Is it disrespectful to call GOD by his name JEHOVAH?

by foolsparadise 59 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  wobble

  Thanks stephen,

  I agree with what you say to a point, I just feel it is wrong to go against your conscience ,your inner feelings, and I do not feel happy addressing the Sovereign Lord of the Universe by anything that is not recognizing who He is, the All-Powerful.

  Yes I am a son, Jesus is my Father, but prayer is worshipful address.and to my heart and mind it needs to be respectful in the utmost sense.

  I do believe that to use the word Jehovah is disrespectful to the true God, although after years of habit it is difficult to expunge, but it is lacking respect because of the lies that the WT have attached to the name, and therefore the mental picture that their hate-filled god, brings to mind as you say it.

  Love

  Wobble
• 

  designs

  Greg Stafford has some interesting comments in his new book on the use of 'Jah' and 'Hallelujah' from Revelation and Jesus, the good Jew, reciting the Torah verbatum with YHWH in the text.

  Its nice to hear a room full of people recite something meaningful to them like the Blessings at Synagogue or elsewhere the Our Father.

  Humans have a tendency to get easily superstitious over many things and use names and objects like talismans.
• 

  Narkissos

  designs,

  "Jesus, the good Jew" (more or less in line with later Rabbinical Judaism => Pharisaic-style rabbi) is just as likely and conjectural a reconstruction as another (Jesus the Essene, the Zealot, the Cynic, etc.)... The only facts we have are the texts -- where "Jesus" speaks Greek and quotes from the Septuagint, and inserts a few approximate Aramaic formulae, especially in miracle working (like magical formulae). The original meaning of Hebrew expressions like Hosannah is completely lost to the Gospel writers, and it is highly debatable whether Allèlouia (which is left untranslated in Revelation 19) was still evocative of the divine name to the final Christian author of Revelation, let alone to his readers / hearers...
• 

  designs

  Narkissos,

  As much as the NT may have or may not have been edited and filtered thru the early Church an observant and astute Jewish man comes thru in the Gospels, one who found his way into Sabbath gatherings. The early community that followed the Way were connected to their Jewish roots for many decades until events caused a more permanent rift.

  The Dead Sea Scrolls show the use of the Tetragrammaton in the time of this good Jew.

  Shalom Aleichem
• 

  AK - Jeff

  The Dead Sea Scrolls show the use of the Tetragrammaton in the time of this good Jew.

  Well, they might show that the tetragrammaton was buried in the desert, but I have seen no significant indication among them that the early Christians used it. We know of course that the tetra was used among Hebrew text, a significant portion of which the DSS were. What point are you making here? The only thing it would mean to me is that when the Essennes [or whomever buried them] put them there, they included old writings that contained the tetra.

  If I buried some old english books from the time of my great grandfather, they would likely contain old english expressions. What would that prove about what I believed, or the words I used, in my time? Nothing. Absolutely Nothing.

  Jeff
• 

  designs

  Jeff

  This community apparently kept writing up till the close of the 1st century when they disbanded. What it can show is the range of the religious Jewish community in the time of Jesus. Did any of these scrolls find their way into the Jewish communities in southern Judea, hard to say.

  Sometimes you have to peel the onion a little in doing historical forensics, set an hypothesis and see if it holds water. When Jesus quotes the Torah in Matthew 4 did he speak in Aramaic, Greek, did he quote the Torah in comptemporary Hebrew of the day or in the dialect of say King David's day. I bring up the later because in the DSS the Tetragrammaton is written in the Hebrew characters from the time of King David but the main text is written in the Hebrew characters of the 1st century.

  The Jews who were believing Jesus to be the Messiah in the 1st century show an interest in their Jewish roots and a certain interest in the indentifying markers of a Hebrew Messiah.

  When revisions of history and historical figures are made it shows the editors know something of the original on which to build their newer version on.
• 

  AwSnap

  How can it be disrespectful??Jehovah isn`t his name,nobody knows the true pronunciation.

  That is exactly what I was going to say. Oh, and someone made the comment that I simply cannot get out of my head.....'if your name is Bob, and people insist on calling you Flob and forcing everyone else to call you Flob, wouldn't that piss you off?' That wasn't the exact comment, but it's what I got from it.

  Jehovah is not the way to pronounce God's name. Nobody knows how. And no, I do not call my dad by his first name...in fact, I got quite a few spankings for doing so as a child.
• 

  The Scotsman

  I would like to think that the creator of the entire universe would not mind if we called him Jehovah. If he did mind - it would be an example of someone who is very easily annoyed.
• 

  Narkissos

  designs,

  Imo the Christian "communities" which produced the NT writings, including the Gospels, can be traced back to a number of "roots" in and out (or on the fringe) of Judaism, both in Palestine and in the diaspora. Some of these "root" circles -- which may or may not have considered themselves "Christian" -- may have used the divine name in some form (in writing and/or orally, as a paleo-Hebrew transliteration requiring oral substitution, or in pronuncible Greek transliteration like Iaô): in our present state of knowledge we can't either prove it or rule it out. What remains is that the actual pronunciation or writing of the divine name in any form apparently played no part in the stage of "Christianity" which produced the earliest known Christian texts, although the notion of the "divine name" remained an important theological motif (cf. the Lord's Prayer which parallels the Pharisaic Qaddish in Matthew, neither of which requires pronouncing the name btw; the Christological uses of kurios in Paul, the "name" manifested by the Son and given to him in John, more loosely the absolute egô eimi... all those are the echoes of the theme of the divine name in the NT, but do not imply actual use of the divine name in any form at that stage).

  Now when you ask, "When Jesus quotes the Torah in Matthew 4 did he speak in Aramaic, Greek, did he quote the Torah in comptemporary Hebrew of the day or in the dialect of say King David's day?" -- you forget to ask: did he? I mean, you seem to simply take for granted that a late 1st-century Greek narrative (in that case, a rabbinic-like exchange of prooftexts with the devil, with no witnesses!) actually reflects something that happened to a Palestinian character in the first century: this assumption I find very questionable.
• 

  Finally-Free

  if your name is Bob, and people insist on calling you Flob and forcing everyone else to call you Flob, wouldn't that piss you off?'

  Exactly! Especially if I were in a position of authority and the people deliberately mispronouncing my name just presumed they were on a first name basis with me.

  Maybe I should try it with a judge the next time I fight a traffic ticket, and see how well I do.

  W