View Full Version : Is Jehovah A Mistranslated Word ?
Scott Hutchinson
04-16-2009, 04:54 PM
Someone asked me about the word Jehovah and how it got into our English bibles and it is a correct OT. word ?
I don't know alot about this,perhaps of you could help me out with this ?
Is this article accurate ?
http://www.evangelicaloutreach.org/jehovahs.htm
Praxeas
04-16-2009, 05:08 PM
Jehovah is not a Translation at all.
Scott Hutchinson
04-16-2009, 05:10 PM
Prax you are very knowledgeable help a redneck out.
Praxeas
04-16-2009, 05:19 PM
J is translated from the Y in Yahweh. H from the H. V from the W (or just V in Hebrew) and H from the H. The vowels though are contrived, the vowels are supposedly taken from the Hebrew word for LORD and inserted into YHWH....no J in Hebrew.
Scott Hutchinson
04-16-2009, 05:29 PM
So Yahweh would be more correct,was this is a copyist error ?
Praxeas
04-16-2009, 07:17 PM
was what a copyist error?
Sister Alvear
04-16-2009, 07:24 PM
So Yahweh would be more correct,was this is a copyist error ?
there is no J in hebrew if I remember correctly.
freeatlast
04-16-2009, 07:50 PM
Scott, here's something that might help you. I didn't write it. just copied&paste
The name of God
"And God said to Moses again, You shall say this to the sons of Israel, Jehovah (YHWH) the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My title from generation to generation."
(Exodus 3:15)
Jehovah, or Yaweh, is claimed by many to be the actual Name of God. Unfortunately, this is not entirely true; while it is representative of God's Name, it is not His actual name. Nowhere in the original manuscripts of Old Testament will you find the actual name, Jehovah, Yehovah, or Yahweh. What you will find is a grouping of four Hebrew consonants, which are equivalent to YHVH, JHVH, or YHWH in the English language. This grouping is called by Bible Scholars, "the tetragrammaton." This set of four letters was used by the Hebrew people to signify the incommunicable Name of God. Wherever it appears in the original manuscripts, it refers only to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, in other words, the God of Israel. It was considered by the Hebrew people to be representative of the sacred, holy, name of GOD. Again, it was never used to represent anyone other than, the self existent, eternal, GOD.
The Names Jehovah, Yehovah, or Yahweh are merely a pronounceable rendering of JHVH, YHVH, or YHWH, none of the renderings are the actual incommunicable name of GOD. The KJV Bible, and other versions, render JHVH, YHVH, YHWH as, LORD. As we can see, none of these are the actual true name of GOD; but we can know that where they appear in the Bible they refer only to the Self Existent, Eternal One, GOD. Also we find that a contracted form of the name of God is used in scripture and is pronounced as YAH, which gives more credence to a rendering of the tetragrammaton as Yaweh instead of Jehovah.
Some history about the tetragrammaton
There are quite a few theories concerning how YHWH became JHVH. In fact there is doubt as to how YHWH was pronounced in Moses' time. Ancient Hebrew had no written vowels, or superscript/subscript vowel markings, it was just understood by the pre-captivity Hebrew what the sound of each of the four written consonants should be. Rabbinical Scholars tell us that after the Great Captivity, it was considered to be blasphemy to speak the name YHWH. Therefore, it is clear that the original pronunciation of the tetragrammaton has been lost. My further studies have indicated that there was no letter 'J' in the ancient Hebrew, hence there was no 'J' sound, which makes JHVH and the name Jehovah pretty unlikely. Even the names Yahweh, or Yehovah, are somewhat questionable, since they are dependent upon the intersection of the vowels from adonai. About the only clear certainty is that YHWH means in Hebrew, The Eternal, Self-Existent One, who was understood to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/ The God of Israel. Most scholars attribute the beginning of shift from Yahweh to Jehovah, to the beginning of the use of superscript and subscript punctuation and vowel marks in Hebrew writing, and the translation of ancient manuscripts, in the 5th & 6th centuries A.D.
From what I understand, we don't know how the name was pronounced centuries ago. The Hebrew letters are YHWH with the W being pronounced somewhere between a W and a V sound. We have some names which incorporate YHWH's names in them such as Yehonatan (Jonathan), Yehoshua (Joshua/Jesus) etc. so some believe the first two syllables were "Yeho." We also have an abbreviated name "Yah" used in the Old Testament. Based on the idea that we have "Yeho" in some names and "Yah" as an abbreviation, some have come to the conclusion that the divine name was pronounced "Yehowah" or "Yehovah."
ManOfWord
04-16-2009, 07:55 PM
Prax and Sis. Alvear have it right. It's HVHY, read right to left. There are no vowels in classical Hebrew. The vowels for the entire Hebrew bible were memorized. Vowel pointing was done much later. Yahweh is about as close as we can get, we think. Jesus wasn't called "Jesus" either. That was the Greek rendering of Yeshua. So, technically, people were baptized in the name of Yeshua not Jesus.
However, it's the same person, so whether we use the Greek rendering or the rendering in another language, it is still the name of the One who shed His blood for us! :D
freeatlast
04-16-2009, 07:59 PM
Prax and Sis. Alvear have it right. It's HVHY, read right to left. There are no vowels in classical Hebrew. The vowels for the entire Hebrew bible were memorized. Vowel pointing was done much later. Yahweh is about as close as we can get, we think. Jesus wasn't called "Jesus" either. That was the Greek rendering of Yeshua. So, technically, people were baptized in the name of Yeshua not Jesus.
However, it's the same person, so whether we use the Greek rendering or the rendering in another language, it is still the name of the One who shed His blood for us! :D
How "Yeshua" Became "Jesus"
The first letter in the name Yeshua ("Jesus") is the yod. Yod represents the "Y" sound in Hebrew. Many names in the Bible that begin with yod are mispronounced by English speakers because the yod in these names was transliterated in English Bibles with the letter "J" rather than "Y". This came about because in early English the letter "J" was pronounced the way we pronounce "Y" today. All proper names in the Old Testament were transliterated into English according to their Hebrew pronunciation, but when English pronunciation shifted to what we know today, these transliterations were not altered. Thus, such Hebrew place names as ye-ru-sha-LA-yim, ye-ri-HO, and yar-DEN have become known to us as Jerusalem, Jericho, and Jordan; and Hebrew personal names such as yo-NA, yi-SHAI, and ye-SHU-a have become known to us as Jonah, Jesse, and Jesus.
The yod is the smallest letter of the alphabet, which is why Yeshua used it in His famous saying in Matt 5:18: "Until heaven and earth pass away not one yod ("iota" in the Greek text) or one kots will pass from the Torah." For emphasis, Yeshua incorporated in this saying a well-known Hebrew expression: lo' yod ve-LO' ko-TSO shel yod, "not a yod and not a 'thorn' of a yod," i.e., not the most insignificant and unimportant thing. When Yeshua declared that heaven and earth might sooner disappear than the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, or the smallest stroke of a letter, He was simply saying that the Torah ("Law" or "Teaching") of Moses would never cease to be.
The second sound in Yeshua's name is called tse-RE, and is pronounced almost like the letter "e" in the word "net". Just as the "Y" sound of the first letter is mispronounced in today's English, so too the first vowel sound in "Jesus". Before the Hebrew name "Yeshua" was transliterated into English, it was first transliterated into Greek. There was no difficulty in transliterating the tse-RE sound since the ancient Greek language had an equivalent letter which represented this sound. And there was no real difficulty in transcribing this same first vowel into English. The translators of the earliest versions of the English Bible transliterated the tse-RE in Yeshua with an "e". Unfortunately, later English speakers guessed wrongly that this "e" should be pronounced as in "me," and thus the first syllable of the English version of Yeshua came to be pronounced "Jee" instead of "Yeh". It is this pronunciation which produced such euphemistic profanities as "Gee" and "Geez".
Since Yeshua is spelled "Jeshua" and not "Jesus" in most English versions of the Old Testament (for example in Ezra 2:2 and 2 Chronicles 31:15), one easily gets the impression that the name is never mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet 'Yeshua' appears there twenty-nine times, and is the name of at least five different persons and one village in the southern part of Yehudah ("Judah").
In contrast to the early biblical period, there were relatively few different names in use among the Jewish population of the Land of Israel at the time of the Second Temple. The name Yeshua was one of the most common male names in that period, tied with Eleazer for fifth place behind Simon, Joseph, Judah, and John. Nearly one out of ten persons known from the period was named Yeshua.
The first sound of the second syllable of Yeshua is the "sh" sound. It is represented by the Hebrew letter shin. However Greek, like many other languages, has no "sh" sound. Instead, the closest approximation, the Greek sigma, was used when transcribing "Yeshua" as "Iesus". Translators of English versions of the New Testament transliterated the Greek transcription of a Hebrew name, instead of returning to the original Hebrew. This was doubly unfortunate, first because the "sh" sound exists in English, and second because in English the "s" sound can shift to the "z" sound, which is what happened in the case of the pronunciation of "Jesus".
The fourth sound one hears in the name Yeshua is the "u" sound, as in the word "true". Like the first three sounds, this also has come to be mispronounced but in this case it is not the fault of the translators. They transcribed this sound accurately, but English is not a phonetic language and "u" can be pronounced in more than one way. At some point the "u" in "Jesus" came to be pronounced as in "cut," and so we say "Jee-zuhs."
The "a" sound, as in the word "father," is the fifth sound in Jesus' name. It is followed by a guttural produced by contracting the lower throat muscles and retracting the tongue root- an unfamiliar task for English speakers. In an exception to the rule, the vowel sound "a" associated with the last letter "ayin" (the guttural) is pronounced before it, not after. While there is no equivalent in English or any other Indo-European language, it is somewhat similar to the last sound in the name of the composer, "Bach." In this position it is almost inaudible to the western ear. Some Israelis pronounce this last sound and some don't, depending on what part of the dispersion their families returned from. The Hebrew Language Academy, guardian of the purity of the language, has ruled that it should be sounded, and Israeli radio and television announcers are required to pronounce it correctly. There was no letter to represent them, and so these fifth and sixth sounds were dropped from the Greek transcription of "Yeshua," -the transcription from which the English "Jesus" is derived.
So where did the final "s" of "Jesus" come from? Masculine names in Greek ordinarily end with a consonant, usually with an "s" sound, and less frequently with an "n" or "r" sound. In the case of "Iesus," the Greeks added a sigma, the "s" sound, to close the word. The same is true for the names Nicodemus, Judas, Lazarus, and others.
English speakers make one further change from the original pronunciation of Jesus' name. English places the accent on "Je," rather than on "sus." For this reason, the "u" has shortened in its English pronunciation to "uh."
In the West, a child's name is often chosen for its pleasant sound, or because another family member had it. The Jews of the Second Temple period also named after relatives (Luke 1:59-63). However, almost all Jewish names have a literal meaning. Occasionally this is seen in English names too, such as Scott (a person from Scotland), Grace (grace), Jasmine (the flower), Johnson (son of John), and Baker (bread maker). But with Hebrew names it is the rule, rather than the exception.
The name Yeshua literally means The LORD's Salvation, or Salvation from the LORD . In comparison, prior to being transliterated from the Hebrew Bible, the name Iesus did not exist in Greek. Through multiple translations and changes in pronunciation, a tradition of saying "Jesus" has obscured His name, "Yeshua." It has shifted His perceived message and identity from Hebrew to Greek.
Scott Hutchinson
04-16-2009, 09:22 PM
was what a copyist error?
Jehovah instead of Yahweh in our english bibles.
Scott Hutchinson
04-16-2009, 09:24 PM
Thank you all as there as some areas I need to do more study in.
Scott Hutchinson
04-16-2009, 09:29 PM
This is interesting.
http://www.biblebell.org/mbag/mailbagba.html
Scott Hutchinson
04-16-2009, 09:33 PM
http://www.letusreason.org/JW14.htm
from chapter 3 of The Oneness of God by David Bernard
The Name Jesus
When the fulness of time came, God did satisfy the longings of His people and revealed Himself in all His power and glory through the name Jesus. Jesus is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name variously rendered as Jehoshua (Numbers 13:16), Jeshua (Ezra 2:2), or Joshua (Exodus 17:9). Both Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8 show that Jesus is the same name as Joshua. (See NIV.)
Jesus means Jehovah-Savior, Jehovah our Salvation, or Jehovah is Salvation. This is why the angel said, "And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). The identification of the name Jesus with salvation is particularly evident because the Hebrew for Jeshua is practically identical to the Hebrew for salvation, especially since ancient Hebrew did not use written vowels. In fact, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance transliterates Jeshua as Yeshuwa and the Hebrew word for salvation as Yeshuwah. Although others have borne the name Jehoshua, Joshua, or Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ is the only One who actually lived up to that name. He is the only One who is actually what that name describes.
Jesus is the culmination of all the Old Testament names of God. It is the highest, most exalted name ever revealed to mankind. ... Jesus fulfills all the compound names of Jehovah... The name of Jesus is the name of God that He promised to reveal when He said, "Therefore my people shall know my name" (Isaiah 52:6). It is the one name of Zechariah 14:9 that encompasses and includes all the other names of God within its meaning.
The New Testament church is identified by the name of Jesus. In fact Jesus said we would be hated among all men for His name's sake (Matthew 10:22). The Early Church was persecuted for the name of Jesus (Acts 5:28; 9:21; 15:26), and they considered it a privilege to be counted worthy to suffer for His name (Acts 5:41). Peter stated that the lame man at the gate Beautiful was healed "by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth" (Acts 4:10). He then explained the supremacy and necessity of this name in receiving salvation: "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). The Apostle Paul wrote, "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth" (Philippians 2:9-10).
Because of the exalted position of this name, we are exhorted to rely upon the name of Jesus in all we do or say: "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Colossians 3:17). We teach and preach in the name of Jesus (Acts 4:17-18; 5:28). We cast out devils, speak in tongues, receive supernatural power and protection, and pray for the sick - all in the name of Jesus (Mark 16:17-18; James 5:14). Signs and wonders are done by the name of Jesus (Acts 4:30). We pray and make requests known to God in the name of Jesus (John 14:13-14; 16:23). We gather together in the name of Jesus (Matthew 18:20). We baptize in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38).
Does this mean the name of Jesus is a kind of magical formula? No. For the name of Jesus to be effective we must have faith in His name (Acts 3:16). We must know and have faith in the One represented by that name (Acts 19:13-17). The name of Jesus is unique because unlike any other name it represents the presence of its owner. It represents God's presence, power, and work. When we speak the name of Jesus in faith, Jesus Himself is actually present and begins to work. The power does not come from the way the name sounds, but it comes because the utterance of the name in faith demonstrates obedience to the Word of God and faith in the work of Jesus. When we call His name in faith, Jesus manifests His presence, performs the work, and meets the need.
Through the name Jesus, therefore, God reveals Himself fully. To the extent that we see, know, honor, believe, and receive Jesus, to that extent we see, know, honor, believe, and receive God the Father (John 5:23; 8:19; 12:44-45; 13:20; 14:7-9). If we deny Jesus, we deny the Father (I John 2:23), but if we use the name of Jesus we glorify the Father (Colossians 3:17).
The Bible foretold that the Messiah would declare the name of the LORD (Psalm 22:22; see Hebrews 2:12). Jesus asserted that He had manifested and declared the name of the Father (John 17:6, 26). In fact, He inherited His name from the Father (Hebrews 1:4). How did Jesus manifest and declare the Father's name? He did so by unveiling the meaning of the name through the works that He did, which were the works of Jehovah (John 14:10-11). Just as God in the Old Testament progressively revealed more about His nature and His name by responding to the needs of His people, so Jesus in the New Testament fully revealed the nature and name of God through miracles, healings, casting out of devils, and forgiveness of sins. Jesus declared the Father's name by His works; for by them He proved that He was indeed the Father, the Jehovah of the Old Testament. (See Isaiah 35:4-6 with Luke 7:19-22.) By demonstrating the power of God in accordance with the prophecies, He proved that Jesus was the name of the Father.
Why is the name of Jesus the full revelation of God? Simply because Jesus is Jehovah and in Jesus dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, including the role of Father (Colossians 2:9).
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