Thinking of becoming a Witness again and my reasons for doing so :(

by reniaa 383 Replies latest jw experiences

Earnest

Leolaia...thanks for a typically thoughtful and well-researched discussion on the use of God's name in the time of the NT, and I agree with much of what you say, particularly as regards Paul's use of 'Lord'. I would point out that I did not maintain the NWT were correct in using God's name in the NT, but said :
There are no existing manuscripts of the NT which have the tetragrammaton or the Greek equivalent of God's name, so in a literal translation I think they are mistaken for doing so. They are doing exactly as Tyndale did in replacing the tetragrammaton with LORD in the OT, i.e. translating as they think it would have been read in Jesus' time rather than translating just what the text says.
I think you would agree with my initial answer to reniaa's question, that
Without quibbling whether it is exactly 6,973 times it is certainly true that the tetragrammaton occurs almost 7000 times in the Hebrew Scriptures and JWs are certainly correct in showing this.
There is a problem in relying on the Septuagint as to whether it used the tetragrammaton or not prior to the time of Christ, as copying of the LXX was not as meticulous as the copying of the Hebrew scriptures and by the time of Origen there were so many variants he felt it necessary to set about the mammoth task of composing the Hexapla. So no doubt there were copies that did not contain the tetragrammaton, and by the time of Philo it is clear the Alexandrian school did not use the name of God as they were influenced by the Platonic view that God cannot be named. And do not Aristobulus, the Letter of Aristeas, Joseph and Asenath all originate in Alexandrian Egypt where Pythagorean, Platonic, and Stoic thought was rife at the time.
I am not arguing that God's name should be used in the NT as the existing manuscripts have no support for that, and you have shown that in Paul's letters the context does not allow it in many places. I do, however, argue that there were copies of the Septuagint at the time of Christ that did contain God's name and there is simply no way of knowing whether or not it was used by Jesus and his disciples.
Earnest
JWdaughter

Leolaia, WOW, what a great explanation of the cross throughout the ages.

I don't know that the WT makes as big a deal about that as it did when I was a child, but back then, they treated it as if it were proof positive that 'so called christians' were really pagans and worshipping satan. I used to think that the CROSS was worshipped by Christians because they used it as a 'icon' of Christianity. I had no clue. Much of what you shared with us, I have since read and come to realize. I have also had the opportunity to catch the WT in some blatant manipulation of this issue-which just makes me mad-they don't have enough real things to pick on, so they make up something so ridiculous?

I hope that some curious JWs have a chance to read that and take it for what it is. It doesn't PROVE anything regarding whether or not Jesus was on a cross or not (although I think there is a preponderance of evidence that indicates it is so), but it does PROVE that the WT/FDS are not honest scholars and are not interested in sharing actual facts and scholarship, but merely interested in manipulation and trying to set their religion apart as separate and more 'worthy', knowing that they are NOT.
reniaa
Thankyou leolaia for you info again and earnest :) this is an interesting opposite to last info we discussed, here we defend using the original replacement even knowing it causes confusion, the average person wouldn't know the difference between the "Adonai" used as Lord and the tetragramation translated as lord, you get confusing scriptures like "My LORD said to my Lord" both totally different words in hebrew but translated into the same meaning :S.
I wanted to double check that JW's on this point, I suppose the question is, should a christian religion continue the jewish tradition of not mentioning God's name considering it sacred, Certainly it does help the trinity viewpoint to have both words translated as lord.
As to use of jahweh and jehovah the origin of both is interesting :)
Early transcriptions of ??????? similar to "Jehovah" Excerpts from Raymond Martin's Pugio Fidei adversus Mauros et Judaeos of 1270 CE (page 559).
(The text in the image reads: "Jehova, or [rather] Adonay".) The word Jehovah displayed at the Roman Catholic Church named St. Martinskirche, Olten, Switzerland, 1521. Graven image of the divine name as it is written on the wall of a Norwegian church. (Source: The Divine Name in Norway)
Transcriptions of ??????? similar to
"Jehovah" occurred as early as the
13th century.
1278: Jehova/Yohoua: in the work Pugio fidei by the Spanish monk Raymond Martin (Raymundus Martini). [4]
1303: Yohouah: in the book Porchetus' Victory Against the Ungodly Hebrews. by Porchetus de Salvaticis. [5] . [4]
1518: Iehoua: in De Arcanis
Catholicæ Veritatis,1518, folio
xliii by Pope Leo X's confessor
Peter Galatin (Galatinus)
1530: Iehouah: Tyndale's Pentateuch
1611: Iehovah: King James Bible of 1611
1671: Jehovah: 1671 [OT] / 1669 [NT] edition of the King James Bible
The editors of the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon write that the pronunciation "Jehovah" was unknown until 1520 when it was introduced by Galatinus; but it was contested by Le Mercier, J. Drusius, and L. Capellus, as against grammatical and historical propriety. The English transcription "Jehovah" appears in King James Versions as early as the 1670's and in subsequent versions. The critique of the English transcription Jehovah, as well as the critique of Galatinus's Latin Transcription Iehoua, and the earlier English transcriptions Iehouah and Iehovah, is based on the belief of scholars that the vowel points of ??????? are not the actual vowel points of God's name.
Thus while most scholarly sources say that scholars are critiquing the name "Jehovah", Galatinus's Latin Transcription Iehoua and the earlier English transcriptions Iehouah [1530 A.D.] and Iehovah [1611 A.D.] were being critiqued before the English transcription "Jehovah" [1671] ever started to appear. From a pronunciation standpoint in English, Iehouah has the same pronunciation and sounds identical to Jehovah.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah
and yahweh
Various proposals exist for what the vowels of ???? were. Current convention is ??????? , that is, "Yahweh" (IPA: /jah'we/). Evidence is:
Some Biblical theophoric names end in -ia(h) or -yahu as shortened forms of YHWH: that points to the first vowel being "a".
Various Early Christian Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name seem to point to "Yahwe h " or similar.
Samaritan priests have preserved a liturgical pronunciation "Yahwe" or "Yahwa" to the present day. [4]
Today many scholars accept this proposal, [5] based on the pronunciation conserved both by the Church Fathers (as noted above) and by the Samaritans. [6] (Here 'accept' does not necessarily mean that they actually believe that it describes the truth, but rather that among the many vocalizations that have been proposed, none is clearly superior. That is, 'Yahweh' is the scholarly convention, rather than the scholarly consensus.) In some editions of the sidur, Jewish prayer book, there are no vowels under God's name, to signify that we do not know God's name and that there is absolutely no pronunciation.
[edit] Evidence from theophoric names
"Yahu" or "Y e hu" is a common short form for "Yahweh" in Hebrew theophoric names; as a prefix it sometimes appears as "Y e ho-". This has caused two opinions:
In former times (at least from c.1650 AD), that it was abbreviated from the supposed pronunciation "Yehowah", rather than "Yahweh" which contains no 'o'- or 'u'-type vowel sound in the middle.
[5] Recently, that, as "Yahweh" is likely an imperfective verb form, "Yahu" is its corresponding preterite or jussive short form: compare yist a hawe h (imperfective), yistáhû (preterit or jussive short form) = "do obeisance".
George Wesley Buchanan in Biblical Archaeology Review argues for (1), as the prefix "Yehu-" or "Yeho-" always keeps its second vowel. [7]
Smith’s 1863 A Dictionary of the Bible Section # 2.1 supports (1) for the same reason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
lol the world according to wiki but they put the pronounciation fairly as it stands :)
Leolaia

Hi Earnest....I understand that we are really not that much in disagreement and I was partly responding to reniaa's original question. I wanted to first point out that the substitution is not just a rabbinical thing but an earlier, more widespread thing in Judaism (reflecting, as you point out, Hellenistic influence, as well as a concept of transcendence in monotheism that made it less desirable to name God), attested first in the LXX translation which itself explicitly forbids the naming of God in Leviticus 24:16. Since the translators themselves took this view, and since there are early witnesses to the LXX use of kurios in Aristobolus and the Letter of Aristeas (which are earlier than the oldest extant MSS), I consider the systematic substitution with kurios in the LXX as more likely original than the (later) Palestinian use of tetragrammaton in the LXX. So the substitution in Philo is not reflective of a change in Alexandrian Judaism but follows the same pattern found in earlier Alexandrine sources, including the LXX which was produced in the same Alexandrian milieu, and Philo himself used a copy of the LXX that already had the substitution (hence his statement, among other things, that the "sacred scriptures" refer to kurios as having ho ón as his onoma "name", i.e. ego eimi ho ón, ho ón apestalke me pros humas ... kurios <> apestalke me pros humas, touto mou esti to onoma in Exodus 3:14-15 LXX). You are right that the text was pluriform in the first century AD (as I mentioned with respect to 4QLXXLev b), so it is possible that some copies that circulated among Christians had the tetragrammaton. Whether or not this was the case with the writers of the NT themselves, however, can be assessed with internal evidence. Paul shows clearly that his copy of the LXX had kurios, not yhwh. Philo and Josephus both alluded to the law in Leviticus 24:16 that forbade the uttering of the name. So it isn't simply a matter of relying on later hexaplaric editions of the LXX to infer whether the substitution occurred early -- we already have evidence of this from the period itself.
Leolaia

this is an interesting opposite to last info we discussed, here we defend using the original replacement even knowing it causes confusion, the average person wouldn't know the difference between the "Adonai" used as Lord and the tetragramation translated as lord, you get confusing scriptures like "My LORD said to my Lord" both totally different words in hebrew but translated into the same meaning :S.
Confusing, if one ignores the capitals, but it was precisely this thing that was probably found in the apostle Paul's own Bible, which allowed him to apply lots of Scriptures about "Jehovah" to Jesus. The use of LORD in capitals for the divine name in the OT reflects the same use of kurios to render the tetragrammaton in the Bible of the early Christians.
The insertion of "Jehovah" in the NT of the NWT makes it very hard for an average JW to grasp Paul's points. In other words, you have to read Paul with the understanding that "Jehovah" is really Jesus. If you don't do that, you would miss what he is saying because you would think that Paul talks about someone else rather than Jesus when "Jehovah" appears. I don't think very many JWs would think of Jesus as Jehovah, right? So it would have been better to have not messed with the text by inserting a name that wasn't there to begin with.
Earnest

Hi Leolaia...the problem that I have in assuming that the original LXX replaced the tetragrammaton with kurios is that, as you note, the oldest extant manuscripts that we have which contain verses including God's name either have the tetragrammaton or a Greek equivalent (usually iaw). These are not only Palestinian MSS but also include the Fouad Papyrus 266 and some of the fragments found at Oxyrhynchus, so it would seem to have an Egyptian provenance.
Your suggestion that the translation of Leviticus 24:16 as "He that names the name..." is a good reason for replacing the name with 'Lord', but that does not explain why anyone would then replace "lord" with the actual name if kurios was in the original Greek. It would be far more likely, imo, that someone translating that verse would replace the name with kurios than the other way round.
Perhaps this is straying a bit from the thread as I have no disagreement on your view of it's use in the NT and appreciate your lack of dogmatism when it comes to things we cannot know. Nevertheless, I would appreciate your thoughts on the above.
Earnest
Sirona

The insertion of "Jehovah" in the NT of the NWT makes it very hard for an average JW to grasp Paul's points. In other words, you have to read Paul with the understanding that "Jehovah" is really Jesus. If you don't do that, you would miss what he is saying because you would think that Paul talks about someone else rather than Jesus when "Jehovah" appears. I don't think very many JWs would think of Jesus as Jehovah, right? So it would have been better to have not messed with the text by inserting a name that wasn't there to begin with.
Yes!
This was a major reason I left the JWs. I realised that what they did with the NWT was dishonest.
Messing with the bible is wrong according to the bible itself. Somehow I suspect that Reniaa will come back with a JW argument or a "well at least they're better than other christians" argument, since that is all she has done throughout the 19 pages of this thread.
Sirona
reniaa

I think it's time this thread went to happy thread land! but if you and leo could give me one example of where other religions haven't been controlled by governing men either one or more inc the teachings and practices from Paul onwards, I'd be surprised! Men where given the responsibility to present the bible to other men once jesus died, you and I can't change this fact, and If I quibble that I say what you accuse JW's of has been done by all Christian faiths that doesn't stop me being right.
All I can say is each person has to judge for themselves which faith presents to their satisfaction what they themselves closely find in the scriptures and from jesus's words if Christian, other faiths also have similar criteria in this way.
I have my doubts about JW's but I'm struggling still to find an alternative that fits my current beliefs. On this i have been totally honest from the start, but this thread has given me food for thought especially info from leolaia :)
reniaa
nomoreguilt

Serona, Leolaia,.......And the rest. Thank you all for all the info you have laid out here. At least through the efforts of all here, I've learned an awful lot in the last few days. I never understood why the jw's ever referred to the use of the name jehovah that was historical. And then they adopt it as thier OWN??? Justification, I guess? Legitimacy??But to use it all that much in the Nt ??? Just Wrong!
NMG
Sirona

but if you and leo could give me one example of where other religions haven't been controlled by governing men either one or more inc the teachings and practices from Paul onwards, I'd be surprised!
I can't believe you! Honestly, your ability to ignore facts astounds me!
Leolaia has proven to you that
1. The Watchtower explanations regarding the "torture stake" or "cross" argument are in error. She has shown that it is far more likely for Jesus to have been carrying the crossbeam of a "cross" than for him to be carrying a stake (which never happened historically)
2. That the Watchtower were in error in their "messing with" the New Testament and inserting the name "Jehovah". She has shown how that even affects the understanding of the scriptures.
These points are significant, especially point 2, because it is a fundamental issue.
In response, because you simply CANNOT ADMIT that the JWs are wrong, you use a really lame argument of "well all religions are run by imperfect men....show me one that isn't". Then you mention the bible and how it has been altered. Oh so I think I'll write my own bible....and alter it all I want....then when someone tells me I'm wrong I will simply use your argument of "well men have always altered the bible, so what is your problem?"
I wonder if you admit that the Watchtower should not have inserted the name Jehovah in the New Testament? (considering that there is no mention of the name Jehovah in the original manuscripts). If you admit that they should not have, then you admit that they have altered the bible! (a big sin, according to revelation). If you say they were right in inserting the name, then you ignore all the evidence and you are back in la la land.
These threads often serve to show people how very intellectually dishonest the JWs actually are. I don't know why, but I'm always surprised at how JWs can ignore logical arguments and facts.
Sirona

Thinking of becoming a Witness again and my reasons for doing so :(

[edit] Evidence from theophoric names

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