I was wondering how many of you think that the name Jehovah is actually correct? To be honest with you, everytime I hear it I cringe. I had that name shoved down my throat for the past 30 years by my witness mother-in-law. Although, I can't say that that is her favorite word... actually, I think satan is her favorite word...lol
The name Jehovah
by sweetums 15 Replies latest jw friends
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nvrgnbk
Jehovah is a metaphor for absolute control.
Satan is a metaphor for freedom.
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greendawn
Jehovah is not the original correct pronounciation which in fact nobody really knows though Yahveh comes close to it.
The point is that Yahveh is the stern God of the OT and we would rather think of God as presented in the NT as the loving Father rather than the emotionally distant and vindictive Lord that was known to the Jews under the Mosaic Law.
The name Jehovah (replacing Christ) is a regression to the OT setup, that's why it is so creepy.
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undercover
I was wondering how many of you think that the name Jehovah is actually correct?
Let's let the Watchtower Society answer that, shall we?
http://watchtower.org/e/na/index.htm?article=article_01.htm
The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever
How Is God's Name Pronounced?
The truth is, nobody knows for sure how the name of God was originally pronounced. Why not? Well, the first language used in writing the Bible was Hebrew, and when the Hebrew language was written down, the writers wrote only consonants—not vowels. Hence, when the inspired writers wrote God's name, they naturally did the same thing and wrote only the consonants.
While ancient Hebrew was an everyday spoken language, this presented no problem. The pronunciation of the Name was familiar to the Israelites and when they saw it in writing they supplied the vowels without thinking (just as, for an English reader, the abbreviation "Ltd." represents "Limited" and "bldg." represents "building").
Two things happened to change this situation. First, a superstitious idea arose among the Jews that it was wrong to say the divine name out loud; so when they came to it in their Bible reading they uttered the Hebrew word 'Adho·nai' ("Sovereign Lord"). Further, as time went by, the ancient Hebrew language itself ceased to be spoken in everyday conversation, and in this way the original Hebrew pronunciation of God's name was eventually forgotten.
In order to ensure that the pronunciation of the Hebrew language as a whole would not be lost, Jewish scholars of the second half of the first millennium C.E. invented a system of points to represent the missing vowels, and they placed these around the consonants in the Hebrew Bible. Thus, both vowels and consonants were written down, and the pronunciation as it was at that time was preserved.
When it came to God's name, instead of putting the proper vowel signs around it, in most cases they put other vowel signs to remind the reader that he should say 'Adho·nai'. From this came the spelling Iehouah, and, eventually, Jehovah became the accepted pronunciation of the divine name in English. This retains the essential elements of God's name from the Hebrew original.
Different scholars have different ideas about how the name YHWH was originally pronounced.
In The Mysterious Name of Y.H.W.H., page 74, Dr. M. Reisel said that the "vocalisation of the Tetragrammaton must originally have been Y e HuàH or YaHuàH."
Canon D. D. Williams of Cambridge held that the "evidence indicates, nay almost proves, that Jahwéh was not the true pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton . . . The Name itself was probably JAHÔH."—Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (Periodical for Old Testament Knowledge), 1936, Volume 54, page 269.
In the glossary of the French Revised Segond Version, page 9, the following comment is made: "The pronunciation Yahvé used in some recent translations is based on a few ancient witnesses, but they are not conclusive. If one takes into account personal names that include the divine name, such as the Hebrew name of the prophet Elijah (Eliyahou) the pronunciation might just as well be Yaho or Yahou."
In 1749 the German Bible scholar Teller told of some different pronunciations of God's name he had read: "Diodorus from Sicily, Macrobius, Clemens Alexandrinus, Saint Jerome and Origenes wrote Jao; the Samaritans, Epiphanius, Theodoretus, Jahe, or Jave; Ludwig Cappel reads Javoh; Drusius, Jahve; Hottinger, Jehva; Mercerus, Jehovah; Castellio, Jovah; and le Clerc, Jawoh, or Javoh."
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. The important thing is to use God's name according to its conventional pronunciation in our own language.
The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever yea, right. How is it that the divine name can last forever when no one knows how it's pronounced and religions promote the wrong translation?
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Open mind
Undercover:
Where were you yesterday when I was looking for input on my upcoming Divine Name family study?
No worries. The "Divine Name" brochure, as your post makes clear, has plenty of very "useful" information in it.
Thanks,
Open Mind
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Justahuman24
Undercover,
"The name that will last forever" doesn't imply that it'll be pronounced correctly forever. It has lasted since it was first made known to Humans because it's always been known. Just bcz the correct pronunciation has been "forgotten" doesn't mean the name has been forgotten too.
Justahuman - but super nonetheless
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dobbie
Personally it would really annoy me if i was the supreme creator and no one could get my name right!Can't see the Queen being happy if her name was always being mispronounced somehow!Also you wouldn't just call her by her first name would you, she'd think it was disrespectful.I think i'm trying to say something but its not making sense lol!Must be near by bedtime!
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sweetums
You are making perfect sense and that is my point! Plus, I think there is a reason for his name not being revealed...
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the dreamer dreaming
JWs say they use Jehovah as it is the most common in english, but they seem to be less then honest .
I had a THE TRUTH book in greek and they use IXOBA which is very different from what greeks had in their language from early times, namely IOBE
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greendawn
In ancient Greek it was iave and the most likely Jewish original Yahveh. At the end of the day it just a Divine name in the Hebrew language that would have no doubt been different had the chosen nation been another one.
Yahveh means: "the one that is" or "the one that exists" probably to distinguish the Hebrew God from those of the nations that do not really exist, it's a juxtaposition between the two sides. What we have in that name is the verb: to be.