Please..someone who has knowledge of this subject..Was the name Jehovah?

Question

in the New Testements at one time? I know it was in the Old Testaments, but JW's have replaced the name Lord in the New Testaments , with Jehovah. They say this is correct..Does anyone know for sure if they are right..or , were they wrong in doing this?

Moises_F........I am not dening the name Jehovah...That is not my question..Please read the question and then anwer it, again...I need to know if the name Jehovah was in the New T. ..or was it added by the JW's without proof that it belonged there. Thanks for your input.

I am very confused..Some say yes..some say no..How can I research it for myself..what books would I need to read in order to find this out..does anyone know. This is important...as it changes everything about the belief in important matters..
How can one know for sure about anything..

Answer 1

don't worry so ............ stick with the most important things .............. like what Jesus told us to do.

Answer 2

For those who insist that Jehovah is not the correct rendering of the Tetragrammaton: accordingly, you must now stop calling the Christ "Jesus". For you, by your new tradition, he must be "Yeshua"; seem wrong? Okay...go ahead and call him Iesous, then. But that's just the Greek rendering, and, well, to be honest, not exactly what the Hebrew speaking Israelites would've called him...it's up to you how far you want to go with that...have fun, though.
I'm sticking with "Jesus"...and the preferred pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton..."Jehovah", which is, incidentally, the conventional literary form, in French, as well as other languages..."Yahweh" has, for a very long time now, been viewed by even Jesuit scholars as "hypothetical".
Interestingly, if these points are true, we are actually agreeing that Jehovah and Jesus each have a personal name.
Isn't that the point?
And, yes, Jehovah's own name appears in other Bible's in it's proper place in the New Testament .
Jehovah's name appears in translations of the New Testament into Hebrew, in passages where quotations are made directly from the O.T.
In 38 other translations from their vernacular, other language translations use their form of the actual divine name, Jehovah.
Actual fragments have been preserved.
Try looking up "Journal of Biblical Literature"March, 1977, p.77, to get you started. The discussion is on usage of the tetragrammaton in copies of the scriptures that made up the Greek Bible of the early church.
I hope this helps.

Answer 3

When & where I First heard this was on a public radio broadcast.
They said that when the Bible was translated into English,
the men doing this Removed His name,
bc they thought that we commoners
were not good enough to know
His Most Sacred & Holy name.
So, I; 4 the 1st time in my life;
put effort into searching out this God,
that goes by the name Jehovah.
I read an hour or more so a day;
and starting learning alot of things.
And No I was not in communication
w/ Any of Jehovah's Witnesses...
what-so-ever!
Then it eventually, Hit! My! Brain!
Jehovah- God's name
Witnesses- telling others about the 1 true God*.
And I also learned that in the Bible (any Bible) when you
see 'lord' that is bc the person said 'lord';
but where it says 'Lord' the person speaking said Jehovah.
And His name had been removed.
*This is what got me studying w/ Jehovah's Witnesses.
Among the many other things I learned; i.e.
that He will take ppl out of every nation,
every tribe & every tongue, a ppl for His name.
I did notice, that Repeatedly the Scriptures say
"for His name" or "in His name,"...
the resounding theme being......
His name.
When I did start studying w/ the Witnesses,
I would go to the public library,
and researched Everything I was being showed
from the Bible.
'Cuz how would I know if what I was being taught
was indeed true.
I even felt bad for 'checking up' on the written word of God.
But, in continuing my studies, I discovered,
that what I was doing was the right thing to do.

I urge you to do the same.
Find out for yourself, if God does have a name.
As u r now doing.

Answer 4

Lisa,
You seem sincere in wanting to get to the truth of the matter. I also detect a sense of urgency or desperation to find out for sure about this, as if all that you've ever believed or not believed hinges on this one thing. So, my advice to you would be to relax and read again the posting by "achtung_", as he has explained it very nicely. Also, if you have access to the NWT Reference Bible, look in the very back, on pages 1564-1566 (Appendix 1D). There you will find references that you can check which explain the "rightness" of restoring God's name in the places where Christian Bible writers were quoting from or referring to the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). As an example, read Luke 4:17-21 and just imagine Jesus standing up in the synagogue in Nazareth, reading from the scroll of Isaiah, and NOT using his Father's name. That would not even make sense. As many times as Jesus said that he had come to make his Father's name known, there is no question that he would have used God's personal name. Today, we only have COPIES of the original Greek manuscripts and those copies do not contain God's name. However, a few fragments of the early Greek Septuagint have been found where the sacred name is preserved in Hebrew, which provides evidence that the divine name was originally found throughout the Christian Greek Scriptures [New Testament]).
I hope this helps you to see the accuracy of the NWT; it simply RESTORES God's name to where it would have been originally.
If there's anything else you'd like to talk about, please feel free to email me directly.
Take care.

Answer 5

browneyedgirl

Haven't had the time to respond to you last update. You previously told me that Origen and Jerome was talking about the Old Testament, which was incorrect. They were actually talking about the New Testament. The Hebrew Characters YHWH were both in the OT and the NT, which is what they were saying.

The Book of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew, then translated to Greek.

Fourth Century, Jerome, who translated the Latin Vulgate States “Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an apostle, first of all composed a Gospel of Christ in Judaea in the Hebrew language . . . Who translated it after that in Greek is not sufficiently ascertained. Moreover, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea.”

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Volume 2, page 512) says: “Recent textual discoveries cast doubt on the idea that the compilers of the LXX [Septuagint] translated the tetragrammaton YHWH by kyrios. The oldest LXX MSS (fragments) now available to us have the tetragrammaton written in Heb[rew] characters in the G[ree]k text. This custom was retained by later Jewish translators of the O[ld] T[estament] in the first centuries A.D.” Therefore, whether Jesus and his disciples read the Scriptures in Hebrew or Greek, they would come across the divine name.

[[As you can see, the Hebrew Characters YHWH appeared in the Greek Scriptures]]

Thus, Professor George Howard, of the University of Georgia, U.S.A., made this comment:
“When the Septuagint which the New Testament church used and quoted contained the Hebrew form of the divine name, the New Testament writers no doubt included the Tetragrammaton in their quotations.” (Biblical Archaeology Review, March 1978, page 14) What authority would they have had to do otherwise?


browneyedgirl

Yes, they are talking about the Septuagint of the Book of Matthew which was written in Hebrew.

Answer 6

Well, Lisa it seems you have a long list of references proving that God's name rightfully belongs in the New Testament. You also have scriptural proof. There is nothing I can add to this except that it should not take years of wading through all of the available reference works for you to know and understand who God is.

Answer 7

YHWH / YAHWEH / JEHOVAH: “LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4; Daniel 9:14) – Strictly speaking, the only proper name for God. Translated in English Bibles “LORD” (all capitals) to distinguish it from Adonai “Lord.” The revelation of the name is first given to Moses “I Am who I Am” (Exodus 3:14). This name specifies an immediacy, a presence. Yahweh is present, accessible, near to those who call on Him for deliverance (Psalm 107:13), forgiveness (Psalm 25:11) and guidance (Psalm 31:3).

Answer 8

You ask how can you know for sure....this is how.

Find an interlinear New Testament which has the original Greek text on one side of the page and the English translation on the other side. Jehovah's Witnesses publish an interlinear Bible - it's purple in color - you can use theirs or one that is published by someone else. They will all be the same. In the 200 plus instances in the New Testament where the JW Bible says "Jehovah", you will see on the Greek side of the page either "lord" or "god", never YHWH or Jehovah, because it isn't there.

Was it there originally? No one can say with certainty, so the only reasonable thing to do is to accept the Greek manuscripts as God has given them to us.

(The fact that someone quotes an Old Testament scripture in the New Testament, doesn't mean that the person said YHWH just because it was in the Old Testament. It was the custom to say "lord" instead of YHWH by the time the New Testament was written, so we have no way of knowing if the person quoting the scripture actually said YHWH, or followed the custom of the day and substituted "lord".)

Note to JR:

No, JR, you are mistaken. Neither Jerome or Origen said that YHWH was in the New Testament. Only the Old. The Greek Septuagint was only the Old Testament which was translated into Greek before the New Testament was even written.

You seem to be combining two unrelated quotes. Yes, I believe Jerome said that Matthew originally wrote his book in Hebrew, but he never said - or even hinted - that YHWH was used. Even though Matthew's use of Hebrew would make the use of YHWH more likely, it's not a certainty, given the custom of the day. Since YHWH was being removed from the OT at that time, it's not likely that new books being written were using it to a large extent, either.

Bottom line: Translators should translate, not substitute words they like better for the ones that are in the text.

2nd note to JR

If you don't believe me that the book of Matthew isn't in the Septuagint, ask Achtung or someone else who knows, whose answer you would be willing to accept. Obviously you wouldn't believe me if I said that grass is green.

Note to Jill:

While you are reasoning away the facts in favor of what "makes sense" (to you), why not reason away the use of "Father" in Matthew 6:9, and translate that as "Jehovah" also? If the rest of your comment is valid, wouldn't it be "rightness" to eliminate "Father" and use "Jehovah" instead?

Don't you realize that the custom of that time was different than the custom now? It would have been viewed as disrespectful THEN to use the divine name as though it was a name for common use. Customs change, but imagine yourself living THEN, not now. You are looking through your own eyes, not the eyes of Jewish Christians in the first century.

Answer 9

Take your own Bible, take the New World Translation. Wherever there is LORD in the New Testament in your Bible, check to see if there is Jehovah in the NWT. The preface of your Bible probably says that the translators replaced the divine name with "LORD". So if NWT puts Jehovah in those places, is it wrong?

People in general have issues with JWs, and there's so many lies around. The reason why the Translation Committee is kept anonymous is no secret- they stated their reasons. Look at the preface of the NWT. They want the translation to stand on its own merit, they didn't want people to do what many here are trying to do- seeking to make the translation stand or fall on their assumptions of the educational backgrounds of the translators.

Look at the NWT itself, and if you still don't like it- please suit yourself, use another translation. All that matters is that you apply what you learn from the Bible.

Answer 10

Yes. For reference go to your Bible. If you study from the King James Version of the Bible, you probably have already noted the places in the OT where the name of God has been removed. Note the words of Jesus Christ in the NT. Jesus often quoted from the OT. In many of those instances, the OT uses the name of God. Jesus also said that he made his Father's name known (John 17:26)
Also Revelation 19 uses the word Hallelujah, which means praise Jah.

Answer 11

The divine name - the Tetragram - was almost always rendered LORD in the Old Testament. For the New Testament (Greek language, not Hebrew) there are 2 possibilities. The inspired authors would have inserted the divine name YHWH if they understood Jesus to be a created being rather than God. (This would have made a clear distinction between the Father (YHWH) and the Son (LORD).) If they used LORD to represent both the Father and the Son, this would be because they understood Jesus to be the same God as the Father. There would be no stronger proof of the doctrine of the deity of Christ than the application to Jesus in the Christian Scriptures the attributes given to Jehovah in the Hebrew Scriptures.

This is why the JW Bible (the New World Translation) has gone overboard in putting 'Jehovah' in place of 'Lord' in the NT! They hate the doctrine of the deity of Christ (as per the Trinity doctrine) and will not have their Bible say that Jesus is Jehovah! They are absolutely wrong to do this, and their prejudice shines through.