Bible Discussion Thread

I am so glad to know what Jesus and Jehovah's feelings are on the matter! Jesus taught his disciples to pray to his Father Jehovah when he taught them the Our Father Prayer. He said to them, "you must pray this way: 'Our Father, who art in... heaven, HALLOWED BE THY NAME' '--To 'hallow' is to MAKE HOLY. So he instructed his disciples to pray to his father and God by making HOLY his name! And what is his name? Jehovah! But some argue that Yahweh is more correct.

From the February 8, 1999 Awake:

Jehovah or Yahweh?

Whereas the name Jehovah appears in the King James Version and other Bible translations, some prefer to use the name Yahweh instead of Jehovah. Which name is correct?

The most ancient Bible manuscripts were written in the Hebrew language. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the divine name occurs almost 7,000 times and is spelled with four consonants�YHWH or JHVH. These four-consonant words are commonly called the Tetragrammaton, or Tetragram, derived from two Greek words meaning �four letters.� Now the question of accurate pronunciation arises because early Hebrew writing consisted of consonants with no vowels to guide the reader. So whether the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton becomes Yahweh or Jehovah depends on which vowels the reader supplies to the four consonants. Today many Hebrew scholars prefer Yahweh as the true pronunciation.

However, consistency favors Jehovah. In what way? The pronunciation Jehovah has been accepted in English for centuries. Those who object to using this pronunciation should also object to the use of the accepted pronunciation Jeremiah and even Jesus. Jeremiah would need to be changed to Yir‧meyah′ or Yir‧meya′hu, the original Hebrew pronunciations, and Jesus would become Ye‧shu′aʽ (Hebrew) or I‧e‧sous′ (Greek). Hence, many Bible students, including Jehovah�s Witnesses, feel that consistency favors the use of the already well-known English-language �Jehovah� and its equivalent in other languages.

Does It Really Matter?

Some may argue that it does not really matter whether you address Almighty God by a personal name or not, and they are content to speak of and address God as Father or simply as God. Both these terms, however, are titles rather than names and are neither personal nor distinctive. In Bible times the word for God (ʼElo‧him′, Hebrew) was used to describe any god�even the pagan Philistine god named Dagon. ( Judges 16:23, 24) So for a Hebrew to tell a Philistine that he, the Hebrew, worshiped �God� would not have identified the true God whom he worshiped.

Of interest is a comment in The Imperial Bible-Dictionary of 1874: �[Jehovah] is everywhere a proper name, denoting the personal God and him only; whereas Elohim partakes more of the character of a common noun, denoting usually, indeed, but not necessarily nor uniformly, the Supreme. . . . The Hebrew may say the Elohim, the true God, in opposition to all false gods; but he never says the Jehovah, for Jehovah is the name of the true God only. He says again and again my God . . . ; but never my Jehovah, for when he says my God, he means Jehovah. He speaks of the God of Israel, but never of the Jehovah of Israel, for there is no other Jehovah. He speaks of the living God, but never of the living Jehovah, for he cannot conceive of Jehovah as other than living.�