The original Hebrew and Greek translations had the tetragrammaton representing God's name. These four Hebrew letters apparently translate in English to "YHWH".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton

Most scholars believe the word to be pronounced "Yahweh" but some believe the pronunciation to be "Jehovah". Hebrews often used the name "Adonai". I have a charismatic Christian friend involved in ministry that uses the name "Adonai."

Our Bible translations today replace the 4 Hebrew letters with "Lord" or "God" (I assume for the sake of unity among the early Christian sects). While that certainly applies, it seems more impersonal than using "Yahweh".

Then again, as Jesus said in John 14:6, "Nobody comes to my Father except through Me." Maybe while having a more personal relationship with Christ we are meant to have a less personal relationship with our Father. Even Christ used the words, "Our Father" when He taught us how to pray. Or did He?

I would be interested in seeing where "Yahweh" was replaced in the Hebrew and Greek translations with "God" and "Lord".

Anyone know where a person could find this out? Other than taking a Jehovah Witness Bible translation that has "Jehovah" for the tetragrammaton.

[This message has been edited by AgBeliever (edited 4/2/2012 10:59a).]

That's alot to chew on. First, anywhere you see "the LORD" in your Bible, it was substituted for tetragrammaton, whose letters translate as YHVH, YHWH as consonants or IEOE/IAOA/IEOA/IAOE if using the Hebrew letters' vowel sounds. The New Testament does not use the tetragammaton at all, instead using Lord, Father or other honorifics.

As far as the pronunciation, no one really knows. Supposedly there are about 3 highest ranking rabbi's who "protect" the name of God from blasphemy, but who knows. The pronunciations accepted by scholars are Yahweh or Yehovah (the Hebrew language does not contain a J). The surviving Samaritan literature suggests they used the name Yahbe with the "b" sound an accented w or v. I can't remember the name, but a Roman Jew once remarked that God's name was four vowels. Thus the support for Yahwe (I-A-O-E). Others would note that hebrew words don't start with the syllable Yah. They prefer Yehovah.

Adonai is a substitution like LORD. It is not God's name.

At some point between the Old and New Testaments, it became "blasphemous" to speak God's name. So even during scripture readings, rabbis would substitute Adonia for God's name. I think that is why you don't see God's name in the New Testament. The disciples were conditioned from childhood to use the honorifics.

More in next post:

As far as whether it is actually blasphemous to say God's Name, it must disagree. First, God's name is used in the Old Testament more than any other. About half the Psalms talk about glorifying the Name of God and making it known throughout the world.

See also Elijah and the priests of baal. Now baal is merely a Hebrew word for "Lord". Elijah mocked those priests for worshipping a powerless god with no name. He called God's name, and God sent fire from heaven. Odd that we have now replaced God's Name in his scripture with the English equivalent of baal.

As an interesting aside, some old Jewish scholars believed that Jesus healed by blasphemously using God's name, and was crucified as punishment.

I would tell you to do some research and be convinced. Then actually call on the name of the God you worship. Just be carefully with the commandment against using His Name in vain.

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Others would note that hebrew words don't start with the syllable Yah. They prefer Yehovah.

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Ah, yet another twist.

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Adonai is a substitution like LORD. It is not God's name

At some point between the Old and New Testaments, it became "blasphemous" to speak God's name. So even during scripture readings, rabbis would substitute Adonia for God's name. I think that is why you don't see God's name in the New Testament. The disciples were conditioned from childhood to use the honorifics.

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A most excellent point. And one that explains a lot. Thanks.

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See also Elijah and the priests of baal. Now baal is merely a Hebrew word for "Lord". Elijah mocked those priests for worshipping a powerless god with no name. He called God's name, and God sent fire from heaven. Odd that we have now replaced God's Name in his scripture with the English equivalent of baal.

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Very odd indeed.

Thanks for posts RamblinAg. They were very informative.

No problem. It was all stream of consciousness, but I can dig up references if you want them.

Here’s what I understand off the top of my head:

Back in the day, Hebrew writing did not have vowels, so they only wrote with consonants. This was probably partially just to save space as parchment space was hard to come by. Also, their language at the time had fewer words, so it wasn’t all that confusing. Even in English with its millions (seems like it) of words, we can read many of them without writing the vowels. For example, sttlmnt is pretty obvious as settlement without vowels and would be even more so if that was the ordinary way of writing.

So, the consonants were transmitted to us in writing, but the vowel sounds were not, because the Hebrews stopped saying the name altogether in order to avoid the possibility of blaspheming the name. Of course those consonants are written in Hebrew, but their sounds are similar to the English YHWH. Actually the first Hebrew letter is much harder than our English Y and actually sounds more like a combination of our J and Y. Similarly with the W it sounds much harder like a cross between our J and W. So, the sound in English letters probably is more like (J/Y)-H – (V/W) – H.

Some time ago (can’t remember exactly, but it was hundreds of years) a group tired to resurrect the actually sound of this name and came up with Jehovah. From the above, it is clear where they got the J, v and h’s from. But it was the vowels that were missing and needed to be added. At that time they just transmitted the vowel sounds from the other titles for God (Ad O nai and El-O-him) into JHVH. This is how they got the distinctive “Oh” sound in the middle.

However, later scholars (don’t know when or how) researched this and came up with “Yahweh”. They use a Y instead of a J and a W instead of a V, but as noted above the actual sound was a bit of a mix. I wouldn’t fault anyone for using an English J or Y as the first letter or a V or W for the third consonant because we don’t really have a J/Y or V/W sound in English, so these are substantially similar and accurate, IMO.

The biggest difference is that Yahweh doesn’t have the distinctive “oh” sound in the middle. As mentioned, the reconstructions of Jehovah barrowed this O sound from Adonai and Elohim, but the later scholars who developed Yahweh did not simply make this clumsy translation, but I don’t know what sources they used to reconstruct their vow pointing.

BTW, modern Hebrew writing now has vowel pointing so this is not a problem. But you have to know what the vowel sounds are to put the vowel pointing in there. That’s the problem with the sacred name, because it was not said for so long, people were not 100% certain what the vowel sounds actually were back when it was originally spoken.

Also, some Hebrew translation use “Ha Shem” in place of YHWH. Ha Shem is literally translated as “The Name”, so they are not actually saying the name, but at least it acknowledges that God has a proper name.

English translations use LORD (in all capitals) when translating YHWH. The Hebrew word “Adonai” is translated into English as Lord (with lower case letters) and is an accurate translation in that the Hebrew word is a title and not a proper name. The Hebrew word Elohim is translated into English as God and is accurate, because it is a somewhat generic title for God. Hebrews frequently consider Elohim to be synonymous with YHWH, not because of linguistics but because they believe the only real Elohim that exists it YHWH.

This typical way of translating YHWH as a title (LORD – even with the distinction of all caps) is a bit misleading because it is not a title, but a proper name and leads to some awkward wording. For example, the phrase:

“Oh, LORD our God”

Sounds a bit redundant with this type of translation. However, it is better translated as:

“Oh, Yahweh our God”

This properly calls on the “NAME” of God and makes more sense. We are not worshiping Ra (the Egyptian sun god) as our God. We don’t worship Ba’al as our God. We don’t worship Zeus as our God.

We worship Yahweh as our God. Our God has a name and we are told to declare the NAME of God.

My brain just got another wrinkle. Good info!

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No problem. It was all stream of consciousness, but I can dig up references if you want them.

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Thanks for the offer. No need to go digging up references though.

Excellent insight Win At Life.

Are there any Bible translations out there that uses the name "Yahweh"?

Seems to me that if one were to take the English Standard Version and replace "LORD" with "Yahweh" where the tetragrammaton existed, that would make for a very accurate translation.

Odin.

I thought it was "I AM"....

Fred

As an aside,a Jewish friend told me that in modern Hebrew, Adoni means 'mister' in everyday life. Little different pronunciation, but same word.

Same in Greek. Kyrios means the Lord in church, but otherwise it means mister.

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Are there any Bible translations out there that uses the name "Yahweh"?

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The New Jerusalem Bible is the only one that I am aware of.

http://www.catholic.org/bible/

As they note, it is the most widely used Catholic bible outside of the United States (don’t know why).

Of course the use of Yahweh isn’t necessarily the sign of kosher (slight pun) for a translation. For example, being a Catholic bible, it has the OT apocrypha, which would be more of an issue they how they translate one word assuming you don’t believe the apocrypha is inspired scripture.

[edit for url fail]

[This message has been edited by Win At Life (edited 4/2/2012 9:57p).]

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As an aside,a Jewish friend told me that in modern Hebrew, Adoni means 'mister' in everyday life. Little different pronunciation, but same word.

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Yeah, I was under the impression it was more personal that it is.

Looks like "Adonai" and "Elohim" was used when God was referred as a less personable and as “Yahweh” when God is referred as more personable.

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The New Jerusalem Bible is the only one that I am aware of.

http://www.catholic.org/bible/

As they note, it is the most widely used Catholic bible outside of the United States (don’t know why).

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Thanks. I'll look into it.

I saw where the King James Version,
Aramaic Bible in Plain English, and
American Standard Version all used "Jehovah" in Psalm 83:18 though.

However, it does appear "Yahweh" is the more accurate interpretation. Especially after seeing this.

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Hallelu-Yah means "praise Yah", and Yah is a contraction of the Divine

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http://www.divinename.no/nameinbible.htm

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Of course the use of Yahweh isn’t necessarily the sign of kosher (slight pun) for a translation. For example, being a Catholic bible, it has the OT apocrypha, which would be more of an issue they how they translate one word assuming you don’t believe the apocrypha is inspired scripture.

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OT apocrypha? You lost me there.

I think I understand the tetragrammaton pretty well now though thanks to you and Ramblin_Ag.

Nevermind. I think I follow you now.

The apocrypha is basically Old Testament books like the Book of Wisdom, which are excluded from many / most Bible translations, but is included in translations preferred by the Catholic church.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_apocrypha

I don't have a problem with such books.

Those books are included in the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Othodox church, which actually makes it the majority of people calling themselves Christians in the world.

The Protestants rejected them and not completely without merit either. Jewish bibles do not include them even though they were written before NT times.

But that is a whole other separate debate that has been done before.

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Jewish bibles do not include them even though they were written before NT times.

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Hmmm. Very interesting.

Thanks again.

Continuing: They were included in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (LXX) a couple hundred years BC. So, that is the argument for keeping those from the LXX. This side would argue that the Masoratic codex that Jews use today wasn’t finalized until a few hundred AD.

So which is right? I studied this issue and thought if I just learned a little more, or everything there was to know, that the correct bible canon would become obvious. Unfortunatly this is not the case. There never is a magic bullet that lets you say for sure what should be in the canon and what shouldn’t be. This applies somewhat to the New Testament, but not as much, because at least Catholics and Protestants agree on the canon of those books.

Looks like the early Reformers agreed the books were written by godly men.

I also saw that Luther expressed doubts about the NT books Jude, Hebrews and James, as well as the Revelation to John.

Since it would seem pretty weird to me to not have those four books in the NT, I think I prefer to have these books in the OT.

I think I will be investing in a New Jerusalem Bible. What translation do you prefer?


[This message has been edited by AgBeliever (edited 4/5/2012 9:51a).]

The deuterocanonical books were rejected by the Jews meeting at Jamnia in 90 AD because they were not written in Hebrew, and they were not written before the time of Ezra. At the time of Jesus, the Jews had not settled on a canon of their own scriptures, which is why the Pharisees and the Saducees believed so many different things.

Pope Damasus I in the late 4th century, submitted the canon of scripture, which included the deuterocanonical books, to the Council of Rome, where all 73 books were approved as being inspired by the Holy Ghost.

Thad is right on. When forming the modern Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scholars rejected anything not written in Hebrew or Aramaic. Most also believe that prophecy stopped with the building of the Second Temple, so they rejected later writings as God-inspired.

Much of this was an attempt to differentiate Judaism from early Christianity by denying the New Testament Scripture was divinely inspired. It makes for some interesting situations, though. For instance, Hannukah is widely celebrated in Judaism, but it comes from Maccabees which is not considered divinely inspired scripture.

Yeah, it looks like the Jews may have rejected the books out of a pride thing (not being written in Hebrew). The books seemed to have be accepted until the 15th or 16th Century.

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For instance, Hannukah is widely celebrated in Judaism, but it comes from Maccabees which is not considered divinely inspired scripture.

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Excellent point.

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What translation do you prefer?

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I still use my NASB mostly because I’ve had it so long, it’s easier for me to find things in it. But I do think it’s one of the better English translations. When I study a scripture more seriously, I look at many (mostly online at Bible Gatway), Strong’s, etc.

However, I also have a copy of the AENT. This is different in most all the rest of the New Testaments because it was translated from the Aramaic Pe****ta instead of Greek texts.

http://www.aent.org/

Roth wrote a book detailing the evidence for the Aramaic primacy of most of the New Testament books.

See here: http://www.ruachqadim.com/about.htm
Here is an excerpt: http://www.tushiyah.org/TheGowra.pdf



Edit: That's P e s h i t t a


[This message has been edited by Win At Life (edited 4/5/2012 12:31p).]

The tetragrammaton is only the initials for the Hebrew "I AM WHO AM", (Exodus 3:13-15) which is not exactly a valid Hebrew construction. But then what God was expressing was probably neither pronounceable nor understandable.
But what seems to me to stand out is the present tense. When you consider that God is timeless - He is the one who always is, then to Him it is always the present.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says “I AM” 7 times, and they are considered to be expressions of His unity with God. The one I find most striking is when the cohort comes to arrest Him.

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4 Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”
5 “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.
“I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) 6 When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

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they drew back and fell to the ground IOW, Jesus expressed who He is in the words which are part of the name of God, and He literally blew them away


As for the Books of the OT Bible, or parts of Books that are referred to as deuterocanonical by Catholics and apocrypha by most protestants, those were only rejected by the Palestinian Pharisaic Jews; however, the Ethiopian Jews have kept those books as canon all along. (BTW, Palestine was a Roman reference to the region - there was no country named Palestine) It seems to support the position that the Pharisees were rejecting those books more because they contained scriptural support for Christianity, than because they weren't in Hebrew.

A few years ago, when we were studying the Old Testament, our deacon invited a Rabbi to speak. (Hey, this is California.) When Q&A time came I politely asked him, how is it that Jews hold Chanukah (Hanukkah) as a most Holy Day, but it is only referred to in the Books of Maccabees. So how can those Books not be considered Holy Scripture? Well, after he danced the Texas 2-step around that, he graciously thanked his Catholic Brethren for keeping the Books alive. I had to hold mouth to keep my smile from being disrespectful.

Hear is the name I would like to hear:

"He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at Jesus’ name, every knee must bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God the Father that
JESUS CHRIST IS LORD"

Does this passage mean that Jesus was given the name: YHWH?

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Does this passage mean that Jesus was given the name: YHWH?

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In the AENT translation, the answer is a clear “YES”.

Philippians 2:9-11 in the AENT:

Wherefore, also, Elohim has highly exalted him and given him a name which is more excellent than all names; that at the name of Y’shua every knee should bow, of (beings) in heaven and on earth and under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Master YHWH is Y’shua Mashiyach to the glory of Elohim his Father.

This is one of the great advantages of a translation from the Aramaic, because Aramaic words have a direct translation from Hebrew. That is, although Aramaic letters are written with different characters from Hebrew letters, the words when spoken have virtually the same sound and the words when spoken in Hebrew. They are very similar sister languages; a bit like Spanish and Portugee (if you will).

In fact the AENT describes Jesus with the sacred name as, Master YHWH, in many other places.

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However, I also have a copy of the AENT. This is different in most all the rest of the New Testaments because it was translated from the Aramaic Pe****ta instead of Greek texts.

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Great point. Translations from Aramic to Greek to English allow one more step for an original meaning to be changed somewhat.

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Jesus expressed who He is in the words which are part of the name of God, and He literally blew them away

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Very true. This brings up another matter. That being Christ being God in the flesh (ie the Trinity).

I have some friends that our Jehovah Witnesses. Although I appreciate their wanting to keep God's name, I definitely have a problem with Christ not being seen as divine. They believe Christ and the arch angel Michael are the same.

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Does this passage mean that Jesus was given the name: YHWH?
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In the AENT translation, the answer is a clear “YES”.

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Awesome.

Personally, I don't believe that the LXX existed in Yeshua's day. There may have been some Greek translations of various books at that time, but no compilation that we know today as the LXX. I believe that the LXX originated with Origen.

Back to the OP, I have a sneaky suspicion that the correct pronunciation of YHWH is Yah-Hoo-Ah. I believe this for two reasons: Names such as Eliyahu, Yirmeyahu, etc contain part of the name: Yahoo. Also, because He seems to really love Hebrew word puns, and Yah-Hoo-Ah is so similar to Yeshua (Yesh-Shoo-Ah).

[This message has been edited by Bracy (edited 4/9/2012 2:03p).]