Jehovah, The Name in Question.

Jehovah's Witnesses claim that God's name, Jehovah, was used by Jesus and his contemporaries. Was this true? Did Jesus refuse to follow Jewish Laws and decide to use God's name? What is the history behind this name? Where did it originate? Was it Jewish superstition that did not allow God's name to be used?

The Divine name was given to the Hebrews (according to legend) by way of Moses. During the centuries that followed, passages such as found in Ruth 2:4 indicates the name was still being pronounced at the time of the redaction of the Hebrew Bible in the 6th or 5th century BCE. But according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the avoidance of the original name of God both in speech and, to a certain extent, in the Bible was due to reverence; and it may well be that such reluctance first arose in a foreign, and hence "unclean" land, very possibly in Babylon.
Certain historical evidence points to this fact. The Tetragrammaton is found to occur 5,989 time in the Hebrew scriptures. However, there is no instance of the divine name appearing in Canticles, Ecclesiastes or Esther, and in Daniel it occurs only 7 times (in chapter 9), a fact which in itself shows the late date of these books, whose authors lived at a period when the use of the Tetragrammaton was already avoided.

Simeon the Righteous or in Hebrew, שמעון הצדיק Shimon HaTzaddik (310-291 or 300-273 BCE) was a Jewish High Priest during the time of the Second Temple. According to Jewish history, after Simeon's death men ceased to utter the Tetragrammaton aloud (Yoma 30b; Tosef. Soṭah, xiii).

Historical evidence also shows that this prohibition continued even during the first century during Jesus' life time. For example, Philo, a Jewish philosopher (20 BCE - 50 CE) knew that the tetragram was the divine name pronounced inside the temple since he related: "There was a gold plaque shaped in a ring and bearing four engraved characters [the four letters] of a name which had the right to hear and to pronounce in the holy place those ones whose ears and tongue have been purified by wisdom, and nobody else and absolutely nowhere else ."

Flavius Josephus (37 CE - 100 CE) who was a contemporary of Jesus' disciples, when writing about the history of the Jews in his writings, Antiquities of the Jews, admitted that he himself is prohibited to pronounce the name. He wrote: "Whereupon God declared to him (Moses) his holy name, which had never been discovered to men before; concerning which it is not lawful for me to say any more” (Ant. 2, 12, 4).

 It is believed that after the disuse of the name Divine Name during the Babylonian diaspora, the correct pronunciation of the divine name may have been lost. Exodus 20:7 says: "You shall not take the name of YHWH your God in vain." The word in Hebrew for vain, שוא shav', means "vain, vanity, falsehood, worthlessness, lie, nothingness." To the Jews, this includes using a false or made-up or mispronounced name. To avoid coming under guilt by accidentally misusing God’s name, there came to be a prohibition to pronounce the name out loud as part of the definition of Ex. 20:7.

 Another fact: Jews, to this day in modern times, when speaking to or about God, they will utter, "Baruch HaShem," which means "Blessed be the name," "holy is the name," or "HALLOWED BE THY NAME." It is said to show that the name is too sacred to pronounce. What did Jesus say in the Model Prayer? Would not this time, when asked how to pray to God, be the best time to show the Jewish people how the name is really pronounced? Instead, he said "Hallowed be they name," or in Hebrew, "Baruch Hashem" because even he didn't pronounce the name.



Well then, where did the name Jehovah come from?


The invention of the word Jehovah will be traced to Catholic Spain and Italy

Before AD 1278 no form of Jehovah has ever existed

1278 Yohoua by the Spanish Monk Raymundo Martini
1303 IOHOUAH, IOHOUA and IHOUAH by Porchetus de Salvaticis
1518 IEHOUA by the Catholic priest “Pietro Colonna Galatino,” Confessor of Pope Leo X.
1525-1530 IEHOUAH by Reformer William Tyndale (1494-1536)
(See for instance Exodus 6:3 http://wesley.nnu.edu/.../imported_site/tyndale/exo.txt )
1526 Jehovah by Martin Luther
1534 Iehovah by William Tyndale
1602 Jehová in the Spanish VALERA Bible version
1611 Jehovah in King James version, mostly transferred from William Tyndale’s translation
1681 Jehova in ALMEIDA Portugese Bible version

In the 19th and 20th centuries Bible translators and scholars became aware of the Jehovah name mistake

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Nowadays most Bible translators will substitute יהוה , pronounced by Jews ADONAI, with words from their own languages as THE LORD, DER HERR, l’ ETERNEL, HERREN, YO SOY, [Моим] 'Господь' etc.
This is considered to be a logic translation of Hebrew ADONAI pronunciation.


 JWs will point to John 17:6, which says, "I have made your name manifest" and say, "See! Jesus made God's name known!" They forget that Jesus preached to the Jews. They KNEW what the name of their god was (they just refused to pronounce it." Making one's "name known" is not making known a literal name. Barnes notes on the Bible states: "The word "name" here includes the attributes or character of God. Jesus had made known his character, his law, his will, his plan of mercy - or, in other words, he had revealed God to them. The word "name" is often used to designate the person." This is why various translation in English translate this verse as:
"I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world." (NIV)
"I have revealed you to the ones you gave me from this world." (NLT)

 WHAT DO ENCYCLOPEDIAS SAY ABOUT THE NAME JEHOVAH

The Jewish Encyclopedia: "Jehovah" -- a mispronunciation of the Hebrew YHWH the name of God. This pronunciation is grammatically impossible. The form 'Jehovah' is a philological impossibility."

The New Jewish Encyclopedia: "It is clear that the word Jehovah is an artificial composite."

Encyclopedia Judaica: "the true pronunciation of the tetragrammaton YHWH was never lost. The name was pronounced Yahweh. It was regularly pronounced this way at least until 586 B.C., as is clear from the Lachish Letters written shortly before this date."

The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia: "JEHOVAH is an erroneous pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton a four lettered name of God, made up of the Hebrew letters Yod He Vav He. The word "JEHOVAH" therefore is a misreading for which there is no warrant and which makes no sense in Hebrew"

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: "Jehovah" -- "False reading of the Hebrew YAHWEH."

Encyclopedia Americana: "Jehovah" -- "erroneous form of the name of the God of Israel."

A Dictionary of the Bible by William Smith: "Whatever, therefore, be the true pronunciation of the word, there can be little doubt that it is not Jehovah."

Encyclopedia Britannica: ""The pronunciation 'Jehovah' is an error resulting among Christians from combining the consonants YHWH with the vowels of ADHONAY....The Masoretes who from the 6th to the 10th century worked to reproduce the original text of the Hebrew Bible replaced the vowels of the name YHWH with the vowel signs of Adonai or Elohim. Thus the artificial name Jehovah came into being."

Webster's Third New International Dictionary: "Jehovah" -- "Intended as a transliteration of Hebrew YAHWEH, the vowel points of Hebrew ADHONAY (my lord) being erroneously substituted for those of YAHWEH; from the fact that in some Hebrew manuscripts the vowel points of ADHONAY (used as a euphemism for YAHWEH) were written under the consonants YHWH of YAHWEH to indicate that ADHONAY was to be substituted in oral reading for YAHWEH. Jehovah is a Christian transliteration of the tetragrammaton long assumed by many Christians to be the authentic reproduction of the Hebrew sacred name for God but now recognized to be a late hybrid form never used by the Jews."

New Catholic Encyclopedia: "Jehovah" -- "false form of the divine name YAHWEH.

The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia: "Jehovah" -- "is an erroneous form of the divine name of the covenant God Israel."

The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible: "Jehovah" --"is an artificial form."

Encyclopedia International: "Jehovah" --"the vowels of one word with the consonants of the other were misread as 'Jehovah.'

Merits Students Encyclopedia: --"is an inaccurate reconstruction of the name of God in the Old Testament."

Encyclopedia Judiacia: "YHWH" -- "When Christian scholars of Europe first began to study Hebrew, they did not understand what this really meant, and they introduced the hybrid name 'Jehovah'...THE TRUE PRONUNCIATION OF THE NAME YHWH WAS NEVER LOST. Several early Greek writers of the Christian church testify that the name was pronounced 'YAHWEH.' This is confirmed, at least for the vowel of the first syllable of the name, by the shorter form Yah, which is sometimes used in poetry (e.g. Exodus 15:2)... The personal name of God of Israel is written in the Hebrew Bible with the four consonants YHWH and is referred to as the 'Tetragrammaton.' At least until the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. this name was regularly pronounced with its proper vowels, as is clear from the Lachish Letters, written shortly before that date."

Nelson's Bible Dictionary: "Jehovah" -- "The divine name Yahweh is usually translated Lord in English versions of the Bible, because it became a practice in late Old Testament Judaism not to pronounce the sacred name YHWH, but to say instead "my Lord" (Adonai) - a practice still used today in the synagogue. When the vowels of Adonai were attached to the consonants YHWH in the medieval period, the word Jehovah resulted. Today, many Christians use the word Yahweh, the more original pronunciation, not hesitating to name the divine name since Jesus taught believers to speak in a familiar way to God."

 Another trick the Watchtower uses to try to fool the rank & file to thinking the Divine name was used in the NT writings,  is to show photographs of the Septuagint with the Greek writings, and which shows the Divine Name in paleo-hebraic letters, and say, "See! The tetragrammaton was there! Scribes removed it!" They fail to explain to the rank & file, that the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, written around 200 BCE, so of course it would have the tetragrammaton in it. In fact there was no equivalent of YHWH in Greek, this is why they left the divine name in paleo-hebraic letters.

It is very ironic the the Catholics invented the name Jehovah since the Watchtower Society blasts orthodox Christendom  for hiding the name of God by replacing it with the Lord.
They claim this is a Jewish "superstition" that dishonors God (which it does not). Yet their own organization has a name that was invented as a result of the same thinking that produced use of "the Lord."

It makes no sense to use an incorrect name for God. But I guess in a religion loaded with misinterpretations, this comes as no surprise.