Don't You Think It's Odd That "Jehovah" Was Invented By A Catholic Monk?... (page 3)

Satanus

Jehovah is, in reality, a catholic god. Wt corp has purloined him. Give him back!!!

S

Faithful Witness

I have not done my homework on the origin of the pronunciation "Jehovah." It never quite made sense to me, that they wanted to call the Father by his personal name. I always felt very weird using it.

I have never called my dad by his first name, even though I've always known it! I can only imagine his response... especially in light of the way he withdrew his affection, when I stopped my bible study. Now, he is love-bombing in his own sort of desperate and obvious way. I wonder what he would say, if I told him I wanted to get closer to him, and have decided to start calling him "Don."

My elderette is attempting another subject change this week, and I would like to finish our discussion we started last week, regarding the use of the name Jehovah. Who came up with that pronunciation? Where can I find reliable documentation of that fact? Thanks for starting this thread.

Satanus

'The pronunciations "Jehovah" and "Yahweh" By combining the vowel signs of 'Adho •n ay' and 'Elo • him' with the four consonants of the Tetragrammaton the pronunciations Yeho •wah' and Yeho wih' were formed . The first of these provided the basis for the Latinized form "Jehova (h) ." The first recorded use of this form dates from the thirteenth century C .E . Raymundus Martini, a Spanish monk of the Dominican Order, used it in his book Pugeo Fidei of the year 1270 .' pg 884 Aid to bible understanding - wt bi soc 1971.

S

leaving_quietly

That this could be so in some cases is indicated by the following statement appearing in the Katholische Bildepost (a Catholic magazine of Germany): “The name of God, however, which they [Jehovah’s Witnesses] have changed to ‘Jehovah’ is simply an invention of the sect.” (August 24, 1969) This statement smacks of religious prejudice. It also reveals poor research since, as already mentioned, the first writer to use the term “Jehova” was a Catholic monk—obviously not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses! -- w80 2/1 p. 12

Thank you for this opportunity to present some facts to you and to the public. We do not say that “Jehovah” is the correct pronunciation of God’s name. For that matter, neither is “Jesus” the correct pronunciation of Christ’s name. But according to the Aramaic language which Christ and his apostles spoke, his name was pronounced “Yeshu′a” (the a representing a gutteral ending). But “Jesus” is only our colloquial way of pronouncing his name, and we do not find fault with you for using it instead of Yeshu′a. However, if you call it shallow scholarship for the Committee to use the word Jehovah in the New World Translation, then you will have to admit that it is due to the shallow scholarship of the Roman Catholic clergy of the thirteenth century, for in that century the word historically appears among them. -- w50 12/1 p. 469 (part of a response to Matthew Smith, Monsignor of the Roman Catholic Church in America)

Apognophos

Honestly, there's no need to delve into historical details. Any honest and knowledgeable Witness will admit that the name definitely wasn't pronounced "Jehovah" in the original Hebrew since there is not a 'J' sound in that language. The vowel sounds are a trivial matter by comparison. There is plenty of uncertainty over whether "Yahweh" is correct, so we can't be dogmatic about how it should be said accurately. But if you want more details, you can simply read the appendix in the revised NWT that deals with the subject and acknowledges that the pronunciation was not "Jehovah". The information there is pretty or totally accurate.

Your point about whether it's appropriate to call God by his name is an interesting one, but easily deflected by a Witness, who will point out that (a) the Jews used his name before the superstition came about, which is indisputable, and (b) the NT talks about calling on God's name, sanctifying it, etc. This is probably referring to God's name in the sense of worshipping him, or in terms of his reputation (and in some cases the text is actually referring to Jesus or Jesus-as-God). But good luck getting a JW to admit that the text doesn't mean what they say it means.

The only clear point I think can be made is that JWs are not making an awful lot of effort to pronounce God's name correctly, which you'd think they would since it is so central to their religion. Also, you'd think that God would have preserved that name if it was meant to be used after Jewish times, or that he would have imparted some new insight to the Bible Students before they took up the name "Jehovah" in 1931; obviously He didn't, since the Witnesses went with the common transliteration of the time.

Satanus

The catholics didn't really bother much w the name. My impression is that it was used in an obscure catholic book and then basically, shelved. Leave it to a protestant sect to make an issue, an idol, really, of it. Its kind of like when kids find dads old ww2 ciggarettes and light them up. They go a little nuts.

S

snare&racket

700 years after Jesus, the first earliest mistake was seen.

The Jews used to read the OT out, the sentence YHWH means "he causes to become".

The hebrew word for lord was adonai.

In the OT, these were the two main penned, references to god in the text. No name at all.

The Jews became mystical about refrences to god, so would not say any of the terms reffering to their god out loud, spexifically YHWH. So when reading the OT, in front of others they would say adonai or other terms instead instead.

So in early manuscripts it can be seen YHWH with the vowels for adonai below it, to remind the reader to say adonai, IF reading aloud.

Skip to 700ad, nearly a thousand years after jesus, and copyists assume that the old hebrew scrolls with YHWH and aoa written beneath it, maybe should me mixed together to make god's name. Like it was some sort of code.

So YHWH and adonai's vowels were mixed. It starts as YaHoWaH, over hundreds of years and the introduction of latin it became JaHoVaH (the YHWH simply replaced with latin alphabet JHVH).

So for a few hundred years the name was used in hymns, bibles etc. Then, in recent history, when they found all the old scrolls and realised what had happened with the copying and insertion of the mashed together YHWH and aoa written below it, the Catholics embarassingly removed the totally made up name JaHoVaH from all their bibles etc, replacing it back go adonai or YHWH.

So cut to the 1930's and an ignorant man in Brooklyn starts pondering who this 'JaHoVaH is in all the old bibles and hymns...' silly muppet jumped the gun and before you know it, they name the religion after a copying mistake.

The most embarassing thing is, they know what gney have done now. At the start of the greek interlinear it says, the name has been continued because it is a popular rendition.

What kind of reason is that AND why didn't I ever read or see any of this, all the while they had us telling people, only we use gods name!

What is worse, adonai and YHWH is obviously ancient Hebrew. The Watchtower society alone insist on exchanging all the greek terms for lord and god etc with Jehovah, for no reason at all. This is SO deceptive, it could not have been in the NT because it was a different language .....AND with thousands of years seperating the OT and NT. Of course as well as that, Jehovah is in NO old mansucripts of the NT and lastly.....as I explain above, it is not even a legitimate name.

snare x

p.s. It is a real eye opening thing to show a JW. "Do you know where the name Jehovah comes from?"

most Jw's are very proud, they will say yes, ask them to pen the tetragrammaton. Most will rememebr it as YHWH. Then ask them what it means. "He causes to become" or "He does as he wills" etc. Now ask what adonai means in hebrew? Remind them it is LORD. Now simply ask them to add the voewls from adonai to YHWH. Then say change the Y to a J and the W to a V for the latinisation.

It is a powerful thing to show them. Then explain it as the copying mistake it is, reinforced and used eventually by a catholic monk that bought into it 1500 years after Jesus died.

HowTheBibleWasCreated

You cannot change the W to a V in hebrew!!!

NAVYTOWN

Regarding the debate about the so-called 'correct name' of 'god'.....Jehovah vs. Yahweh : Who really gives a rat's ass? It's all made-up nonsense anyway. It's not like there are NO OTHER PROBLEMS in the world for people to be concerned with!!! Please grow up, People!!!

HowTheBibleWasCreated

Actually it does matter. Knowing the name of 'God' is YHWH means we can search for him in arceology and find out for instance:

He was a regional God

He was Married to Asherah (Sacred Pole)

He replaced El... the previous Canaanite/Israelite head God

He came from the Shashu tribe south of Edom in Midian area.

Knowing that 'God' has a name it the first step to proving he doesn't exist

Don't You Think It's Odd That "Jehovah" Was Invented By A Catholic Monk?...

Share this