Concealing the name of God

[CherubRam]

Concealing the name of God

Concealing the name of God was not only a custom, it was also made a law.

The sages quoted, "This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations" (Ex. iii. 15). Here the word "le-'olam" (forever) is written defectively, being without the "waw" for the vowel "o," which renders the reading "le-'allem" (to conceal; Ḳid. 71a).

Forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the priests ceased to pronounce the Name (Yoma39b). From that time the pronunciation of the Name was prohibited. "Whoever pronounces the Name forfeits his portion in the future world" (Sanh. xi. 1).

30 AD to 70 AD.
Abba Saul (2d cent.) condemned the profanation of the Tetragrammaton by classing those "that speak the Name according to its letters," with those who have no part in the future world (Sanh. x. 1); and according to 'Ab. Zarah 17b, one of the martyrs of Hadrian's time, Hananiah b. Teradion, was burned at the stake because he so uttered the Name.

The view that prayer is more effectual if the name of God is pronounced in it as it is written caused the scholars of Kairwan to address a question in the eleventh century to Hai Gaon with reference to the pronunciation of the Shem ha-Meforash, to which he answered that it might not be uttered at all outside the Holy Land (Hai Gaon, "Ṭa'am Zeḳenim," p. 55; see Löw, "Gesammelte Schriften," i. 204).

Because Hebrews dropped their 'ayins', to keep from saying God's name, hence we have "y'shua." Also spelled Yeshua, for which we have in Greek, "Iēsous" and "Isus." These are corruptions of the names that begin with "Yah."

Thirteen theophoric names with "Yeho" have corresponding forms where the letters eh have been omitted. There is a theory by Christian Ginsburg that this is due to Hebrew scribes omitting the "h", changing Jeho (יְהוֹ‎) into Jo (יוֹ‎), to make the start of "Yeho-" names not sound like an attempt to pronounce the Divine Name.

Theophoric Names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophoric_name


Praise, Exalt, and Proclaim His Name

Exodus 34:5
Then Yahwah came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, Yahwah.

1 Chronicles 16:8
Give praise to Yahwah, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done.

Psalm 34:3
Glorify Yahwah with me; let us exalt his name together.

Psalm 68:4
Sing to God, sing in praise of his name, extol him who rides on the clouds; rejoice before him—his name is Yahwah.

Psalm 96:2
Sing to Yahwah, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.

Psalm 105:1
Give praise to Yahwah, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done.

Psalm 148:13
Let them praise the name of Yahwah, for his name alone is exalted; his splendor is above the earth and the heavens.

Isaiah 12:4
In that day you will say: “Give praise to Yahwah, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted.

Isaiah 47:4
Our Redeemer—Yahwah of Host is his name— is the Holy One of Israel.

Isaiah 52:6
Therefore my people will know my name; therefore in that day they will know that it is I who foretold it. Yes, it is I.”

Malachi 2:2
If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says Yahwah of Host, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me.

Last Days.
Zechariah 13:9
This third I will put into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘Yahwah is our God.’”

Yahwah reveals His name to Moses
Exodus 3:13-15.
13 And Moses said to Elohiym, “Suppose I go to the siblings of the Israelites and say to them, 'The Elohiym of your forefathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is His name?' What shall I say to them?”
14 And Elohiym said to Moses, “The Living that Lives. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'The Living has sent me to you.”
15 And Elohiym also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, 'Yahwah, the Elohiym of your forefathers; the Elohiym of Abraham, the Elohiym of Isaac and the Elohiym of Jacob has sent me to you.' That’s my name forever, the name by which I’m to be remembered, from generation to generation.”

Exodus 6:3
I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name Yahwah I did not make myself fully known to them.

Yahwah
A note on the words hawah and hayah.
Quote from pages 217 and 218 of the Brown-Driver-Briggs. Ref # 3068-69 on page 217.
Brown-Driver-Briggs on page 218 states that, "Many recent scholars explain יהוה‎ as Hiph. of הוה equals היה "

הוה hawah / HWH is hawah.
היה hayah / HYH is hayah.

Note that the vowels are all " a."
יהוה Yahwah
The vowels are "a" in the Brown-Driver-Briggs, the NIV Exhaustive Concordance, and the Strong's Exhaustive Concordances.
The name Yahwah is from the Aramaic, not the Hebrew.

The original spelling of God's name is Yahuah, later changed to Yahwah for modern English.

 

[CherubRam]

During the Babylonian captivity the Hebrew language spoken by the Jews was replaced by the Aramaic language of their Babylonian captors. Aramaic was closely related to Hebrew, and while sharing many vocabulary words in common, they contained some words that sounded the same or similar but had other meanings.

In Aramaic, the Hebrew word for “blaspheme” used in Leviticus 24:16, “Anyone who blasphemes the name of YHWH must be put to death” began to be interpreted as “pronounce” rather than “blaspheme”. When the Jews began speaking Aramaic, this verse was misunderstood to mean, “Anyone who pronounces the name (or writes) of YHWH must be put to death.” Since then observant Jews have maintained the custom of not pronouncing the name. This also lead to some believing that God's name is not pronounceable.



Holman Christian Standard Bible

Jeremiah 23:27.
Through their dreams that they tell one another, they make plans to cause My people to forget My name as their fathers forgot My name through Baal worship.

My translation
Through their imaginings that they tell each other, they made plans to cause my people to forget my name, like their forefathers forgot my name through Baal worship.

Some Biblical theophoric names end in ia(h) or yah as shortened forms of YHWH: That points to the vowels being "a".

Pronouncing the Name of God​

Nothing in the Bible prohibits a person from pronouncing the name of God. It is evident from scripture that God's name was pronounced routinely. Many common Hebrew names contain "Yah" and "ia(h)" parts of God's name. For an example the name Jeremiah ends in "ah." The Name Yahwah was pronounced as part of daily services in the Temple.

There is no prohibition against pronouncing the name in ancient times. As a matter of fact, the Mishnah recommends using God's name as a routine greeting to a fellow Jews. Berakhot 9:5.
However, in the time of the Talmud, it was the custom to use substitute names for God. Some rabbis asserted that a person who pronounces YHWH according to its letters (instead of using a substitute) has no place in the world to come, and should be put to death for pronouncing the four letter name.

The prohibition on pronunciation applied only to the four letter name YHWH, but Jews customarily do not pronounce any of God's many name titles except in prayer or study.

After killing Hebrew Christians, the Jews would take the New testament scripture written in Hebrew, and carefully cut the name of God out. Then they would place the divine name in a safe place to keep. Following that, they then would burn the remainder of the scrolls in a fire. Rabbi Yose who lived during the second century AD states that, Quote: "One cuts out the reference to the divine name which are in them [the Christian writings] and stores them away, and the rest burns." One of his characteristic sayings is, "He who proclaimed the coming of the Messiah, [John] and he who hated scholars and their disciples; [Yahshua] and that false prophet and those slanderers, will have no part in the future world."

According to Bacher this was directed against the Hebrew Christians.

Note: The person who proclaimed the coming was John the Baptist, and it was Yahshua who spoke against the scholars of the law. The scholars were the scribes or Pharisees.

And so it is an established fact, the disciples of Yahshua did write the holy name of God into the New Testament.

 

[CherubRam]

Saturday 11th May 2013

15th August 2008

Page 4

Vatican forbids use of 'Yahweh'

Keywords: Names Of God, Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, Conceptions Of God, Lord, Shema Yisrael, Names Of God In Judaism, Religion / Belief

BY STAFF REPORTER

THE VATICAN has forbidden the use of the tetragrammaton YHWH (usually pronounced "Yahweh") to refer to God in the liturgy.

The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued a directive which said that the word "Lord" should be used instead.

The instruction was signed by Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the congregation, and Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith, secretary of the congregation. on August 8.

It said: "In liturgical celebrations, in songs and prayers the name of God in the form of the tetragrammaton YHWH is neither to be used or pronounced."

It also said that the word should not be used in modem translations of the Bible. Translations should follow the 2001 Vatican instruction Liturgiarn authenticam and replace "YHWH" with equivalent terms to Adonai (Hebrew) or Kyrios (Greek) such as "Lord", "Signore", "Seigneur", "Herr" and "Senor".

Fr Tim Finigan of Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen, Kent welcomed the letter, saying that it achieved a number of things.

He wrote that "there is an important now on New Testament Christology pointing out that the attribution of the title `Lord' to Christ is a proclamation of His divinity" and that the new directive removed "needless offence to Jewish sensibilities". Judaism forbids speaking out the name "Yahweh".

 

[CherubRam]

Jehovah Yahwah​

Jehovah is grammatically impossible to say in Hebrew, it is impossible to say “Jehovah” in either Hebrew or Aramaic. The letters to create those sounds simply do not exist in either the modern or ancient language of Hebrew.

Well, then, where did the word “Jehovah” come from?

The Hebrew Scriptures (the books of the Tenakh or erroneously-called “Old Testament”) were originally written almost totally in the Hebrew language, plus some sections in Aramaic, neither language containing any vowels, only consonants. However, there were a few of those Hebrew letters that would indicate that a vowel sound should be used. For example, the letter a (aleph), while actually a consonant, would let the reader know to insert an “ah” sound, and the letter w (vav), which was pronounced somewhere between the English “V” and “W” could also be pronounced like English “oo”. Let's see how this works, if you pronounce "W" like "oo" and remember to insert the appropriate vowel when you see “#”.

MWST P#PL SHWLD B #BL TW RD THS SNTNC FRLY #SLY WTHWT VWLS
Most people should be able to read this sentence fairly easily without vowels.​

The Jews knew what vowel sounds to be used in the pronunciation of the words based on the construction of the sentence, the context, and their excellent memories. Since very few people could afford to have written copies of even small portions of the Scriptures, huge amounts of Scripture were accurately committed to memory.

Between the sixth and tenth century after the birth of Messiah, a group of Scribes know as the Masoretes added a system of vowel points to enable the preservation of the original pronunciation. Their version of the Scriptures is know as the Masoretic Text.

The Name by which G-d revealed Himself to the Patriarchs and to Moshe was the Hebrew word for “I AM” or “I AM THAT I AM” — meaning something similar to “The One Who exists by His own power.” This Name was spelled hwhy, the Hebrew equivalent of “YHWH” (yod, heh, vav, heh) and was considered too sacred to pronounce. This four-letter word is also know as the Tetragrammaton (meaning “four letters”). When reading the Scriptures or referring to the Sacred Name (HaShem), the Jews would substitute the word “Adonai,” which means “Lord.”

To indicate this substitution in the Masoretic Text, the Masoretes added the vowel points from the word “Adonai” to the Sacred Name, and came up with a word that would look to them something like YaHoWaH.

Since there was no such word in the Hebrew language, the reader would be forced to stop and think about what he was reading, and thus would avoid accidentally speaking the Sacred Name aloud.

Later, some Christian translators mistakenly combined the vowels of “Adonai” with the consonants of “YHWH” producing the word “YaHoWaH.” When the Scriptures were translated into German during the Reformation, the word was transliterated into the German pronunciation, which pronounces “Y” as an English “J” and pronounces “W” as an English “V” — or “Jahovah.” Then in the early 17th century when the Scriptures were being translated into English with the help of some of the German translations, the word was again transliterated as “Jehovah,” and this this unfortunate accident has carried over into many modern English translations.

The term is now recognized by all proficient Bible scholars to be a late hybrid form, a translation error, that was never used by the Jews.

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary:

“Jehovah — False reading of the Hebrew YAHWEH.” (“Jehovah,” Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1973 ed.)

Encyclopedia Americana:

“Jehovah — erroneous form of the name of the G-d of Israel.” (Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 16., 1972 ed.)

Encyclopedia Britannica:

“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.” (“Yahweh,” The New Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 12, 1993 ed.)

The Jewish Encyclopedia:

“Jehovah — a mispronunciation of the Hebrew YHWH the name of G-d. This pronunciation is grammatically impossible.” (“Jehovah,” The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 7, 1904 ed.)

The New Jewish Encyclopedia:

“It is clear that the word Jehovah is an artificial composite.” (“Jehovah,” The New Jewish Encyclopedia, 1962 ed.)

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, p. 680, vol. 7, “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.”

Note: The Hebrew language did not have an E vowel until about the tenth century AD.

 

[CherubRam]

In Aramaic, the Hebrew word for “blaspheme” used in Leviticus 24:16, “Anyone who blasphemes the name of YHWH must be put to death” began to be interpreted as “pronounce” rather than “blaspheme”. When the Jews began speaking Aramaic, this verse was (mis)understood to mean, “Anyone who pronounces the name of YHWH must be put to death.” Since then, observant Jews have maintained the custom of not pronouncing the name, but use Adonai (“my Lord”) instead. This also lead to some believing that God's name is not pronouncable.

After 300 B.C. Adonai became more frequently used than Yahwah. And the Books of Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon do not use the name Yahwah.

Origen reported that when Jews read the name Yahwah, they would pronounce it Adonai, while non Jews would pronounce it Kurios.

Later on, Christian scribes replaced the Hebrew characters in the Greek Bible with Kurios. Scribes translating the Hebrew Bible showed that Yahwah should not be pronounced, but read as Adonai by substituting the Hebrew vowels of Adonai for those of Yahwah when writing the divine name. Later on, readers who did not know this history did not pronounce Yahwah; but neither did they pronounce Adonai, as the scribes intended. As a result the Middle Ages readers of the Hebrew Bible began pronouncing precisely what was written, and the mixture of consonants from Yahwah and vowels from Adonai, producing the pronunciation of Jehovah, a word that never existed for speakers of ancient Hebrew.

The word "Jehovah" comes from the fact that ancient Jewish texts used to put the vowels of the Name "Adonai" (the usual substitute for YHWH) with the consonants of YHWH to remind people not to pronounce YHWH as written. A sixteenth century German Christian scribe, while transliterating the Bible into Latin for the Pope, wrote the Name out as it appeared in his texts, with the consonants of YHWH and the vowels of Adonai, and came up with the word JeHoVah. In Hebrew the word Jahovah can be interpretated as "God's destructive evil desires."

The editors of the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon write that the pronunciation "Jehovah" was unknown until 1520 when it was introduced by Galatinus; Pietro Colonna Galatino (1460–1530), also known as Petrus Galatinus.

Commentary in the Oxford English Dictionary concerning the letter J. Quote: "The J j types are not used in the Bible of 1611...."

The Encyclopedia Americana wrote the following about the letter J:
"The form of J was unknown in any alphabet until the 14th century."

The name Jehovah is the name of nobody, and the name of Jesus is the name of nobody, because those names did not exist before the 14th century.

Yahwah is the correct transliteration into English, and Yahshua is the correct transliteration into English, because the ancient Semitic language did not use the letter "E" for a vowel. Nor was there the letter J in any name. There is no sound or letter in the middle of those names, that was due to a scribes error.

It is asserted by Philo that only priests might pronounce God's holy name.

Josephus wrote that those who know God's Holy name were forbidden to reveal it.

Yahwah was and is the "Beginning of Life", and that is what His name means; "Life Began" or "Life's Beginning." Nothing or no one lived before Him. Scriptures define Him as a Living Being and not a conception or a perception. Our scriptures say that He is a Spirit and that He is Holy, and that is why He has the name title of Holy Spirit.