My husband's family are JW. They don't have much to do with me because I have been branded stubborn with regards to their teachings. The first book they studied with me was The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever. I had to use Jehovah's name. I will be saved by using Jehovahs name, it must be sanctified. I immediately saw contradictions. They admitted in literature that Jehovah is a mistransliteration and that Yahweh is more correct. So if they are so concerned about using god's real name then why not be Yahweh's Witnesses. This I would respect them for. They told me to just ignore that part. I told them under their rules of ' all that call upon Jehovah will be saved' I would not be saved because I would be calling on no one, as god's name isn't Jehovah. I also told them that there is actually a group called Yahweh's Witnesses. They really didn't like this.
Read The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever via The Watchtower website. Hilarious.
These two quotes from the brochure are complete contraditions of one another. Don't they have editors at Bethal?
*"Hence, the sanctification of God's name is far more important than any other issue."
It later goes on to say:
*"Thus it is evident that the original pronunciation of God's name is no longer known. Nor is it really important. If it were, then God himself would have made sure that it was preserved for us to use."
Welcome Smudge - and good morning (early riser too !). Yes it can be very frustrating to argue with JWs. They ignore anything you say or ask, and give you canned answers to all your valid and researched arguments. They refuse to read anything that's not a Watch Tower publication.
I had a heated discussion once with them about God's name also. They want you to accept as truth anything they present to you and they refuse to listen or consider anything you say that could bring doubts into their well rehearsed and memorized presentation. They live in their own little dream/fantasy world....
Is your husband an "active" JW ? Does he want you to "convert" ?
hahaha...thank you for the laugh smudge. JW's hate it when you point out the blaring wrongness in their religion. I wasn't told I was stubburn, I was told not to think so much.
Yeah, you're stubborn for not immediately accepting their inconsistancies as unimportant. Nice. We're supposed to search out things like this in other religions and condemn them for it, but Jehovah's Witnesses do not want to be subject to the same standards they hold up for "Christendom". Just a little hypocritical I'd say.
Easy JW refutation I would have used as a brainwashed JW is this:
"Those are two separate points. The footnote is talking about his ACTUAL name - Jehovah, and the other is the SANCTIFICATION of his name ... i.e. making his name (or reputation) known. It is important that his name (or reputation/charactar) be known. His qualities, purpose, etc. Whether or not the technicality of his ACTUAL NAME is really pronounced Jehovah, is like the footnote says, not the most important thing."
I think a good counter argument to your statement (I know you're only playing devil's advocate) would be this:
If, when Jesus was talking about God's name in the Lord's prayer and other times, he meant the physical name, why didn't he actually use the name? If, as the NWT claims, Jesus used the name Jehovah each time he quoted from the OT why wouldn't he use in these instructional verses about proclaiming and sanctifying that name? Could it be that he was discussing the character, abilities, reputation, etc of God and not necessarily his "name?" The brochure The Divine Name says this: "It was not merely by chance that Jesus taught his followers to put God's name first in their prayers. That name was clearly of crucial importance to him, since he mentioned it repeatedly in his own prayers. On one occasion when he was praying publicly to God, he was heard to say: "Father, glorify your name!" And God himself answered: "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again."—John 12:28, The Jerusalem Bible." When the brochure says "he [Jesus] mentioned it [Jehovah] repeatedly in how own prayers" they are being deceitful. According to the NWT Jesus only used the name Jehovah on 3 separate occasions (not counting quotations from the OT) (Mark 5:19;13:20; Luke 20:37) and not one of these was a prayer. Weighing the evidence, then, what was Jesus more concerned with the physical name of God or his reputation and character?
Ithinkisee, - I would answer you this way. It would open an opportunity for me to discuss the subject further and to do greater research. I would not tip my hand all at once.
Thanks, I did review that in my NWT, several WT articles and the Divine Name Brochure. What I was surprised to find is that the oldest manuscripts of the Greek Scriptures don't have the Tetragammaton in them. I had no idea that Jehovah didn't show up in the earliest manuscripts. It seems that the Hebrew version of the Greek text adds the tetragrammaton. But, these Hebrew versions are only 500 years old and not 1700 years old like the Greek manuscripts. In fact, I saw that our NWT used a current bible translation to add Jehovah to some biblical texts! This doesn't make a lot of sense to me so I think I better research it better. In my mind, the older the manuscript the more accurate the material, especially if it is attested to by several other old manuscripts. Certainly if Jehovah was concerned about his name being in the scripture he would have ensured that his inspired writers would have put it in. Hmm, I have some thinking to do.
