Is there any evidence that the Tetragrammaton YHWH ever appeared in the original Nt documents.?

Question

If it did not then why have JW's added it despite dire Biblical warnings about adding to or taking away from scripture. If removed from the NT an entirely different light is cast upon the role and deity of Jesus. Has a grave sin been commited? I need to know because I am a doubting Jehovahs Witness. If the name of Jehovah has been added where it should not exist then most of what I believe can be called into question. JW's please don't bother telling me to speak to the elders, Iv'e already listened to their version of why it has been added. If there is any historical evidence of it being present in 1st/2nd century documents, before the supposed great apostacy that seemingly removed it in the 4th century then I will stand repentant.

Answer 1

No Curly Sue,
The Tetragrammaton has NEVER appeared in ANY New Testament document or Manuscript.

The assertion by the JW's on these Y/A pages that it must have been in the originals, or that Jesus and the Apostles must have used it is;
1) Either an outright lie
2) Supreme ignorance regarding the Manuscript Record
3) Willful Delusion

Probably number 3

There are over 25,000 Manuscripts and partial Manuscripts, and NOT ONE of them contain the Tetragrammaton.

So either God was not capable of preserving it, or He did not want it any manuscript because that is NOT His name.

Since Phillipians Chapter 2 says that "Jesus" is the Name that is above EVERY NAME, its obvious that God does not hold the Tetragrammaton in any special favor.

At the beginning of the Watchtower Org, Charles Taze Russell needed something "different" to attract followers.
He chose to highlight the name "Jehovah". It garnered a quick following.


....theBerean

Answer 2

The "Tetragrammaton YHWH" as you refer to it, is the original Aramaic naming of the Deity of Israel, also known as Elohim, or Emanuel, in some texts. It is not a Jewish invention, for the Jews are not descendents of the Israelites spoken of in Biblical times, but the children of Edom (Edomites) who had come onto the land of Israel when the children of Israel had be taken into banishment by Nebucadneser of the Babilonian Kingdom. Upon the return of the children of Israel to Jerusalem, they found their land settled by the Edomites, and incorporated them into the house of Israel as their wards, for the Edomites had no where else to turn to. Being prolific breeders, the Edomites had eventually outnumbered the Israelites, and when the Israelites due to their transgressians against YHWH had been sent forth into the world ahead of their enemies, the Edomites again took over the land of Israel, but also claimed the Israel culture as their own, begining a new "nation" known today as the Jews.
As to the name YHWH ever having appeared in the original text: Yes, that is the original version, before it was changed by numerous translation efforts throughout the ages. Unfortunately the worst attrocity in respect of the original text, took place with two historical events: 1: The "compilation/unifying" and similar translation of the original Israel/Aramaic texts under the guidance of Contstatine, by the - then newly formed - Catholic Church, which resulted in thousands of pages of these originals scriptures being "thrown out - because they did not comply with the doctrines of the Church"! This was the worst form of censorship ever committed; and 2: The burning and destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria (ironocally by bthe same church group!), in which thousands of pages of extremely valuable scriptures were burned to ashes. Thus ensuring that there is no way anyone can verify through the original texts whetther the subsequent translations were correct or not.
To err is human, and in translation after translation errors have crept in - and the end result that we see today, is little more than a compounding of errors upon errors . . .
Unfortunately very few of us can read and understand the original Aramaic text - what little is left of it.

Answer 3

In Revelation, YH appears which is translated as Hallelujah or Praise Jah. But as for YHWH, no, it doesn't appear in any of the thousands of original language manuscripts. There is only a theory that says it might have been there, but removed.

The fact that the Tetragrammaton doesn't appear in other early Christian writings or even in secular writings of that time period (see edit), however, make it seem pretty evident that it just wasn't being used at the time - right or wrong.

Edit , for clarification

I should have said that other Christian writings, and secular, of that time period didn't "use" the name in their writings, but I didn't mean to say that the Christians were unfamiliar with the Tetragrammaton. I'm saying this from memory, but if my memory is correct, I believe Origen (2nd or 3rd century, probably) was familiar with it, as was Jerome who said that God's name appeared in the ancient Scriptures (Old Testament) in ancient - not modern - Hebrew letters. There were no vowels used - only consonants - so the name was probably not pronounced, but the consonants could still be written.

Answer 4

Jehovah is another form of Yarweh. hebrew did not have vowels
when the OT was being written (NT is in greek)

jehovah does not appear in any Christian texts before the 16C. the name Yaweh was not pronounced out of respect for its holiness (from 3c on) In its plce hebrew readers used 'adonoy (lord). Vowels were added to Hebrew c.1000AD, at this time the consonants of Yahweh were preserved, but the vowels of'adonoy were used. Renaissance christian tradition erroneously combined the two to make Jehovah, which is occasionally found in KJV. more recent translations tend to use Lord

Answer 5

The four letter name of God Tetragrammaton YHVH was closely debated as Jehovah, later to be claimed as YHWH or Yahweh by Hebrew scholars. Neither appear in the NT. It derives from the Torah.

Answer 6

My suggestion to you is to learn enough Greek to be able to figure this one out for yourself--most of the answers you recieve here will be speculation that goes something like "well, MY bible says "lord" so yours must be wrong." I'm sure that just as with the Hebrew Bible there must be editions of the Christian bible that have the original Greek beside the English text. Also, if 1st-2nd century documents are still extant there are probably excerpts available online which you can examine.

Answer 7

Contrary to many of the answers here,

It is not just Jehovah's Witnesses that have placed Jehovah's name in the NT.

Please note these scholars comments:

Wolfgang Feneberg comments in the Jesuit magazine Entschluss/Offen (April 1985): “He [Jesus] did not withhold his father’s name YHWH from us, but he entrusted us with it. It is otherwise inexplicable why the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer should read: ‘May your name be sanctified!’” Feneberg further notes that “in pre-Christian manuscripts for Greek-speaking Jews, God’s name was not paraphrased with kýrios [Lord], but was written in the tetragram form [YHWH] in Hebrew or archaic Hebrew characters. . . . We find recollections of the name in the writings of the Church Fathers;

Professor George Howard of the University of Georgia wrote: “Since the Tetragram [four Hebrew letters for the divine name] was still written in the copies of the Greek Bible which made up the Scriptures of the early church, it is reasonable to believe that the N[ew] T[estament] writers, when quoting from Scripture, preserved the Tetragram within the biblical text.”—Journal of Biblical Literature, March 1977, p. 77.

“In pre-Christian Greek [manuscripts] of the O[ld] T[estament], the divine name (yhwh) was not rendered by ‘kyrios’ [lord] as has often been thought. Usually the Tetragram was written out in Aramaic or in paleo-Hebrew letters. . . . At a later time, surrogates [substitutes] such as ‘theos’ [God] and ‘kyrios’ replaced the Tetragram . . . There is good reason to believe that a similar pattern evolved in the N[ew] T[estament], i.e. the divine name was originally written in the NT quotations of and allusions to the OT, but in the course of time it was replaced by surrogates.”—“New Testament Abstracts,” 3, 1977, p. 306.

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Volume 2, page 649) says: “One of the most fundamental and essential features of the biblical revelation is the fact that God is not without a name: he has a personal name, by which he can, and is to be, invoked.” Jesus certainly had that name in mind when he taught his followers to pray: “Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified.”—Matthew 6:9.


Even the NKJV has "LORD" in caps in the NT, which is their way of rendering the 'YHWH' in English.

As to those who said the early christians didn't use God's name please read this quote from above.

"We find recollections of the name in the writings of the Church Fathers;"

.

Answer 8

Most every time this name appears in scripture it is translated "Lord". The word Jehovah is a new word used for the name of the Deity. It came down to us through some evolution.
"Jehova" in 1270 A.D. Latin.
"Iehouah" in 1530 A.D. English.
"Iehovah" in 1611 A.D. English.
"Jehovah" in 1769 A.D. English.
All Vowels were excluded from the original word making it unpronounceable. Use any word you want for it just understand Jesus claimed that position when He said " before Abraham was I AM... " Jim

Answer 9

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Answer 10

The name of Jehovah does not appear in the NT because it was evidently removed by later copyists. That is evident by the fact that Jesus and the apostles frequently quoted from the Hebrew text where the YHWH appeared.

For example, when Jesus was tempted by the Devil three times, in each response Jesus quoted from the Jewish Law that contained the YHWH. It is inconceivable that when Jesus quoted from such texts containing the YHWH that he would not have pronounced his Father's name.

It does not undermine our confidence in God's Word that Jehovah-haters have always sought to erase or conceal the sacred Name of God. We know the Jewish scribes developed a superstition that forbade them from pronouncing the Name.

Likewise, modern translators have admitted to their bias in substituting LORD in the Hebrew text for the YHWH. It should come as no surprise that the early NT copyist were similarly over-reached by the Devil and influenced to erase God's name and replace it with LORD.

An abbreviated form of The Name does occur at Revelation 19:1, 3, 4, 6, in the expression "Alleluia" or "Hallelujah" in KJ, Dy, JB, AS, and RS.

The logic presented for the absence of the "full form" of the Divine Name in the NT had been that the inspired writers of the NT made their quotations from the Greek Septuagint version of the OT, which substituted Kyrios or Theos for the Tetragrammaton.

Commenting on the fact that the oldest fragments of the Greek Septuagintdo contain the divine name in its Hebrew form, Dr. P. Kahle says:

"We now know that the Greek Bible text [the Septuagint] as far as it was written by Jews for Jews did not translate the Divine name by kyrios; but the Tetragrammaton, written with Hebrew or Greek letters, was retained in such MSS [manuscripts]. It was the Christians who replaced the Tetragrammaton by kyrios, when the divine name written in Hebrew letters was not understood any more." (The Cairo Geniza, Oxford, 1959, p. 222)

When did Greek translators of O T stop using The Divine Name?

... evidently in the centuries following the death of Jesus and his apostles. In Aquila's Greek Version, dating from the second century C.E., the Tetragrammaton still appeared in Hebrew characters. Also, around 245 C.E., the noted scholar Origen produced his Hexapla, a six-column reproduction of the inspired Hebrew Scriptures:

"In Origen's Hexapla . . . the Greek versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and LXX [Septuagint], all represented JHWH by PIPI, in the second column of the Hexapla the Tetragrammaton was written in Hebrew characters." (The Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford, Vol. XLV, 1944, pp. 158, 159)

Why would the early copiests substitute kyrios (Lord) or theos (God) for The Divine Name?

From 66 CE to 135 CE there were:

Several Jewish revolts fostered much persecution by Roman authorities upon any who appeared Jewish;

After the apostle's deaths, there was a great falling away from the true faith. (2 Thessalonians 2:3; 2 Peter 2:3);

Most Jewish Christians were killed by the Roman authorities, leaving mostly "Gentile" Christians. These Gentile Christians wanted to appease the Roman authorities and gain approval amongst Romans, in general, and therefore may have developed a propensity to discard almost anything that made them look Jewish, including The Divine Name.

Greek philosophies were put on par with the Holy Scriptures. (2 Timothy 6:20, 21)

No matter how you break it down, God Almighty revealed His name thousands of years ago as YAHWEH (Exd 6:3 - Jehovah), and quite emphatically declared that His name would never, ever change (Ex.3:15).

Yahshua (Jesus) said that God was His Father, and clearly proclaimed God the Father's name as distinct from His own. Even through the closing chapters of Revelation, God the Father's name remains an identifying feature between God's people and others.

Though it is true that Yahshua (Jesus) is to be given a new name (Rev 3:12), it is equally true that God Almighty's name was, is, and always will be YAHWEH (English: Jehovah).