Yahweh was originally simply Israel's tribal god. In the Hebrew written language, which used no vowels, the his name was written ''YHWH''.
However, because Jews generally were forbidden by the Fifth Commandment to pronounce the sacred name, the vowels of ''Adonai'' (literally 'my lords') were normally inserted between its consonants, resulting in the name 'Jehovah'. Reflecting the same taboo, the earlier English translations of the Bible replaced the name with the phrase 'the LORD'. Because Jesus' followers routinely called him ''adon'' ('boss', 'lord', which translated into the gospels' Greek as ''kurios''), the two titles became confused in English, to the point where it became unclear whether the phrase 'the LORD' was referring to Jesus or to Yahweh. This helped to reinforce Christians' conviction that Jesus was God - even though, to any faithful Jew such as Jesus was, suggesting that a mere man could be God was the ultimate in blasphemies. As a result, centuries of dispute arose over the question.