves, which led to the elimination of the slave trade (and later, of most forms of slavery) by the late 19th century. One (disputed) school of thought points to the role of abolitionism in the American Revolution: while the British colonial metropole started to move towards outlawing slavery, slave-owning elites in the Thirteen Colonies saw this as one of the reasons to fight for their post-colonial independence and for the right to develop and continue a largely slave-based economy.


title: Colonialism

text: British colonising activity in New Zealand from the early 19th century played a part in ending slave-taking and slave-keeping among the indigenous Māori.


title: Colonialism

text: On the other hand, British colonial administration in Southern Africa, when it officially abolished slavery in the 1830s, caused rifts in society which arguably perpetuated slavery in the Boer Republics and fed into the philosophy of "apartheid".


title: Colonialism

text: The labour shortages that resulted from abolition inspired European colonisers in Queensland, British Guaiana and Fiji (for example) to develop new sources of labour, re-adopting a system of indentured servitude. Indentured servants consented to a contract with the European colonisers. Under their contract, the servant would work for an employer for a term of at least a year, while the employer agreed to pay for the servant's voyage to the colony, possibly pay for the return to the country of origin, and pay the employee a wage as well. The employees became "indentured" to the employer because they owed a debt back to the employer for their travel expense to the colony, which they were expected to pay through their wages. In practice, indentured servants were exploited through terrible working conditions and burdensome debts imposed by the employers, with whom the servants had no means of negotiating the debt once they arrived in the colony.


title: Colonialism

text: India and China were the largest source of indentured servants during the colonial era. Indentured servants from India travelled to British colonies in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and also to French and Portuguese colonies, while Chinese servants travelled to British and Dutch colonies. Between 1830 and 1930, around 30 million indentured servants migrated from India, and 24 million returned to India. China sent more indentured servants to European colonies, and around the same proportion returned to China.


title: Colonialism

text: Following the Scramble for Africa, an early but secondary focus for most colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. By the end of the colonial period they were mostly successful in this aim, though slavery persists in Africa and in the world at large with much the same practices of "de facto" servility despite legislative prohibition.


title: Colonialism

text: Conquering forces have throughout history applied innovation in order to gain an advantage over the armies of the people they aim to conquer. Greeks developed the phalanx system, which enabled their military units to present themselves to their enemies as a wall, with foot soldiers using shields to cover one another during their advance on the battlefield. Under Philip II of Macedon, they were able to organise thousands of soldiers into a formidable battle force, bringing together carefully trained infantry and cavalry regiments. Alexander the Great exploited this military foundation further during his conquests.


title: Colonialism

text: The Spanish Empire held a major advantage over Mesoamerican warriors through the use of weapons made of stronger metal, predominantly iron, which was able to shatter the blades of axes used by the Aztec civilisation and others. The use of gunpowder weapons cemented the European military advantage over the peoples they sought to subjugate in the Americas and elsewhere.


title: Colonialism

text: The populations of some colonial territories, such as Canada, enjoyed relative peace and prosperity as part of a European power, at least among the majority. Minority populations such as First Nations peoples and French-Canadians experienced marginalisation and resented colonial practices. Francophone residents of Quebec, for example, were vocal in opposing conscription into the armed services to fight on behalf of Britain during World War I, resulting in the Conscription crisis of 1917. Other European colonies had much more pronounced conflict between European settlers and the local population. Rebellions broke out in the later decades of the imperial era, such as India's Sepoy Rebellion of 1857.


title: Colonialism

text: The territorial boundaries imposed by European colonisers, notably in central Africa and South Asia, defied the existing boundaries of native populations that had previously interacted little with one another. European colonisers disregarded native political and cultural animosities, imposing peace upon people under their military control. Native populations were often relocated at the will of the colonial administrators.


title: Colonialism

text: The Partition of British India in August 1947 led to the Independence of India and the creation of Pakistan. These events also caused much bloodshed at the time of the migration of immigrants from the two countries. Muslims from India and Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan migrated to the respective countries they sought independence for.


title: Colonialism

text: In a reversal of the migration patterns experienced during the modern colonial era, post-independence era migration followed a route back towards the imperial country. In some cases, this was a movement of settlers of European origin returning to the land of their birth, or to an ancestral birthplace. 900,000 French colonists (known as the "Pied-Noirs") resettled in France following Algeria's independence in 1962. A significant number of these migrants were also of Algerian descent. 800,000 people of Portuguese origin migrated to Portugal after the independence of former colonies in Africa between 1974 and 1979; 300,000 settlers of Dutch origin migrated to the Netherlands from the Dutch West Indies after Dutch military control of the colony ended.


title: Colonialism

text: After WWII 300,000 Dutchmen from the Dutch East Indies, of which the majority were people of Eurasian descent called Indo Europeans, repatriated to the Netherlands. A significant number later migrated to the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.


title: Colonialism

text: Global travel and migration in general developed at an increasingly brisk pace throughout the era of European colonial expansion. Citizens of the former colonies of European countries may have a privileged status in some respects with regard to immigration rights when settling in the former European imperial nation. For example, rights to dual citizenship may be generous, or larger immigrant quotas may be extended to former colonies.


title: Colonialism

text: In some cases, the former European imperial nations continue to foster close political and economic ties with former colonies. The Commonwealth of Nations is an organisation that promotes cooperation between and among Britain and its former colonies, the Commonwealth members. A similar organisation exists for former colonies of France, the Francophonie; the Community of Portuguese Language Countries plays a similar role for former Portuguese colonies, and the Dutch Language Union is the equivalent for former colonies of the Netherlands.


title: Colonialism

text: Migration from former colonies has proven to be problematic for European countries, where the majority population may express hostility to ethnic minorities who have immigrated from former colonies. Cultural and religious conflict have often erupted in France in recent decades, between immigrants from the Maghreb countries of north Africa and the majority population of France. Nonetheless, immigration has changed the ethnic composition of France; by the 1980s, 25% of the total population of "inner Paris" and 14% of the metropolitan region were of foreign origin, mainly Algerian.


title: Colonialism

text: In his 1955 essay, "Discourse on Colonialism" (French: "Discours sur le colonialisme"), French poet Aimé Césaire evaluates the effects of racist, sexist, and capitalist attitudes and motivations on the civilisations that attempted to colonise other civilisations. In explaining his position, he says, "I admit that it is a good thing to place different civilisations in contact with each other that it is an excellent thing to blend different worlds; that whatever its own particular genius may be, a civilisation that withdraws into itself atrophies; that for civilisations, exchange is oxygen."


title: Colonialism

text: To illustrate his point, he explains that colonisation relies on racist and xenophobic frameworks that dehumanise the targets of colonisation and justify their extreme and brutal mistreatment. Every time an immoral act perpetrated by colonisers onto the colonised is justified by racist, sexist, otherwise xenophobic, or capitalist motivations to subjugate a group of people, the colonising civilisation "acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a centre of infection begins to spread." Césaire argues the result of this process is that "a poison [is] instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward "savagery"."


title: Colonialism

text: Encounters between explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced new diseases, which sometimes caused local epidemics of extraordinary virulence. For example, smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, and others were unknown in pre-Columbian America.


title: Colonialism

text: Half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518 was killed by smallpox. Smallpox also ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, killing 150,000 in Tenochtitlan alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, aiding the European conquerors. Measles killed a further two million Mexican natives in the 17th century. In 1618–1619, smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans. Smallpox epidemics in 1780–1782 and 1837–1838 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians. Some believe that the death of up to 95% of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases. Over the centuries, the Europeans had developed high degrees of immunity to these diseases, while the indigenous peoples had no time to build such immunity.


title: Colonialism

text: Smallpox decimated the native population of Australia, killing around 50% of indigenous Australians in the early years of British colonisation. It also killed many New Zealand Māori. As late as 1848–49, as many as 40,000 out of 150,000 Hawaiians are estimated to have died of measles, whooping cough and influenza. Introduced diseases, notably smallpox, nearly wiped out the native population of Easter Island. In 1875, measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, approximately one-third of the population. The Ainu population decreased drastically in the 19th century, due in large part