Posts by David

43

Why Is YHWH Used Regularly In OT and NEVER in NT?

by minimus in

jw
friends

and if the name jehovah is that important why is it that jesus christ never use that name in a record of scriptures?.

David_Jay

I had a philology professor who was fond of reminding us students: "All that is Greek is not Septuagint."

This was more than just a reminder to avoiding mixing the actual Septuagint created by the Sephardim with Christian translations of the Old Testament into Greek (scholars and academics view these as two different things). His reminder actually meant that " common misconceptions are also popular. "

Popular misconceptions are popular because people choose them over the facts. And you can complain all you want and argue until you're blue in the face, but you can't stop lemmings from jumping off a ledge by telling them they'll die or stop Jehovah's Witnesses from obeying the next foolish teaching from the Governing Body by pointing out the facts about how incorrect the Governing Body is. People often choose to see things their way because it is popular with them, and facts don't matter.

Though I am a Jew, I do appreciate Jesus' words: "If they won't believe what is written by Moses or the Prophets, neither is someone rising from the dead going to do much to convince them."

I can go on to explain that Greek translations of the New Testament by Christians are not considered to be LXX in academia, and demonstrate that even if they were it would not change the end result that JWs are wrong about what they claim (and that is the real point of all I've been saying, and all that really, truly matters in the end). The fact is that when humans tell fellow humans that they are incorrect, that drive to say "No I am not" blinds us to reason and humility.

It won't be possible for me to convince you that you are or may be mistaken because you are like me. It never feels good to hear that. Forums make stubborn mules of us all. While I am convinced that I am not incorrect, I am equally convinced that you would not let me convince you either. So merely stating more facts is a useless exercise. (I am equally convinced you will reply to this with some statement that tries to further disprove anything I have been saying either here or before or to justify your own words.)

It doesn't matter that you are incorrect in your details or not. It doesn't matter if I am wrong or right either. The main subject is the failure of the Jehovah's Witnesses and their theology about the Divine Name.

And guess what? They're not going to be convinced by any evidence either, even if it came in the form of a resurrected man. Facts don't convince people. Only the courage and fortitude to refuse to give into pride and stubbornness can do that.

43

Why Is YHWH Used Regularly In OT and NEVER in NT?

by minimus in

jw
friends

and if the name jehovah is that important why is it that jesus christ never use that name in a record of scriptures?.

David_Jay

The Codex Sinaiticus is a Christian codex of the Christian canon written by Gentiles, whereas the Septuagint is made up of Jewish scrolls written by Jews.

The Codex Sinaiticus comes from around 300 CE, but the Septuagint from around 132 BCE.

The Codex Sinaiticus was written in leafs, sown into signatures, an invention of the Gentiles, whereas the codex had not been invented when the Jewish translators of the Septuagint did their work (which is why the LXX is on scrolls).

The Codex Sinaitcus contains the entire Christian canon of books, and it was composed by Christians some 300 years after the Temple fell. The Septuagint is a Jewish translation of the Tanakh into Greek of the Second Temple era, almost 200 years before the birth of Christ.

The Greek translation of the Old Testament in the Codex Sinaticus is a copy of a late tradition of the Septuagint, whereas the Septuagint is not a copy of anything but an original translation.

You claim here that "I have nowhere said PRylands 458 is Christian. It is from the second century BCE so it cannot be Christian." But prior to this, in an earlier post you wrote:

The earliest copies of the LXX used various forms of YHWH or the Greek transliteration IAW. (There are about 7 such examples) None of the Jewish fragments that survive show KYRIOS instead of the divine name. The earliest Christian copies using KYRIOS date no earlier than late second century AD. The fragment of Genesis that leaves spaces for either YHWH or KYRIOS is quite late, from the third century, and probably Christian. It is probably indicative of the transition from using YHWH to KYRIOS in Christian practice.

You write that “the earliest copies of the LXX used various forms of YHWH” though you now agree that the earliest example in the Rylands fragment does not. You also wrote that there are “Jewish fragments” of the LXX that have survived in contrast to a “fragment of Genesis” of the LXX that “is quite late, from the third century, and probably Christian.”

From this I gathered you were saying that the PR 458 is the fragment “that leaves spaces...from the third century, probably Christian.” My mistake if I didn’t understand you, but the only copy of the Septuagint “that leaves spaces” for YHWH is PR 458. PR 458 contains only portions of Deuteronomy, not Genesis, and originates from about 200 years before the birth of Christ.

You added in a later post: “The text is not extant in the places where the divine name would appear.” But as I demonstrated, PR 458 consists only of Deuteronomy sections, and the Divine Name is supposed to appear several times at Deuteronomy 28:17-19 and 27:15 and 28:2, where PR 458 only has spaces instead.

So I will claim I am making the mistake in understanding you. You wrote these things, but obviously you have different meanings behind your words I do not see. You must be talking about something else and thus we are comparing your apples to my oranges.

But your claims about what is the LXX and what isn’t might be due to your mistaking all Greek translations of the Hebrew text as Septuagint, where that is not the case. If it wasn’t on a scroll written by Jews circa 200-150 years before Christ, it is not the Septuagint.

43

Why Is YHWH Used Regularly In OT and NEVER in NT?

by minimus in

jw
friends

and if the name jehovah is that important why is it that jesus christ never use that name in a record of scriptures?.

David_Jay

And I just verified this with several scholar friends of mine.

Papyrus Rylands 458 contains only verses from Deuteronomy, and contrary to your claim, it covers verses in which the Divine Name is supposed to occur, namely...

Deuteronomy 28:17-19 and 27:15 and 28:2.

Where the Hebrew text contains the Divine Name in these verses, Papyrus Rylands 458 contains empty spaces.

There are various photographs of this papyrus all over the Internet, as well as well-established agreement in many authoritative publications and academic journals. Your claims that this is a product of the Christian era and covers no verse where the Divine Name should appear are quite incorrect.

43

Why Is YHWH Used Regularly In OT and NEVER in NT?

by minimus in

jw
friends

and if the name jehovah is that important why is it that jesus christ never use that name in a record of scriptures?.

David_Jay

Dude, Slimboy, you started off by saying...

"The earliest Christian copies using KYRIOS date no earlier than late second century AD. The fragment of Genesis that leaves spaces for either YHWH or KYRIOS is quite late, from the third century, and probably Christian."

There are no Christian copies of the Septuagint. They are Jewish. The Septuagint was completed in 132 BCE, and as such this statement of yours is impossible. Christians did not produce the LXX, and the earliest copies predate the first century CE.

43

Why Is YHWH Used Regularly In OT and NEVER in NT?

by minimus in

jw
friends

and if the name jehovah is that important why is it that jesus christ never use that name in a record of scriptures?.

David_Jay

Slimboyfat,

Actually, I've worked on an interconfessional translation of the Scriptures in the early 2000s between Jews, Catholics, and Protestants. I did some work on the Deuterocanonicals, and with help from members of the CBA I got access to the textual materials that went into the current Catholic NABRE. It used a "patchwork" approach to produce its current 2011 revision of these books, including Hebrew manuscripts previously unavailable to produce English versions of Tobit and Ben Sira.

It was during this period that I got access to the Septuagint texts. Jews don't use them much anymore, even though they are Jewish translations of the Tanakh into Greek. This is when I got to see the various fragments for myself (though most in facsimile format due to the fact that the originals cannot be exposed to handling). Pr458 has spaces with dots instead of the Tetragramaton. I've seen it personally as well as the 2nd generation LXX texts with the Divine Name in Hebrew characters.

The Septuagint is a work of the BCE period, not the CE era. The reason the CBA members were so helpful in my introduction to these tests is that the Catholic Church accepted the Canon of the Alexandrian Septuagint prior to the development of both the Marcion canon and the New Testament canon. It is marked as the "LXX" (which is the number 70 in Roman numerals) due to the tradition that 70 scholars of the Jewish diaspora produced it.

So no, I am not relying on Wikipedia but my own educational training I received after leaving the JWs and my personal experience from my professional life.

Your claim that the LXX is a Christian work from the Christian era is neither substantiated by history or dating of the manuscripts themselves. The Septuagint is well-known as a work of the Jewish diaspora Second Temple era, predating Christianity. Some of the quotes of the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament come from the LXX, which in itself proves that it came before the first century.

The finalized generations of the Septuagint abandoned the use of retaining the Divine Name centuries before the first Christian texts were composed. Because it was used as a source for Tanakh quotes, the New Testament has no use of the Divine Name when it quotes the LXX. This was even acknowledged in the appendix material of the original 1950 edition of the New World Translation.

Because the LXX has those "extra" books like Ben Sira, Tobit, Wisdom, and editions to Esther and Daniel is the reason the Catholic Church has them in their canon. It was the version of the Old Testament inherited by the original Church. The books of Maccabees, products of the Septuagint, contains the origins of the Jewish celebration of Chanukah and are read by many Jews each year on the 8 nights of celebration. These facts alone show the LXX cannot be a product of the CE period, let alone that secular history records when the LXX was produced.

To demonstrate, a copy of the Septuagint (which legend said was owned by Cleopatra) was reportedly lost in the fire set by Julius Caesar's men during a battle which spread to the Library of Alexandria. This happened during one of his famous battles that occurred in 48 BCE. This footnote to history would have been impossible if the LXX was a product of the Christian era.

Again, as I've stated in my previous post, why believe me, a Jew, right? We wouldn't know our own history or details about our own holy books like the Septuagint, or so it seems by the way many Christians and non-Jews challenge us about the details regarding our own culture.

129

Hi forum

by A Believer in

i proably shouldnt be on here but i feel like saying this.

i have been for the last couple weeks been studying religion.

i've learned the only ones who today do what the bible says to is jw.

David_Jay

"The only ones today who do what the Bible says is Jehovah's Witnesses."

This may be true, and at the same time it can be a very bad thing. The Bible says some people will make grave errors. Are you one of these? At Luke 21:8 Jesus said:

"Beware that you are not lead astray, for many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and 'The time is near!' Do not go after them."

The footnote to this verse in the NRSV says that "I am he" is literally "I am" and scholars point out this can be a reference to the Divine Name, making the verse read: "Many will come in my name, uttering the Divine Name, saying 'The time is near!' Do not go after them."

What religion fulfills this? Who goes about "uttering the Divine Name"? Who else but Jehovah's Witnesses are going about telling people that "the time is near"?

Even if the footnote reading is ignored, what did Jesus say we should do when we encounter people who tell us "the time is near"? Christ's answer: "Do not go after them." Are you obeying this or ignoring this?

Jehovah's Witnesses say world events like wars and earthquakes and the like are signs that the end is soon to come. But Jesus taught the opposite:

"When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately." --Luke 21:9.

Notice, "the end will NOT follow immediately" as the Witnesses have been saying it would. As Jesus states as recorded in Matthew 24:6, "you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but the end is not yet." These are not signs of the end times says Jesus. And again, should his followers hear people saying " the time is near, " they are instructed by Jesus not to follow those who claim such things.

What about how the Witnesses claim that we have been living in the time of Jesus' invisible presence since 1914? Jesus warned: "If they say that the Son of Man is present but far away in the desert somewhere, there is no reason to go with them. If they say: 'He can't be seen because he is in an inner room closed away from sight,' don't fall for that. For just as you can see the flash from a lightning bolt in the East even If you are facing West, it will be no different once the Son of Man is here. If there really is a dead body somewhere, the presence of vultures will prove it. " --Matthew 24:26-28.

Are you disobeying Jesus by following those who tell you the end is near? Do you believe that Jesus has returned, but can't be seen because he is out of sight as if he were away in the wilderness of in some inner room?

Do that if you want to. Follow those Jesus said NOT to follow. It will only prove you will make up any excuse of believe anything except the words of Jesus: "Do not go after them."

43

Why Is YHWH Used Regularly In OT and NEVER in NT?

by minimus in

jw
friends

and if the name jehovah is that important why is it that jesus christ never use that name in a record of scriptures?.

David_Jay

You are correct, Fulltimestudent, with an additional "caveat," as you put it.

It is actually an act of naïveté that some non-Jews and especially Christians make in reference to Jewish religion and worship. Our religious practices and theology have never, ever been static. They not only changed under Hellenistic influence, as you mention, but in every era, with the winds of every political change.

Jews acknowledge a fact that is often disturbingly unamusing to the likes of Jehovah's Witnesses, namely that there was never a truly "pure" form of Judaism. It has never been "one original thing" (even if you read through the Hebrew Bible, which many JWs never have). Christians especially like to think that Judaism only changed with the Second Temple era and mistakenly draw Jesus as a "restorer" of "true" Jewish practice and thought (in reality, he was as much a product of the times as were the Pharisees). Political intrigue and changes to the map of history have always influenced Jewish theology, and it has bent for all types or reasons (not merely survival) with each passing century up to and after Jesus.

It is even a fundamental element to Jewish practice that Judaism never stays aloof and disconnected from the changing world around it. Except for small groups of fundamentalist Jews, the universal tenet of tikkun olam makes this impossible. The acknowledgement of this need for "staying in touch" and changing with the times does not come from many religious groups, like the JWs, who rely on a fictional retelling of Jewish history to make their house-of-card theology work.

As for the Name, part of the reason that it is not used to the extent that God remains essentially "nameless" is that the Jewish concept of "God" is very unlike the Christian and Muslim concept (not to mention the Watchtower brand of "God"). It is actually closer to atheism than the Christian concept of theism.

For Jews, all gods and all religions are false. There is no such thing as a god. Deities are fake. All of them are. The "God" of the Jews is what we recognize as the "Great Cause" and "Ultimate Purpose" of all. What or who is this, we don't know. Can it be truly understood or defined? No, not in Jewish thought.

But since the universe is here, the concept is that we are thus witnessing an "effect." The universe and world we live in is the effect produced by a "cause." This "cause" is what the Abrahamic God is. It is not "god" in the pagan or heathen view. It does not require belief anymore than the "effect" we witness does. The Great Cause of everything is the only thing that can be "God" in the sense that humans can grasp. It also, according to Jews, remains a mystery, much like agnostics acknowledge.

So it is very different from "God" taught in Sunday schools and Watchtower studies. YHWH is the "un-God," if you can grasp my meaning. That is why Jews can be atheist and still pray and worship. The two are not against one another in Judaism.

This makes the Name ineffable. We don't even recognize the pronunciation "Yahweh" in Judaism because it is as invented as the Catholic "Jehovah." It doesn't sound anything like anything in Hebrew. There's nothing like it. We only use "Yahweh" in discussions like this with Christians or those exposed to Christian thought, but the sound and name mean nothing. We don't recognize it as being the same as the YOHD HE VAV HE of HaShem. So there was never anything for Christianity to inherit when it came to a name's pronunciation. "Names" are not the sounds they make in Jewish culture, they are the person and their attributes.

But as one person said: "What do you Jews know about God or the Bible?" Until people listen and learn from the Jews about their God, they will never fully grasp the concepts so many of them hold dear (like Christianity). We Jews are always wrong, and the Gentile Christians and their "scholars" always know better. (Can I hear an "Amen!" from the Governing Body?) Sigh.

43

Why Is YHWH Used Regularly In OT and NEVER in NT?

by minimus in

jw
friends

and if the name jehovah is that important why is it that jesus christ never use that name in a record of scriptures?.

David_Jay

Judaism acknowledges some of the theories you are proposing, Crazyguy (making you not so "crazy" after all).

One theory is that the Hebrews were introduced to YHWH via the people of Sinai, some of which may have been fellow slaves that escaped with them from Egypt during the Exodus. Jewish scholarship points to clues in the Torah itself as to this being possible.

The critical theory centers on the Exodus narrative, where it is not until Moses flees to Midian, meets up with and marries the daughter of Jethro, "the priest of Midian," that Moses comes into contact with YHWH. ( Exodus 2:16; 3:1-6) Moses then returns to Egypt to gather his people to worship this God on the mount where, under Jethro's patronage, he meets God by Name.--Exodus 3:12.

While most Orthodox Jews who read Scripture with a literal approach similar to the myopic view of JWs would disagree, anthropology and archeology (as well as some of the history of the Jews) suggests that the monotheistic God-concept might have been learned from the peoples that the Israelites joined with during this period. It later grew into the form later adopted (and adapted) by Christians and Muslims.

But Jews also acknowledge that their monotheism does not originate from the Bible. That is a Christian misconception. The Tanakh did not play a central role in the development of Jewish monotheism, but instead it's oral tradition which became the Mishnah, not the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Bible stories are liturgical narratives designed for reading in public worship, not a compendium of Jewish history or religious doctrine (like the Mishnah and Talmud). It was only after the Second Temple rose that the Bible took shape, and its use as the composite library we know today came only after the Temple's demise in 70 CE, far too late to be considered the basis for the theology that shaped its pages. So while there may truly be some merit in what you say, it is also impossible to attribute it to Scripture which came only far much later.

43

Why Is YHWH Used Regularly In OT and NEVER in NT?

by minimus in

jw
friends

and if the name jehovah is that important why is it that jesus christ never use that name in a record of scriptures?.

David_Jay

Slimboyfat,

Forgive me, but the claim from the Watchtower that the earliest LXX copies used various forms of the Tetragrammaton is quite false. Second generation fragments have been discovered with it, but originally the LXX had nothing where the Divine Name occurs in the Hebrew.

Papyrus Rylands 458 is the oldest fragment of the LXX. It does not use contain the Divine Name. Instead there are blank spaces, often with a dot. The second generation fragments appear to come next but the practice seems to have been discarded in favor of the substitution.

While the Tetragrammaton is special, it us because we Jews don't see it as a "name" as such. In our culture it is viewed as an "anti-name" or the opposite of a SHEM, a "handle" for which to manage or control one. Some Jews utter "HaShem" when coming across the Four Letters, meaning "THE Name," with the emphasis on the "Ha" or "the," because it is a "name" unlike any other.

The use of it in the LXX was experimental, as its sudden appearance after Pr458 demonstrates. The LXX composers were not sure how to handle it, even employing the very old, long unused Paleo-Hebrew for a while before abandoning it altogether.

And it wasn't left unpronounced because it was "unique," but because it was "holy."

In Jewish theology, holy things are left untouched or at least used less than the mundane, everyday things of life . For instance, the Holy of Holies was rarely entered, and then by only one person each year. The Ten Commandments were hidden from sight in the Ark, and the Ark itself was hidden in the Holy of Holies. If you touched it, like Uzzah did, you would die. (2 Samuel 6:6, 7) The consecrated bread on display was not to be eaten until it had remained before the entrance to the Holy of Holies for a specific amount of time, and then when it could be eaten, only the priests could do so. That is why it was a big thing for David and his men to be offered and eat this bread when they were hungry. It was not for mundane use. (1 Samuel 21:5, 6) And it is the reason Eve adds the injunction not to "touch" the fruit of God's tree when God had only command that it not be eaten, since the Hebrew custom is that the holier something is, the less it is to be used or ever.--Compare Genesis 2:17 to 3:3.

Since the Tetragrammaton is God's Self-Designation beyond the scope of common names, and because it is God's Name, it is like the fruit of the tree, the Ark, the Ten Commandments, the Holy of Holies. If something is to be "hallowed" in Jewish custom, it is not to be used. It can be there for all to see, like the fruit, the Temple that housed the Holy of Holies and the Ark, and even the eating of the presentation bread by the priests, but it is not for common use. That is something more than unique, like the appearance of the Super Moon we are witnessing in the night skies right now. What is unique is more mundane than what is holy.

Pagans repeatedly uttered their divine names to show that these names were unique, special, and even holy to them. Jews did the opposite. The holier something was, the more purposefully far removed it was from use. This is something that might escape a Gentile audience since the culture of Hebrews is not well-understood outside our own people, and Christians are more often to side with their own scholars and teachers over our own Jewish history and experience (as one Christian once told me upon learning I was Jewish: "What do Jews know about the BIble anyway?"), but it is not the good use of critical thought to ignore it.

And by the way, Papyrus Rylands 458 is not from the 3rd century or Christian, as you stated. It dates to the 2nd century BCE and is Jewish.

30

Is Satan really the bad guy in story of creation?

by evilApostate in

i wanted to take an objective look at satan in the story of creation.

this is not meant to offend those of you who are still christians.

i'm agnostic btw.

David_Jay

Yes, Jews as well as Catholic/Orthodox Christianity understand the term "Satan" to merely refer to an "adversary" or "accuser." For instance, the official US Catholic Bible, the NABRE, refers to the "Satan" of Job as "the satan" with a detailed footnote explaining that the individual spoken of is not to be immediately identified with the "Satan" of Christianity.

As to the rest, it may surprise you that the Jewish way of viewing this story of Adam and Even is that it doesn’t end at Genesis 3:24 but at Genesis 11:9. While Jews can differ greatly in how literal or symbolic they view the details of the subject, the following is what is generally understood about the Creation story in Scripture.

The Creation story is told in a series of stages based on the cosmology the Jews shared with their Mesopotamian neighbors:

the universe is a vast sea or abyss of waters,
from the waters a dome is made to hold the waters back in order for the world to be made,
the first world is erased by these waters in order to make room for our present world,
all peoples are assigned to their proper place by tribe or people or (as in the case of the Bible) language.

The “Adam and Eve” story is the second act of the first world created. It is likely not literal in detail, though some Jews believe that the persons were. “Adam and Eve” are merely set into the Mesopotamian cosmology paradigm, but the drama has Jewish theology lessons centering around the need for Torah observance. Instead of the trees representing actual forms of botany or an act of “original sin” being described, Jews see the story as merely telling us that humans tend to act independent of their Creator. The “serpent” is not “Satan the Devil,” just a serpent that “speaks” as part of the lesson (much like the animals in Aesop’s tales speak in those moral lessons).

The world that results from Adam and Eve is made to fit into the Mesopotamian cosmology in which it was believed that the deities grew angry with the world and wiped it out by releasing the cosmological waters upon society in order to create the current world. It grows darker and darker until the Noachin flood wipes away all things (not because of the “serpent” but because Adam and Eve’s children are immoral), and the Hebrew “history” can thus be made to fit the accepted “science model” of the universe and its origins. Lastly the current world gets divided into nations by language (a dramatic device, far from being a true historical, direct action of God).

The story ends in chapter 11 with a genealogy that leads to the history of Jewish patriarch, Abraham. The setting is that God is responsible for all peoples having their unique language, cultures, and countries, and no less the Jews--whose story gets told from this point onward.

Jehovah’s Witnesses (and most literalist Christians) read the stories as separate events in history while in reality they are just one, “the” story of “how the universe (which back then was just the world) came to be” according to the accepted cosmology of the day. The Jews merely pasted their own characters and religious lessons onto the paradigm, but the complete story is Genesis 1-11:9. This make demands upon the story that do not allow for the Jehovah’s Witness interpretation of a “fall from grace” that occurred in a literal garden due to a conversation with a snake over which tree to eat from. Who wouldn’t want to eat from God’s tree, anyway? It would be better for you that any other? (And really, does God really need a tree to eat its fruit?) It’s too silly even from a pure mythological reading to allow the narrative to be reduced to Watchtower literalism.

This doesn’t mean that “Satan” is a mere Christian invention, even though the serpent in the Garden of Eden is not identified with the Devil (nor is “the satan” of Job--which in that book is merely an angel raising issues for the sake of argument). But as time passed, Judaism came to suspect that humanity was not without some challenger that it could not simply ignore.

While today some Jews see “the Devil” to be nothing more than the imperfection or dark side within each of us which we naturally attempt to overcome, Second Temple era Judaism already acknowledged a “Satan the Devil” of sorts, a “fiery hell” and even Purgatory (this Catholic notion actually comes directly and mostly unfiltered from Judaism). The Tanakh is only a static picture of past theological concepts, absent of the actual Torah influence or tradition (often called the “Oral Torah”) which was the mainstay of Jewish religion. Without this, all reading of the Tanakh is greatly incomplete.

Later redacted into the Mishnah and expanded via the Talmud, the concept of evil was sometimes personalized into dark spirits and demons not unlike those embraced by Christianity. By the time of Jesus, the idea of a “chief” or “leader” of the demons was already in place. The term “Satan” is merely a label borrowed from Hebrew as this being (if he exists) does not actually have the name given to him by humanity.

David_Jay

Posts by David_Jay