"As to the Old Testament name of God, certainly the spelling and pronunciation "Jehovah" were originally a blunder."
(The Bible in Living English, 1972, p.7, Watch Tower Bible And Tract Society Of Pennsylvania)
What's the deal?
WT Says Jehovah a mistake
by garybuss 59 Replies latest jw friends
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garybuss
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pomegranate
The deal is: It's called the truth.
"Jehovah" is a blunder and a half.
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Quotes
Can anyone provide a legible scan of this material? Once verified, this one is going straight into the website!
~Quotes
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garybuss
If they know their name is a blunder, why don't they change it? I don't get it . . .
gb
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Satanus
It's severely twisted thinking. That blunder is the foundation cornerstone of their rutherfordian religion. Even the catholic church, which invented the word prefers not to use it. Their bible uses yahweh, which is more accurate. Go figure.
SS
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garybuss
Quotes, I have the book and a scanner. I will try to scan it and post it tomorrow.
gb
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Big Tex
I don't mean to be picky, but I think the correct name in English is YHWH. I don't think the ancient Hebrew used vowels. Yahweh is the closest approximation.
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cellomould
The usage of vowels in Hebrew was simply different. They used symbols above the characters more often than separate characters. Not that I care much.
cellmould
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pomegranate
Their bible uses yahweh, which is more accurate.
According to the Jews. Of which if you check their record in the Bible, they constantly lied about everything.
I believe YHWH was never pronouncable. It's pronunciation was not lost to Jewish tradition, it was NEVER KNOWN how to utter it.
If I believe the Jews story that they stopped using it out of superstition, that means their superstition was more powerful than God's name. Sorry, the JEWS in the Bible have a notorious record of LYING, CHEATING, STEALING and flipping God the finger.
They NEVER knew how to say the name. As a matter of fact, I would bet it would be WRONG in God's eyes to utter a name for him because in fact, HIS NAME IS SO SUPERLATIVE, it would be impossible to repeat.
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You Know
You are much mistaken. The Watchtower has said no such thing. You are referring to the preface of the Bible in Living English that the WTS printed for a time. That translation, however, was not produced by the Society, they merely acquired the copyright for a period and distributed that translation. That being the case, the forward from which your quote was taken was written by the author of the translation, Steven Byington. (It's often referred to as the Byington Translation.) He even signed his initials after the forward showing that the opinions expressed were his own. Byington was not associated with the WTS as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. So, the WTS merely faithfully reproduced the author's opinion and not their own.
Also, Byington's comment about the name "Jehovah" being a mistake, has reference merely to the anglicized form of the YHWH. At that time Byington may have been laboring under the erroneous opinion that Yahweh was the more accurate English rendition of YHWH. We now know though that Yahweh is not even close seeing that the YHWH was originally pronounced using 3 syllabels, not two as in Yahweh, and that the vowel sound for that middle syllabel was an "O."
/ You Know