HaShem - Yahweh or Jehovah?

to avoid an offtopic discussion in another thread, and answer wmscott's reply http://EvC Forum: How Can Trinity Believers Explain This -->EvC Forum: How Can Trinity Believers Explain This. uh, no, it's the way german and early english translators do things.lets look at the way MODERN english translators do things. these are from the latest masoretic translation, translated by hebrew rabbis who are also fluent in english.

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Exodus 6:2-3
God spoke to Moses and said to him, "I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make myself known to them by My name יהוה."

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now, LORD = YHWH = יהוה. it's all the same exact word. El is a less formal title for god, related to "Elowah" which is the singular of "Eloyhim" by which god is also called. Shaddai means "almighty" so he's saying that he refered to himself simply as the mightiest god to the patriarchs, but now he's giving moses his real name. it's silly to render this text "by My name LORD" because it doesn't say his name is אדני it says יהוה. the translator is trying to get the name right, in english.but it doesn't say anything different from the first "LORD." both are יהוה.the two verses in isaiah choose to render the repition יה יהוה as "Yah the LORD." this rendition treats hashem like a title, and the derivitive title like a nickname, which is not EXACTLY correct, but captures the meaning of the original verse. the kjv chooses render יה as "LORD" which is inconsistent with the rest of the text. everywhere else, יהוה is rendered as "LORD" but here it must be rendered as something else to avoid repition. and incorrectly so. let's read in exodus chapter four, from about verse 11.

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Moses said to God, "When I come to the Israelites and say to them 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?" And God said to Moses, "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh."

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that's nice and all, but what does it mean? it could mean "I am what I am" or "I will be what I will be" etc. this is actually a JOKE, mind you. It's god telling moses that he doesn't really HAVE a name at all, he's just himself, and then telling moses to go make himself look stupid in from of the israelites. it's also a response to the belief that you can control a spirit by its name. if god doesn't have one, he's the most powerful spirit of all. god is all of existance, he is that which exists.and so his "name" is a play on "ehyah." it's a pun, his name should SOUND like "ehyah" ... "yahweh." yes, thank you, i have a concordance.just because some translators wrote it that way doesn't mean it's correct or "in the bible." like i said, moses doesn't part the red sea, it's a translation error, and a rather persistent one. this one is ALSO an error. no, this is incorrect. the name came about when they transliterated יהוה with the vowel pointings that should belong to אדני so you spoke "adni" instead "yhwh". it was never ment to read with those vowels. sean connery is right, it does. if you had a latin vulgate bible, or a greek bible, hashem would read "IHVH" and in english we'd make that "JHVH". but these are translations of translations.http://www.tashian.com/multibabel/ play with this a little a while, and see what it does to meanings. i would argue that most well known name for god is "God" followed by "LORD" and that those are two we should use.i want to also address the point that "Jehovah" is a common translation of YHWH. i'll ignore for a second that everywhere but four verses is it translated "LORD" and just look at how various other translations render it. here's isaiah chapter 12, verse 2.

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The Septuagint (200 BCE)

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idou o qeos mou swthr mou kurios pepoiqws esomai ep autw kai swqhsomai en autw kai ou fobhqhsomai dioti h doxa mou kai h ainesis mou kurios kai egeneto moi eis swthrian

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Latin Vulgate (AD 405)

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ecce Deus salvator meus fiducialiter agam et non timebo quia fortitudo mea et laus mea Dominus Deus et factus est mihi in salutem

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King Jame Version (1611)

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Behold, God [is] my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH [is] my strength and [my] song; he also is become my salvation.

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Noah Webster Version (1833)

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Behold, God [is] my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH [is] my strength and [my] song; he also is become my salvation.

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Robert Young Literal Translation (1898)

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Lo, God [is] my salvation, I trust, and fear not, For my strength and song [is] Jah Jehovah, And He is to me for salvation.

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J.N.Darby Translation (1890)

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Behold, God is my salvation: I will trust, and not be afraid; for Jah, Jehovah, is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation.

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American Standard Version (1901)
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for Jehovah, [even] Jehovah, is my strength and song; and he is become my salvation.

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Revised Standard Version (1952)

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Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.

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Jewish Publication Society (Masoretic, 1962)

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Behold the God who gives me triumph!
I am confident, unafraid;
For Yah the LORD is my strength and might,
And He has been my deliverance.

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New King James Version (1982)

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Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; For Yah, the Lord, is my strength and song; He also has become my salvation.

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New American Standard Bible (1995)

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Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; For the LORD GOD is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation.

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New Living Translation (1996)

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See, God has come to save me.
    I will trust in him and not be afraid.
  The LORD GOD is my strength and my song;
    he has become my salvation.

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Hebrew Names Version (2000)

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Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD, the LORD, is my strength and song; and he has become my yeshu`ah.

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LORD - 8
Jehovah - 5i've arranged these translations chronologically, to demonstrate my point. i want you to notice something, well, kurios. the people who translated the septuagint read it "LORD" (kurios) because they were greek-speaking jews. the latin vulgate also renders it "LORD" (dominus). (feel free to check those, btw)then, the english king james comes along and messes it up for 300 years. notice that all the "jehovah" ones are consectutive?(also strange is that only NLT and JPS recognize that it's poetry. the hebrew doesn't indicate because the original didn't even have line breaks, spaces, vowels, or punctuation. poetry was indicated by pairing statements. it makes sense in english to break it into lines however. it's more evidence that the people doing the other translations didn't know what they were doing. the poeticality of this verse is apparent to just about anyone. not coincidentally, both of the translations that correctly render this passage as poetry also render hashem as "LORD.")

i was thinking more along the lines of the bible forum, as it deals with a specific faith, and various translation of the text. i'm not arguing that yahweh and jehovah are different gods to be believed in, but that one is the more correct textual rendering.
but i suppose this could work too.

thanks.hopefully it gets some attention. i'm sort of hoping amlodhi in particular can show why the modern choice for pronounciation is what it is.

yes, exactly. the name jehovah came about as a misunderstanding of the notation for that substitution and is therefore an error.

oh, but i wanted an excuse to type in hebrew, greek, and latin all in one post!

yes, i said that. see:

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it's silly to render this text "by My name LORD" because it doesn't say his name is it says .

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but almost everywhere else is rendered as if it were , because this is what is spoken and read in place of hashem, the divine name. turn to any random pasasge of the bible. if it says "LORD" in all caps or small caps, the word it's translating is NOT adonay, but yahweh. "jehovah" is an english reading of a germanic transliteration of of YHWH with the vowels belonging to ADNY. "yahweh" is the best reading of the proper name. yes, eloyhim is an informal word meaning "gods." the plurality has been much debated, but i don't think it's an issue. it's used both as singular word and a plural word, according to context (like scissors, or pants in english). it's used to refer to yhwh, idols, foriegn gods, and sometimes even people.however, there are whole sections of the bible where this is the ONLY way god is refered to, much like we call god "god" and not "yahweh." actually, when your english bible says "the LORD God" it says "yhwh eloyhim" in hebrew, not "adonay eloyhim." agreed with the first part, but not the last. "jehovah" is an incorrect rendering of the name. but "Y_aH_oW_aH" was never meant to be read literally, it was a form of notation to remind the reader to say "adonay" instead of "yahweh." transliterating it is an error. yes, i might even agree with that. however, the addition of the vowels of "adonay" to "yhwh" is something that has been done as a product of that superstition. it is not in the original text. if we want to remove the superstition about reading the name of god, we have to remove the vowel points along with it, and look at the actual word.

actually, i can't recall for the life of me why the current vowels in "yahweh" were chosen. my teacher explained it to me once, and i should have taken notes.i recall that it had something to do with standard name prefixes, and a play on the word "to be." you just had to pick the right tense.i was hoping you could explain that here, to further demonstrate why "yahweh" is a better choice than "jehovah," if it's not neccessarily the original pronounciation.

the bible is confusing in this matter. the last verse in genesis four does say that that was the point at which people began to use the name of the lord. the bible contains the name well before this, however, as early as chapter two, in conjunction with eloyhim.it's not really a problem if you give it some thought: genesis was written AFTER the events in took place, not during. if i wanted to be an apologist, i'd say that at some point people forgot the name of the lord, since god doesn't use it with the major patriarchs. he uses varitions of elowah.the evidence is also pretty good that moses did not write genesis, at least not in its entirety. but that's another thread. you must not have read very far into the bible. there are LOTS of instances in which god is JUST called god. genesis 1 for instance. this suggests that these portions of text were written later when the god in question did not have to be identified: everyone KNEW which god they were talking about. just as we do today. it also had to be written after the custom of not using the name of the lord came about.earlier texts (like genesis 2) identify god by title (eloyhim) and specific name (yahweh). this suggests that they were aware of other (foriegn?) gods, but that the focus was on one particular local god. agreed. actually, they were doing this in 300 bc as well. why do you think christ refers to god as "father" and says "your name" instead of just using it? the custom of avoidance of speaking hashem was already in place during his lifetime. notice the pronounciation. we say "hall-eh-loo-yah" or some variant, not "hall-eh-loo-ja" with hard j sound as in "just."

no, just think it's important to try to get the name of the deity you worship right. what if i called god "memra" as one of the targums does? is that ok too?in many cases it's just an issue of pronounciation. "jacob" is just an anglicized pronounciation of "ya'aqob." it's still essentially the same name. it was apparent how far pronounciation can go when my teacher said the name "zechariah." now, you and i would read it "zack-ah-rye-ah" but he said it "ze(c)h-har-yah-ah" with that gutteral "ch" that we don't even have in the english language. it sounded completely different, but it was just how you said it.jehovah is a fundamentally different name than yahweh. jehovah is neither the most correct, most modern, or most common translation of the name. from post 1: This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 11-22-2004 11:13 PM

uh, no. the name of the lord is not recorded as being uttered by anyone in the text until genesis 4:26. in fact, i bet you won't find "LORD" surrounded by a quotation made by a man anywhere in the book of genesis at all, but i'd have to check that one. it would, however, be consistent with the idealogy of the time period in which it was compiled: speaking the name of the lord was bad. 4:26 is the only verse that MENTIONS that people used to use the name of the lord. and it doesn't say falsely, it says they "began to invoke the lord by name" or "called on the name of the lord."yes, the name itself is recorded before that. like i said, it's not suprise, the book was written after those events took place. if i had to venture a guess, i'd say a good section of it was written well after moses as well.but genesis is horribly inconsistent in these matters. reading it in order, in clear english blew me away. look at this:

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Genesis 6:3

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The LORD said, "My breath shall not abide in man forever, since he too is flesh; let the days allowed him be one hundred and twenty years."

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now, god says this before noah, before babel. yet,

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Genesis 9:29

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And all the days of Noah came to 950 years; then he died.

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what? further inconsistancies can be seen in chapter 11, in just about every descendant of noah. kind of odd, don't you think? what's the best explanation for this? genesis wasn't written all at once. in fact, i see four distinct styles in the book of genesis alone, suggest four different authors. the latest date i can find in the text is 600 bc, when camels were domesticated, the chaldeans ruled ur, and the hebrews were exposed to a lot of babylonian mythology which appears in the text.so i'm not afwully suprised if it DOES contain an inconsistancy abotu the usage of the name, such as the bit about el, and exodus which is an entirely separate book. like i aid, IF i was an apologist, i would make the statement that people forgot the name. i am not an apologist. want me to post 17 examples in the book of genesis where they call god by "el" and not "yhwh" ? some bits use it almost exclusively. like i said, different authors. that's one of those meaningless phrases you learn in church. what does that mean? make his name manifest. the either knew the name or they didn't. and no, they certainly never would have, considering you can't pronounce that name in hebrew. if the bible was the word of god, wouldn't he have written his name as "me" occasionally? and this is exactly why the bible does use his name -- in places. certain portions show evidence that they were written AFTER it was customary to avoid the name of the lord.i'll spare you the actual quotes, but compare psalms 53 and 14. they're the same psalm. the books of psalms (there's five) overlap a little, and overlap with other books too. this is one indication of an overlap in the book itself. so it's useful for examining the differences in thought patterns in different circles at different times.psalm 14 uses the name of the lord, but psalm 53 uses eloyhim in place of it in every instance (unless you have a masoretic text, but i think they've inserted it there to make it match 14). my bible doesn't say that.

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Matthew 4:7

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efh autw o ihsouV, palin gegraptai, ouk ekpeiraseiV kurion ton qeon sou.

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we recognizing this word in greek yet? it's kurios, or lord. not "jehovah" but "lord" lowercase. as in "adonai" in hebrew. if jesus spoke hebrew, we would have said "adonai eloyhim" not "yahweh eloyhim" in this verse. but since jesus did not speak hebrew (he spoke aramaic), i don't know what he said. however, i doubt it would have been the name of god. it was recorded as using the title for god. had i been baptized, they would have said to me:"i baptize you in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost." this is like columbus landing on hispanola and saying "i claim this land in the name of the king of spain!" that's nice. it's making use of the power of the name sure -- without USING the name.

it's not an issue of dropping anything, it's an issue of using innappropriate vowels.jacob is yah-ahk-obe. it's not that different. we've lost a syllable, and pronounce the vowels a little differently. but jehovah os yah-weh. here we're adding a syllable, and completrely changing the word by using the incorrect vowels. uh, no. most translators today would NOT support your argument. it's simply not translated that way any more. it's well know to anyone even the slightest bit versed in hebrew that the name "YHWH" is rendered with the vowels of adonai, so the reader says "adonai" and not "yahweh." no person the slightest bit educated in hebrew would EVER read this as the combination of the two words.let's look at how a group of educated hebrew linguists and rabbis translated these names in 200 bc.

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Exodus 6.3:

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kai wfqhn pros abraam kai isaak kai iakwb qeos wn autwn kai to onoma mou kurios ouk edhlwsa autois.

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the second one should be starting to look familiar. it's kurios, or "lord." in hebrew, "adonai." why would educated hebrew linguists and rabbis render "YaHoWaH" as "kurios" in greek, instead of "iahowah" or even "iaweh?" because you weren't meant to read the consonants, JUST the vowels, and remember to say "adonai" or "kurios" in greek.for demonstration purposes, the first bolded bit is "jacob"

i guess i stand corrected on this one. i only made a breif overview of genesis looking for it in quotes. however, it's still inconsistent with 4:26, and exodus 6:3. sounds nice. but it still doesn't make any sense.moses fathers his three children at age 500, and the flood comes when he's 600. that's 100 years difference. god tells moses he's going to flood the earth at some point after noah has his kids. so noah had at most 100 years to build the ark, not 120 as the beginning of chapter 6 suggests with your reading.did god wait to tell moses? you, quote in context.samuel has very little to do with jesus. and no, the disciples of jesus would NOT have known the name jehovah, they would have known some variant on "yahweh" and probably known not to SAY it, but say "adonai" instead. no, psalm 53 does not say that. it doesn't even say "LORD" or "YHWH." it says god: ELOYHIM. was it removed by an editor? YES. that was the point i was trying to make clear. no, think about this one again.if i were in charge of editing the bible as it stands today in order to remove the name of the lord, i would have been fired. whoever did that missed 6519 instances. that's a LOT!what i just provided you with is evidence that the custome began while the bible was still being compiled. the person who transcribed psalm 53 avoided the name, but the person who transcribed 14 did not. these two were written down by SEPARATE INDIVIDUALS.no one person sat down and wrote or editted the bible. different people had different customs. but the person who wrote genesis 1 did not use the name of the lord, and person who wrote genesis 2 did. some places show obvious signs that the authors and/or redactors avoided the name.and the earliest text we have of the old testament doesn't use the name of the lord AT ALL. in every instance, the septuagint uses the word "kurios" in place of the name. that means that in 200 bc, the custom was already in place.

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Deuteronomy 6.16:

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Do not try the LORD your God, as you did at Massah.

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Deuteronomy 6.16:

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ouk ekpeiraseis kurion ton qeon sou on tropon exepeirasasqe en tw peirasmw

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no, sorry, it does not. please do show me where the septuagint contains the name of the lord though, because i have yet to find one example of it. a philosophical point, and i don't know. maybe he did, maybe he didn't. he was a bit of a radical reformist, against the conventions and just following the letter of the law, so i imagine he would have called the lord by name. but he would not have said "jehovah." nor "yahweh" for that matter, as he spoke aramaic and the pronounciation was probably different. this statement is erronious on multiple levels.a. "YHWH" or any variant thereof does not appear in the septuagint to my knowledge. this is the oldest biblical text we have, dating to 200 BC, prior to the writing of the nt.
b. "יהוה" currently appears in every masoretic hebrew text (both modern and archaic) used in synagogues several thousand times (6519 between the torah, nevi'im, and ketuvim). my english version of the masoretic texts even contains it once in hebrew, in exodus 6:3.
c. the new testament was mostly WRITTEN during the second and third centuries ad. your bible is trying to insert the name of your religion into the text, when it is not there."better" translations render the name as one of the two words it is a combination of -- but not both. and as i pointed out, matthew 4:7 does not contain the name of the lord in greek. i would actually be interested to see how it's rendered in greek, if someone can find me a text where it has been.

i haven't seen any, no.the septuagint is a static document. it's the greek translation that 72 rabbis conducted (in alexandria, i believe) from about 300-200 bc. we HAVE these documents: they are the oldest text of the bible that we do in fact have.the only difference in the septuagint today is that it's 2000 years older now. it's not like someone went back in 1941 with a bottle of white out and replaced all of the yahweh references with kurios.

you're grossly misunderstanding me. that's not a rebuttal to my point, or a correction: it IS my point. the people who translated the septuagint translated the name of god as "kurios" or lord, and this is the reason most modern translations have the word LORD in all caps as the name of god. six THOUSAND some references, yes.

a good question. because we ALSO have the masoretic text, about ad 600 if memory serves. it does contain the name of the lord, in consistent patterns. it is also not a translation of the text, exactly. but it is evident that the text has been updated from an original source, that is much older. the masorites were the ones with the doctrine of not changing a single letter (even though they did add vowel points).so it's a pretty good theory that the people who translated the septuagint were the one who made changes. in the hebrew tradition, none.