Earnest
I think you should look up, even in the footnotes of Nestle-Aland, how many passages in the New Testament are there, where there are several readings, and fluctuations can be observed in this. "Jesus", "Lord Jesus", "the Lord", "Christ Jesus", etc. I think it follows from this that there must have been "Jehovah" in all such places. Well, that's a pretty unscientific proposition.
The fact that Jerome and Origen (and of course many others) were writing about that YHWH was included in the Old Testament undermines the Watchtower's hypothesis that an early Christian church was driven by the superstitious erasure of the name YHWH from everywhere.
The fact that there were many versions of the manuscripts also proves that there was no direct will or central authority that wanted or was able to make a single established version of the NT text exclusive and destroy all others without a trace. So in Christianity there was no such figure as, like Uthman in the Islam, who ordered the compilation of the standard version of the Quran, and destroyed other versions.
This is indeed a conspiracy theory, what the WTS presents here: without any specific direct (manuscript) or indirect (report about such a manuscript) evidence they claim that all the early Bible copyists of the New Testament, and even the entire Church itself, were evil, "apostate", and Bible forgers.
Even the Watchtower praises Jerome and presents him as an honest Bible translator in thir articles, even though according to their logic he was also an evil, "apostate". Although there were many manuscripts that no longer exist in his time, and Jerome collated them during his translation of the Vulgate, he nowhere indicated that he had seen even a single New Testament document containing YHWH.
The Watchtower's argument is completely priceless speculation, they refer to such as "reasonable" that Jesus and the apostles and these alleged proto-Watchtowerite Christians of the first century "used" the "Jehovah", because Jesus rebuked the Pharisees. Well, yes, but Jesus always indicated specifically what he objected to in the teaching and practice of the Pharisees, and neither Jesus nor the apostles objected to the Jewish tradition of not pronouncing the Name, it was simply not an issue!
During the time of Christ, the name Yahweh was no longer used in everyday life; Adonai had displaced it from common usage. The people had not read or pronounced it for two centuries; the majority were not even aware that it had once been commonly used, and even fewer knew its actual pronunciation. Although they heard this sacred name every day during the priestly blessing at the temple, they could not clearly identify it because the extended melody with which the priests sang it somewhat drowned it out.
However, during the time of the oppressive reign of the Hellenizing Syrians, to avoid misuse and misinterpretation, the name Yahweh was no longer pronounced clearly, but was rather swallowed up in the customary melody so that the uninitiated could not understand it. Rabbi Tarfon, a priest and scholar who survived the destruction of the temple, testified to this (Tosefta Berakhot VII; Kiddushin 71a). The daily worship service concluded with the priestly blessing, which was part of the supplementary part of the service. (See Benediction and Ite missa est!). There was no blessing at the evening sacrifice.
Only the priests and the scribes knew it. However, only the priests pronounced it in the temple when they said the blessing. Outside the temple, in the synagogues, only Adonai was allowed to be used. According to Tamid VII/2 (v. Sota VIl, 6), "In the temple, they pronounced the Name as it is written, but in the country (outside the temple, in the synagogues) its alias," (i.e., Adonai).
It was an extremely solemn event when the high priest pronounced the sacred name of Yahweh at the three confessions on the Day of Atonement, which, however, he did later, because of frivolous people and to avoid abuses, not loudly, but quietly (Jerusalem Sanhedrin Chapter III 40b)
The fact that the priests were an exception was based on the clear command of God himself, according to which they had to pronounce His name in order to bless the sons of Israel (Numbers 6:23-27). The fact that it was only permitted for the priesthood to pronounce this name in the Jerusalem temple was justified by referring to Deuteronomy 12:21 and 14:24, because the temple is identified there as the place chosen by God to place His name and dwell there.
Apart from the priestly blessing, it was only permissible to pronounce the name of Yahweh in two cases: 1. In the case of the trial against the blasphemer during the testimony, where they wanted the eldest of the witnesses to reproduce the blasphemy exactly as the defendant had said it and to pronounce the name of God as the blasphemer had pronounced it. After the witness pronounced the name of Yahweh, the judges stood up and, in a sign of great outrage and pain, tore their clothes, which they never sewed back together. The second (and, if there was one, the third) witness only added: I can say the same. (Sanhedrin VII. 5; 55b - 56a). - 2. It was also pronounced during the education of the young men, when they communicated this sacred name to them with due caution in secret.
With the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70, the last refuge for the sacred name of Yahweh also disappeared, and over time the circle of those who knew how to pronounce this name correctly became smaller and smaller. Therefore, in order not to let it completely disappear, but still to exclude profanation, they allowed, with certain restrictions, that the priests could secretly and carefully communicate the name of Yahweh not only to the priests but also to other worthy and reliable devout disciples, but only once, at most twice a year. (Kiddushin 71a).
Eventually, due to secrecy, the original vocalization of this sacred name was completely forgotten among Jewish scholars, so that today no one knows its exact original pronunciation; an attempt to establish this by those outside the Jewish community is essentially only conjecture, which only has more or less probability, because non-Jewish witnesses mostly give the pronunciation of the Hebrew name in Greek transcription, not quite clearly (and cannot give it); and because they differ in their data. These non-Jewish witnesses are partly pagans, partly Christians.
Despite all the secrecy of the Jews, the pagans somehow learned to approximate the pronunciation of this much-concealed name (perhaps through the Egyptian Hellenistic Jews). Here, of course, we are not thinking of such strange pronunciations, readings, such as those recorded by some old Christian writers. Thus, Jerome informs in one of his letters (which Origen also mentions) that the Greeks who do not understand Hebrew, reading the tetragrammaton, the letters of this similar to Greek, from left to right said PIPI. The explanation for this is that there was an area where Jews and pagans met each other: magic, witchcraft, which was practiced by the ancient peoples without national difference and thus was international. Jewish and pagan witchcraft influenced each other. Since names in general, and especially the names of God, had great significance in magic, knowledge of the secret name of the Jewish God was of practical benefit to the "sorcerers" - whether they were Jews or pagans - they therefore tried to find out the secret.
And that they succeeded is evidenced by the magical texts of the pagan sorcerer papyri, in which we also come across Greek transcriptions of the four-letter name of God among the Jewish god names appearing in the magic formulas. And it is surprising that the pagan transcriptions of this name largely coincide with the transcriptions found in Christian church fathers and writers. This circumstance makes it clear that the pagan and Christian transcriptions can be traced back to a common source, that is, these Jewish god names originate from Jews.
It's clear that the pronunciation "Jehovah", which emerged during the Christian Middle Ages and can still be heard today from uninitiated Christians, a pronunciation never used by the Jews, is incorrect. This is common knowledge among scholars. It's known that the punctuators of the Hebrew text, the so-called Masoretes, when they supplied the Hebrew text of the Scripture (around the 7th century AD) which had so far only marked the consonants, with the vowels of traditional pronunciation, kept in mind the Jewish prohibition of pronouncing the name of God. In accordance with the Jewish custom of reading Adonai (אֲדֹנָי) instead of YHWH, they added the vowels of the Hebrew word Adonai to the unpronounceable four consonants, slightly altering the first vowel (e.g., instead of אֲדֹנָי, they put אֲדֹנָי), thus forming a word which was read as Adonai. Wherever Adonai already appears immediately next to YHWH, to avoid the repetition of the same word, the vowels of Elohim were added to YHWH, thus forming יְהֹוִה, which was read as Elohim.
The Masoretes, in their religious scrupulousness, wanted to make the pronunciation of YHWH impossible in order to protect it from profanation. This was one of the 'fences' conceived by Rabbinic thought to prevent the violation of the prohibition contained in Exodus 20:7.
It is therefore clear that the linguistically distorted form "Jehovah" (which makes no sense) comes from reading the consonants of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai, a mistaken pronunciation that began to gain popularity around 1520, when Peter Galatinus (d. circa 1540), a Franciscan monk and orientalist, later the confessor of Pope Leo X, recommended its adoption in his work 'De arcanis catholicae veritatis' (II, 10) published in 1518 in Ortona. This pronunciation was also adopted by Martin Luther, although several people protested against it at the time.
Religious Jews still show their respect for the sacred name Yahweh by never pronouncing it (as they do not know its original pronunciation), instead saying either Adonai or HaShem in its place. Even though they regard its pronunciation as forbidden, they are allowed to pronounce each of its four consonants separately (Yod, He, Vav, He). Refer to Sebuot 34a; Sopherim 4; Abot De-Rabbi Nathan 34; Yer. Megillah 1, 9.
In writing, it has also become customary to merely indicate this sacred name in abbreviated form. This used to be done with either four, three, or two Yod characters (י), thus: יי, ייי, or simply with a He (ה), which is an abbreviation for HaShem.
The text is Shabbat 116a, which reads as follows:
"With regard to the blank folios [gilyohnim] and the Torah scrolls of heretics [minim], one does not rescue them from the fire; rather, they burn in their place, they and the names of God contained therein. What, is this not referring to the blank folios of a Torah scroll? The Gemara rejects this: No, it is referring to the blank folios of the scrolls of heretics [minim]. The Gemara is surprised at this: Now, with regard to the scrolls of heretics [minim] themselves, one does not rescue them; is it necessary to say that one does not rescue their blank folios? Rather, this is what it is saying: And the scrolls of heretics are like blank folios.
With regard to the blank folios and the Torah scrolls of the heretics, one does not rescue them from the fire. Rabbi Yosei says: During the week, one cuts the names of God contained therein and buries them, and burns the rest. Rabbi Tarfon said in the form of an oath: I will bury my sons if I fail to do the following, that if these books come into my possession I will burn them and the names contained therein."
According to the Watchtower Society, the word minim (heretic) refers to Christians, but in reality, we can speculate among three possibilities. The minim either refers to heretical Jews (Bick's opinion), or to Christians (according to the Society), or to such Judaizing Christians who were also considered heretics by the early Christian Church (for example, the Ebionites).
The Jews actually did not call Christians "minim" (heretics), but "nosri" (Nazarenes). Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220, Against Marcion, 4:8) records that the Jews called Christians "Nazarenes" from Jesus being a man of Nazareth, though he also makes the connection with Nazarites in Lamentations 4:7. Jerome too records that, in the synagogues, the word "Nazarenes" was used to describe Christians. Eusebius, around 311 CE, records that the name "Nazarenes" had formerly been used of Christians.
So this Talmudic text is most likely about some writing of the Jewish heretics (e.g. Sadducees, Nazoraeans, Samaritans etc.) Or those labelled as "minim" by the Rabbis were Gnostics who originated in Jewish circles pre-dating Christianity, and that gilyonim were 'tablets' bearing a gnostic "Ophite diagram" as described by Celsus and Origen. This would explain the opposition from Rabbi Tarfon.
Karl Georg Kuhn (‘Judentum Urchristentum Kirche’, 1964) argues that:
- the Talmud passage (Shabbat 116a) is clearly later than the passages from the Tosefta, and too late to be used as a source for the Jamnian period;
- in the Tosefta passages citing Rabbi Tarfon, sifrei minim should be understood not as gospels but as Old Testament texts belonging to heterodox Jewish groups such as those at Qumran as well as to Jewish Christians; and gilyonim should be understood not as gospels but as Marginalia cut off from Biblical texts;
- Rabbi Tarfon is unlikely to have made a pun on books being called ‘gospels’ earlier than Christians were known to have called their books ‘gospels’;
- Rabbi Tarfon is unlikely to have punned gilyonim on merely the second half of the word ‘euangelion’, and there are other grammatical problems making it unlikely that a pun on ‘euangelion’ is in play.
Daniel Boyarin, in line with Kuhn, understands the books to which Rabbi Tarfon referred to be Torah scrolls. Marvin R. Wilson takes the term 'minim' in the Talmud as originally denoting all “dissidents, apostates and traitors” rather than Christians in particular.
I don't think it is reasonable that the Jews would have thought of the manuscripts of the New Testament here, after Gentile Christianity was completely separated from the Jewish religion, there was no passage between the two, the Jews distanced themselves from the Christians, and did not care in the least about what their in their writings and what not. In addition, the Jews were not in power, there were fewer of them than the Christians. The Jews had no jurisdiction over the Christians to order the burning of their writings that allegedly contained the name of YHWH. The word gilyonim in the plural, means several copies of a single work, not multiple different gospels.
Moreover, in Jewish understanding, not only YHWH is considered the name of God, but all of these: Adonai, El, Elohim, Shaddai, Tzevaot, Ha-Shem, Ehyeh. So, when a Jewish text speaks of the "divine name," it does not necessarily refer to the Tetragrammaton. And you can see: in text they speak in plural: "names of God".
