Questions about god's name

by Jankyn 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Jankyn

  Hi, all.

  I have a couple of questions for the research-bunnies on the board--there are so many of you who've spent so much time studying both the Bible and JW beliefs, and it's an incredible resource for the rest of us. I used to know the JW line on some of this stuff, but since I left in my late teens and am now moving into middle age, I've forgotten a lot.

  First, I know that the NWT inserts "Jehovah" every time the Old Testament uses the tetragrammaton (YHWH). My question is, what is the basis/claim they make for inserting "Jehovah" into the New Testament? Since the New Testament was written mostly in Aramaic, it doesn't contain the tetragrammaton, does it?

  Second, I seem to recall having read somewhere that "Jehovah" is actually a mis-translation of "Yaweh," which would be what the tetragrammaton is with vowels added. Does anyone have any further information about this, or a suggestion about where I should look for more info?

  Thanks in advance for your time. I'm just really curious about how "Jehovah" managed to take over the New Testament for JWs...

  Best,

  Jankyn
• 

  daystar

  jankin

  Wikipedia.org has a good bit of information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YHVH

  I believe the argument for replacing Lord with Jehovah in the NT goes something like this:

  Any place we think he's talking about God, he must be talking about Jehovah, so let's replace Lord, or any other place we feel the subject to be speaking about God with His proper name.
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  Narkissos

  Hi Jankyn,

  Here's one of the latest threads on the subject: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/99702/1.ashx

  what is the basis/claim they make for inserting "Jehovah" into the New Testament?

  They claim it was there first, although there is not the slightest evidence for it.

  The funny thing is, if you ask a JW "was the NT correctly transmitted?" s/he will answer: "Why, of course, there are thousands of ancient manuscripts available, and when there happens to be some difference between them, you can restore the original reading by comparing them" (textual criticism 101). However, the WT argument implies that all extant ancient NT manuscripts, without exception, are wrong as to the (presumably) all-important issue of "God's name".

  The WT argument as exposed in the NWT appendices is that some early copies of the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) did have the Tetragrammaton in ancient Hebrew letters (unreadable for a Greek reader) in the Greek text, which is true. Then they assume that the NT writers might have resorted to the same practice (for which there is zero evidence as stated above). In some cases (especially Romans 10 & 14) kurios ("Lord") is the obvious keyword and the argument is destroyed by substituting "Jehovah" to it -- a very good evidence that kurios was there in the first place.

  Since the New Testament was written mostly in Aramaic, it doesn't contain the tetragrammaton, does it?

  It was written only in Greek, but your argument stands.
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  Forscher

  The insertion of the divine name in the New Testamnet is, in my opinion, going beyond the scripture. We do know that the dvine name did occur in the New Testament in early copies because the ancient translator Jerome mentions that it did. The use of the short form of it, Jah, occurs a number of times in Revelation as part of "alleluia," the greek transliteration of the Hebrew "halleluyah." However, for whatever reason, the exact locations of the divine name in the New Testament are lost to us now. The only way to put them in is through guessing at the locations. That is not the role of a translator and until manuscripts come to light that show us the locations is altering the scriptures in my opinion. I think it is arrogant to do that!
  
  As for inserting "Jehovah" into the Old testament. It is well attested to in the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament and should be used in the interest of accuracy. "Jehovah" was accepted as the angliscised form, or the translation, of "YHWH" in English for centuries. Therefore, it is entirely proper to use it when translating the Old Testament into English despite the modern objectors. If we accept their position that we must use "Yahweh" (which I question as to accuracy anyway), then we would be bound to call Jesus "Yehshua" and other such transliterations as well (wich is just exactly what some of those folks want to do anyway). So I see no problem with using "Jehovah" in translation wherever it appears in the texts we have .
  
  Forscher
• 

  Hellrider

  Forscher:

  We do know that the dvine name did occur in the New Testament in early copies because the ancient translator Jerome mentions that it did

  Where? I didn`t know that. Where exactly does Jerome say this?
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  Now What?

  
  Greetings!

  My question is, what is the basis/claim they make for inserting "Jehovah" into the New Testament?

  The claim comes from a replacement theory going backwards from Greek to Hebrew. In other words, since the tetragrammaton didn't appear in greek, they assumed that Kyrios (Lord) and Theos (God) must mean the tetragrammaton. So they changed the words Kyrios and Theos back to Jehovah in 237 places in the NT. Now granted, some of these place are quotes from the OT, but the source OT was usually the LXX (greek) and not the Torah, Nevi'im or Kethuvim (essentially the Hebrew OT).

  In the case of 1 Co 7:17 it is pure conjecture, with no basis, just bias, to replace the name here. The wt excuse is 'context'.

  *edited to apologize to Narkisso. I didn't see that you already made these same points until after I posted. Sorry about that!
• 

  Narkissos

  We do know that the dvine name did occur in the New Testament in early copies because the ancient translator Jerome mentions that it did

  Where? I didn`t know that. Where exactly does Jerome say this?

  I second the question.

  In Prologus Galeatus (introduction to Samuel-Kings) Jerome obviously refers to copies of the Greek Old Testament (LXX).
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  Hellrider

  Forscher: I believe you are mistaken, but I did some research, and I know what you are referring to. You are mistaken. Jerome believed there had been a hebrew Matthew original. However, all of these "rumors" and statements from these, stem from a statement made by Papias, who believed (wrongly) that there had been a hebrew original of Matthew. Jerome never said that the tetragrammation had been used in the NT, he only quoted Epiphanus, who quoted Pantaenus, who quoted Eusebius, who quoted Origen, who quoted Ireneus who quoted Papias...and Papias believed that there had been a hebrew original of Matthew. However, no traces of the this "ghost" - original have been found, and studies in the language of Matthew clearly dismiss that Matthew was a translation from Hebrew. And even if a hebrew original HAD at one time existed, this is still not necessarily an argument that the tetragrammation was used in it. All Jerome did was say that there had been a hebrew original, nothing more. A hebrew original, even if it DID exist, is no argument that YHWH was used in it, it is not used in all places (far from it) in the OT, when the reference is to God.
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  Now What?

  We do know that the dvine name did occur in the New Testament in early copies because the ancient translator Jerome mentions that it did.

  Unfortunately, as much as we appreciate Jerome's efforts, his work used many sources for his Latin translation. I would like to see the context of this statement in his writings. I have a feeling it was a comment on some of the discrepancies/assumptions of the sources.

  However to be fair, I have not studied much on the process of the Vulgate, so I might be assuming too much here.
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  Now What?

  studies in the language of Matthew clearly dismiss that Matthew was a translation from Hebrew

  To throw another log on the fire, we have been looking at the textural sources of the NT over the past several weeks. Last week we looked at the sources of Matthew, with the general concensus being the primary source was Mark (greek text), Quelle (greek text) and some stuff unique to Matthew (but with the other sources greek, it would be logical that the remainder of the text also be writtem in greek).

  Just a thought