Why Jehovah is not included in some Bible.

by homme perdu 55 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Narkissos

  Schizm,

  I agree with you that transliteration is hardly the big issue.

  But I personally would see no problem with having God's name appear in the NT in those places where the writer is quoting from the OT where the name is there. If the name "Noah" can be spelled the same in the NT as it was in the OT, then why not deal with God's name the same way?

  Here I don't agree: when you translate a text you have to translate this text, not its possible sources (especially in other languages). You can transliterate Noah from the NT because the NT first transliterated it into Greek. It is now part of the Greek text you are translating.

  This is not the case with Yhwh. It is never transliterated into Greek in any NT manuscript. Quotations of the OT in the NT substitute the name Yhwh with Greek nouns like kurios (Lord) or theos (God). Whatever the reason why the NT writers did it (they couldn't read Hebrew, they used excerpts from the Greek Septuagint), the fact is they did it and the NT Greek text which is to be translated is Yhwh-free (if I dare say). What the NWT did with the NT is not "restoring" the divine name, it is sheer fraud. Perhaps the only real fraud in the NWT, but a fraud all the same.
• 

  Dansk

  Something else the JWs would have a fit over. Jehovah is always a HE. However, as an Elohim (composite male and female) God of YH (Yah, Yahu, Yaa, Yaw or Yahw) and the Goddess HWH - we get the composite name Yahweh
  (YH'HWH or YHWH). So, Yahweh is male and female, signifying completeness - but the JWs would have us believe he is male only!

  Ian
• 

  Schizm

  Narkissos,

  Interesting thoughts you've presented. However, I would disagree with your idea of the WTS's having brought God's name over into the NT in those certain instances as being fraudulent = trickery.

  BTW, I'd like to get your opinion as to whether or not it was wrong for translators to completely remove God's name from the OT in some of their translations. Would you care to comment on this?

  .
• 

  Schizm

  Narkissos,

  Whatever the reason why the NT writers did it , the fact is they did it and the NT Greek text which is to be translated is Yhwh-free

  I personally can't fathom myself being one of those writers of the NT and being found guilty of having deliberately altered the words of the Hebrew text that I'm quoting from. For a writer to substitute God's name with "Lord" or "God" (which are titles) is what would be fradulent in my opinion.

  .
• 

  Leolaia

  The NT writers were following the LXX, which already had replaced the tetragram with kurios. And if you can't fathom that, it would probably blow your mind that NT writers often paraphrased the original OT text and took liberties with the wording in its citation.
• 

  Narkissos

  I'd like to get your opinion as to whether or not it was wrong for translators to completely remove God's name from the OT in some of their translations. Would you care to comment on this?

  My clear preference is to transliterate the name "Yhwh" as it is ("consonants" only), or Yahweh as a second option (most French Catholic Bibles do that, I think the Jerusalem Bible does it in English too). Even Jehovah as a third option where the traditional transliteration is still widely accepted (such as in the Spanish Reina-Valera or the Portuguese Ferreira de Almeida).

  I took part in the recent revision of an old Protestant translation (Louis Segond), which, according to the practice of French Protestant Bible since Olivétan (Calvin's relative), used to "translate" Yhwh as "l'Eternel" ("the Eternal One"). Such a "meaning" imposed to a personal name (which is generally not supposed to "mean" something but to designate somebody) distorted the text in many ways. However, the revision Committee did not agree to transliterate, and chose to revert to "the LORD". The only thing I obtained is to have "(Yhwh)" included into the text where it really affected the meaning. For instance, "I am Yhwh" doesn't mean the same as "I am the Lord" or "I am the Eternal One".
• 

  Narkissos

  Hi Ian, nice to "see" you here also!

  However, as an Elohim (composite male and female) God of YH (Yah, Yahu, Yaa, Yaw or Yahw) and the Goddess HWH - we get the composite name Yahweh
  (YH'HWH or YHWH). So, Yahweh is male and female, signifying completeness - but the JWs would have us believe he is male only!

  Where did you get this idea?

  In polytheism Yhwh was clearly male (as a variant of the equally male Haddad-Baal), he certainly had a paraedra (sp?) or consort goddess (Ashera?). Is there some evidence for a goddess Hwh? In transliteration it reminds me of the name of "Eve" (Hawah), but the initial "H" is actually a different letter in Hebrew and a confusion is linguistically unlikely.
• 

  Schizm

  Narkissos,

  My clear preference is to transliterate the name "Yhwh" as it is ("consonants" only)....

  I'm glad to hear you say that. Doing that would at least leave the text in tact. For translators to go to the extent of removing even the tetragrammaton (YHWH), simply due to a lack of agreement over how the name should be pronounced exactly, doesn't appear to be very scholarly. All they had to do was leave the 4 Hebrew characters there in each of the 7,000 places it appears, with a notation in the preface maybe that explains what the "YHWH" stands for. Seems simple enought to me. *LOL*

  .
• 

  Narkissos

  Schizm:

  I personally can't fathom myself being one of those writers of the NT and being found guilty of having deliberately altered the words of the Hebrew text that I'm quoting from. For a writer to substitute God's name with "Lord" or "God" (which are titles) is what would be fradulent in my opinion.

  They probably did not do it "deliberately". Very likely none of the NT writers could read Hebrew or access Hebrew manuscripts. As Leolaia said they usually quoted from the Greek Septuagint (LXX), which does not mean they had complete Greek manuscripts to quote from btw. Manuscripts were rare and expensive. So most often they quoted either from memory or from Christian testimonia, i.e. lists of pre-selected "proof-texts" or chosen excerpts from the Greek Septuagint. Which could explain very well (1) the variation from complete Septuagint mss; (2) the original context seldom being taken into account; (3) the association of the same OT verses in different NT books.

  As to the evidence that Paul, for instance, couldn't write anything but kurios when he quoted or alluded the OT in Romans 10:13 or 14:7ff, cf. the link I gave above.
• 

  Schizm

  Narkissos,

  I personally can't fathom myself being one of those writers of the NT and being found guilty of having deliberately altered the words of the Hebrew text that I'm quoting from. For a writer to substitute God's name with "Lord" or "God" (which are titles) is what would be fradulent in my opinion.

  They probably did not do it "deliberately". Very likely none of the NT writers could read Hebrew or access Hebrew manuscripts. As Leolaia said they usually quoted from the Greek Septuagint (LXX)....

  So what I think you're saying, is that the NT writers were quoting from imperfect manuscripts in which God's name had been removed for one reason or another. Well, then, doesn't common sense dictate that modern translators ought to resort to more ancient sources which are now accessable?... sources that show all the places in the Hebrew text where the tetragrammaton appears. Would not doing so justify the altering of the NT so as to bring it into conformity with the original Hebrew text, and thus maintain the integrity of the Scriptures? It appears to me that THAT is what the WTS has attempted to do, at least with regards to the quoted texts that we're referring to. So what is so fradulent about that?

  .