hmmmm interesting point.
can you tell NE I am sending pm. cheers.
Do You Believe Gods name is Jehovah and why?
by sarahsmile 76 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Stauros
Jesus called Him Heavenly Father not Jehovah (YHWH)(YHVH). What does Jesus mean when he said let your name be sanctified?
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*lost*
Maybe name as in
One True God,
God the Father.
God the Creator.
God the almighty.
etc.... no other god, entity, being, was/is all powerful like god, with all of his attribute.
maybe, possibly.
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GreenhornChristian
Perhaps YHWH is not Jesus father.
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mP
@rawe
I added brackets to reflect El Shaddai reference. I will need to read over some more text, but I tend to see "Jehovah" as the later, somewhat forced, addition to the text and this explanation here at Exodus 6 reflecting that. I found the Wikipedia article interesting too, with the explanation that 'Shaddai' may mean 'destroyer' and thus comes out as 'Almighty'. Certainly the idea that the God that belonged to a people could help them in war comes out in OT writings. The circumstance of NT writers was entirely different, part of a Jewish sect that was opposed both by Jews and Romans. Not likely they would make a connection between God and nationalism.
Cheers,
-RandymP:
Yes even before the watchtower, the authors or editors of the jewish texts were trying to unite all references to god by their ancestors into one god. The many tribes and peoples tha twere part of the nation of israel had their own traditions and they all know that each had different names for the true God. THe answer is these were different gods, but in the interests of being a monopoly the priests in jerusalem wanted all teh sacrifices, god for themselves. Perhaps this was because israel was a poor land or they were simply greedy.
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mP
Heaven;
MP , you definitely missed my point. God is not a sentient being. Slavery is a result of people overpowering and controlling other people. Slavery is lacking in love. There is also no divine message kept only for certain peoples. It's just a message created by a certain group of humans for a certain group of humans and nothing more.
mP:
So why does God demand genocide and slavery ? Once you admit those passages were created and motivated by selfish men with an agenda, its also obvious how the rest of the text was formed. After all what parts can be trusted to be unaltered and why are you trusting such truths to vile evil men ?
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rawe
Hi Sarahsmile,
"Personally I think all bibles should place the tegtagramanon back."
It depends on what the Bible translator is attempting to accomplish. There is little question the tetragrammaton (YHWH) appears thousands of times in the oldest Hebrew manuscripts we have. Likewise we know later copies replaced the tetragrammaton with Adonai (Lord). The Jehovah-to-Lord replacement also happened to the Greek Septuagint translation of the OT.
A big problem one has in translating the Bible is simply that it is not one book from one author at one time. It is a collection of books that were not stable on this issue. One of the problem in using the oldest Hebrew text for OT is that it creates a hybrid translation looked at from the Christian perspective. Thus when Paul says this...
All Scripture is inspired of God - 2 Timothy 3:16a
What exactly does he mean by 'Scripture'? I think it is safe to conclude he means the Greek Septuagint (LXX) and here is why...
Hebrews 1:6 says this: But when he again brings his Firstborn into the inhabited earth, he says: “And let all God’s angels do obeisance (sic) to him.”
The "All God's angels" is an OT quote from Deuteronomy, but look how it reads...
Be glad, YOU nations, with his people, For he will avenge the blood of his servants, And he will pay back vengeance to his adversaries And will indeed make atonement for the ground of his people. - Deuteronomy 32:43
The puzzle is solved when one looks this up in the Septuagint...
Rejoice, ye heavens, with him, and let all the angels of God worship him; rejoice ye Gentiles, with his people, and let all the sons of God strengthen themselves in him; for he will avenge the blood of his sons, and he will render vengeance, and recompense justice to his enemies, and will reward them that hate him; and the Lord shall purge the land of his people. - Deuteronomy 32:43 (LXX)
So... as a translator, I think it would be very legitimate to create a translation that did not include the divine name in OT, if the purpose was to create a Bible translation that reflected the religious text as used by the early Christian community. That text would be the LXX, which by that time had the name Jehovah replaced with Lord. This theory is supported by the following facts: (a) Christians writers wrote in Greek and thus would have relied on a Greek translation of the OT, (b) no extant manuscripts of NT include the tetragrammaton, (c) the quote of Deuteronomy in Hebrews shows the LXX was the source (d) and we know that later copies of the LXX had replaced Jehovah with Lord.
Cheers,
-Randy -
sarahsmile
Interesting points. Thank you for your thoughts.
Going to think about it.
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Phizzy
I concur 100% Randy, with your conclusions about what the Apostle Paul meant by "scripture", the Septuagint, plus, possibly (?), other writings too perhaps that are not included in the arbitrary Canon decided on by the R.C Church.
Certainly, any debate about using "the Divine Name" is redundant for Christians, for these and the reasons stated earlier in the thread.
The WT gets it abysmally wrong as usual.
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mP
rawe
All Scripture is inspired of God - 2 Timothy 3:16a
What exactly does he mean by 'Scripture'? I think it is safe to conclude he means the Greek Septuagint (LXX) and here is why...
Hebrews 1:6 says this: But when he again brings his Firstborn into the inhabited earth, he says: “And let all God’s angels do obeisance (sic) to him.”
mP:
WHile i agree that Paul was quoting the greek lxx, the question remains which books did he think were special. Its hard to tell given that he never actually makes an effort to say which or what. One can only conclude that God doesnt really care or is mighty sloppy with his messages.