Question about Acts 2:34, LORD in all capital letters, and Jehovah?

Question

People say that LORD in all capitals means that the Bible originally said Jehovah in those places.

Other people say that Jehovah isn't in the New Testament.in the original Bible, only lord.

But Acts 2:34 says "LORD".in all capitals AND it's in the New Testament. So what does it say in the original? Jehovah or lord? (I know it means God and not Jesus, but I want to know what word was written there.)

Achtung, thank you for sharing all that information. But I still don't know which word was used. You seem to say that it was Jehovah at first, but removed. But you said that all the copies that have been discovered don't say Jehovah. So wouldn't that mean that the Bible just doesn't say Jehovah in that place? Isn't it possible that it was never there? In that one place, I mean. I agree it would make more sense to say Jehovah, but I'm getting the idea that it said lord instead.

Answer 1

If you're thinking 'lord', you are correct. Actually, the Greek word for lord, kurios.

If you can find the Emphatic Diaglott by Benjamin Wilson, you will be able to clearly see the Greek side-by-side with the English translation. You can see the Greek which reads :"Said the Lord to the lord of me" which Mr. Wilson translated "JEHOVAH said to my LORD".

As mentioned, there is a theory that Jehovah may have been written there originally since it was a quote from the Old Testament which said "Jehovah' (YHWH) . However, the writer of Acts (Luke) may not have quoted it exactly as it was written and it is the words of Luke that are being translated.

As a side point, I noticed that, despite Mr. Wilson's apparent disregard for the Greek text, the preface says that scrupulous fidelity had been maintained in giving the "true" rendering of the Greek into English. Mr. Wilson uses 'Jehovah' about 7 times in the New Testament, compared to the New World Translation's 200 (approx.).

As mentioned, there is no manuscript evidence that the name Jehovah ever appeared in the New Testament at all. The theory derives from the fact that YHWH DID appear and was removed from the Old Testament. There IS manuscript evidence of that.

At the time the New Testament was written, centuries had passed since the writing of the Old Testament. God's name was no longer being used. The New Testament was written in Greek whereas the Tetragrammaton was Hebrew. New Testament writers did not use God's name even when it would seem to be an appropriate occasion for doing so, such as Acts 17 where Paul tells the men of Athens about his god. Although the men of Athens call him an "Unknown God', Paul does not mention to them that he has a personal name or that his name is Jehovah. Likewise, Jesus gave instructions on praying to God - not Jehovah - but Father. (Matt 6:9, 10). For these reasons, it isn't surprising that God's name isn't found in the New Testament (with the exception of Hallelujah or Praise Jah, in the Book of Revelation). It apparently was never there.

There really is no need to theorize that it WAS there and removed. Although anything is possible, if such would be the case, it would mean that Jehovah either didn't divinely provide protection against corruption of the 27 books we call the New Testament, or that it was not a matter of sufficient importance that He felt should be corrected.

Answer 2

it is evident that the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew characters (הוהי) was used in both the Hebrew text and the Greek Septuagint. Therefore, whether Jesus and his disciples read the Scriptures in either Hebrew or Greek, they would come across the divine name. In the synagogue at Nazareth, when Jesus rose and accepted the book of Isaiah and read 61:1, 2 where the Tetragrammaton occurs twice, he pronounced the divine name. This was in accordance with his determination to make Jehovah’s name known as can be seen from his prayer to his Father: “I have made your name manifest to the men you gave me out of the world. . . . I have made your name known to them and will make it known.”—Joh 17:6, 26.

Concerning the use of the Tetragrammaton in the Christian Greek Scriptures, George Howard of the University of Georgia wrote in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 96, 1977, p. 63: “Recent discoveries in Egypt and the Judean Desert allow us to see first hand the use of God’s name in pre-Christian times. These discoveries are significant for N[ew] T[estament] studies in that they form a literary analogy with the earliest Christian documents and may explain how NT authors used the divine name. In the following pages we will set forth a theory that the divine name, הוהי (and possibly abbreviations of it), was originally written in the NT quotations of and allusions to the O[ld] T[estament] and that in the course of time it was replaced mainly with the surrogate ? [abbreviation for Ky′ri·os, “Lord”]. This removal of the Tetragram[maton], in our view, created a confusion in the minds of early Gentile Christians about the relationship between the ‘Lord God’ and the ‘Lord Christ’ which is reflected in the MS tradition of the NT text itself.”

To know where the divine name was replaced by the Greek words Κύριος and Θεός, we have determined where the inspired Christian writers have quoted verses, passages and expressions from the Hebrew Scriptures and then we have referred back to the Hebrew text to ascertain whether the divine name appears there. In this way we determined the identity to give Ky′ri·os and The·os′ and the personality with which to clothe them.

Appendix 1D from the Large print reference bible NWT.

I hope this helps.

Answer 3

The languages in which the bible was originally written did not have formal capitals or punctuation, so when capitals are used in modern bibles it is merely the modern convention accepted by that particular translator/publisher which determines what is used in a particular bible edition.

The Hebrew Scriptures (so-called "Old Testament") include the Divine Name nearly seven thousand times, written as four Hebrew letters corresponding to "YHWH" and described universally as "the Tetragram" or "the Tetragrammaton" (literally meaning "four letters"). Most bibles follow the ancient superstition of hiding the personal name of God by replacing it with some title such as God or Lord. Over the centuries, perhaps a twinge of remorse for dishonoring the Divine Name persuaded many translators to at least set apart such aliases by using all capital letters, such as GOD or LORD.

Trinitarians realized that using "Lord" helped to obscure the fact that Jesus the Son is a distinct person from God the Father. The practice had the effect of making a Scripture which actually referred to YHWH (Yahweh/Yehowah in Hebrew, or Jehovah in English) instead seem to refer to Jesus. The end-result pleased Trinitarians so much that they worked to replace YHWH wherever they could, and so (as of May 30, 2007) all the discovered ancient Greek manuscripts have already had instances of "YHWH" removed.

But such forced obscurity is exposed as absurd when the two persons (Jehovah and Jesus) are juxtaposed in a single sentence, such as at Acts 2:34. In this verse and others, dozens of bibles have chosen to restore the Divine Name (הוהי or YHWH or Yahweh or Jehovah) where it plainly belongs, where many or most others merely all-capitalize the instance of "lord" which refers to God the Father.

Even more interestingly, hundreds of times a Christian Scripture directly quotes from a Hebrew Scripture which plainly contains the Divine Name (such as Acts 2:34 which quotes Psalm 110:1). In these instances, it is shameful when a bible refuses to restore the Divine Name to its plainly rightful place.

The New World Translation is a noteworthy exception to the generally superstition-coddling trend of other bibles.

(Psalm 110:1) NWT: The utterance of Jehovah to my Lord is: “Sit at my right hand

(Acts 2:34)
NWT: Jehovah said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand
NASB: THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, "SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND
GWT: The Lord said to my Lord, "Take my highest position of power
KJV: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand
ASV: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand
BBE: The Lord said to my Lord, Be seated at my right hand
DBY: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand
WEY: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand
WBS: The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand
WEB: The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit by my right hand
YLT: The Lord saith to my lord, Sit thou at my right hand

Learn more:
http://watchtower.org/e/na/index.htm?article=diagram_04.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/ti/index.htm?article=article_05.htm