“In the Ophite gems of King, (Gnostics), we find the name Iao repeated, and often confounded with that of Ievo, while the latter simply represents one of the genii antagonistic to Abraxas. In order that these names may not be taken as identical with the name of the Jewish Jehovah we will at once explain this word. It seems to us surpassingly strange that so many learned archeologists should have so little insisted that there was more than one Jehovah, and disclaimed that the name originated with Moses.
Iao is certainly a title of the Supreme Being and belongs partially to the Ineffable Name; but it neither originated with, nor was it the sole property of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelar “Spirit”, the alleged protector and national deity of the “Chosen people of Israel”, there is yet no possible reason why other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One living God. But we deny the assumption altogether.
Besides, there is the fact that Yaho or Iao was a “mystery name” from the beginning and never came into use before King David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were compounded with iah or jah. It looks rather as though David, being a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines, (2 Samuel), brought thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high priest, from whom came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at Hebron, Habir-on or Kabeir-town, where the rites of the four, (mystery gods), were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. They aspired to build a temple to, like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.
Says Furst: “The very ancient name of God, Yâho, written in the Greek Ιαω, appears apart from its derivation, to have been an old mystic name of the Supreme deity of the Shemites. (Hence it was told to Moses when initiated at HOR-EB – the cave, under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite or Cainite priest of Midian.) In an old religion of the Chaldeans, whose remains are to be found amongst the Neo-platonists, the highest divinity enthroned above the seven heavens, representing the Spiritual Light-Principle, (nous), and also conceived as Demiurgus, was called Ιαω, who was, like the Hebrew Yâho, mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the initiated. The Phoenicians had a Supreme God whose name was trilateral and secret, and he was Ιαω.”
But while Fürst insists that the name has a Semitic origin, there are other scholars who trace it farther than he does, and look back beyond the classification of the Caucasians. In Sanscrit we have Jah and Jaya, or Jaa and Ja-ga, and this throws light on the origin of the famous festival of the car of Jaga-nath, commonly called Jaggernath. Javhe means “he who is”, and Dr. Spiegel traces even the Persian name of God, “Ahura”, to the root ah, which in Sanscrit is pronounced as, to breathe, and asu, became, therefore, in time, synonymous with “Spirit”. Rawlinson strongly supports the opinion of an Aryan or Vedic influence on the early Babylonian mythology.
We have given, a few pages back, the strongest possible proofs of the identity of Vishnu with Dag-on. The same may be adduced for the title of Ιαω, and its Sanscrit root traced in every country. JU or Jovis is the oldest Latin name for God. “As male he is Ju-piter, or Ju, the father, pitär being Sanscrit for father; as feminine, Ju-no or Ju, the comforter – being the Phoenician word for rest and comfort.” Professor Max Müller shows that although “Dyaus”, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the ordinary Sanscrit, yet it does occur in the Veda, “and thus bears witness to the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Zeus”, (the Veda).”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 