Responce to Hector Avalos

RE: Avalos, “Of course, we only have your word that you were just really "testing" Harry.”

Okay, you got me, I was not really testing Hairy, I was playing with him as someone would play with a gullible child by making the nose grabbing gesture and saying “I got your nose!” In fact, it was pretty absurd of you to stick your nose into what I perceive as a personal discussion that turned ugly, and impose your scholarly ethics. Frankly, it is none of your business what I say to Hairy, especially when I am trying to make him look like a fool. Not that he doesn’t do a pretty good job of that on his own.

Hector, wake up! DC is not a scholarly blog, it is a meeting place for egotistical haters. And I am getting just a little tired of your narrow minded accusations about me. You neither know me nor understand me. Maybe you should take some time and find out just who I am before you go accusing me of things. As you already know, I am not a scholar, so why do you hold me to scholarly ethics? Again, as you know, I am not a Jehovah’s Witness, so don’t compare my ethics with their ethics. What you may not know, is that I am not even a Christian, so don’t say my words or actions reflect poorly on the Christian God. Comprende?

Here is an example of your inability to detect the nuances of argumentation.

RE: “You have already PROVEN that YOU did not understand Robertson by the sheer fact that you could not tell me how he would translate John 1:1.”

This is the second or third time you said this now, are you really that naive? Of course I know how Robertson would translate John 1:1, I purposely did not give you an answer because I did not want to play your little game that you were trying to set up.

In this next response, I’ll have to set it up because you clearly have a problem with context.

I said: “It is just too bad that you have been contaminated by the atheists you hang around with, you are picking up some very bad habits.”

You replied with: “Your reply is pure nonsense. I had come to these conclusions about KIT's use of Robertson while in High School, and before I became an atheist.”

Your getting as bad as Hairy, what in the world are you talking about? All I can say is context, context, context. What I said was based on the following.

I said: “First, you are absolutely wrong about Robertson. He mentioned John 1:1b ONLY to show an instance where ton theon = God, for his comparison of the anarthrous theos that equals God he goes to Romans.”

This has nothing to do with the KIT. I was talking about how you, like other atheists, only see what you want to see. Robertson made NO mention or connection to John 1:1c on page 761. However, you are able to see something that is simply not there. Maybe you should work on attaining your own high standard of ethics before you criticize others.

Some history on the word God

The development of English orthography was dominated by Christian texts. Capitalized, "God" was first used to refer to the Judeo-Christian concept and may now signify any monotheistic conception of God, including the translations of the Arabic Allāh, Indic Ishvara and the African Masai Engai. The use of capitalization, as for a proper noun, has persisted to disambiguate the concept of a singular God, specifically the Christian God, from pagan deities for which lower case god has continued to be applied, mirroring the use of Latin deus. Pronouns referring to God are also often capitalized and are traditionally in the masculine gender, i.e. "He", "His" etc.

Sometimes, surface forms can be misleading. For example, the Latin and Greek words for "god" look related: deus and θεος (theos). But Greek [θ] generally corresponds to Latin [f], and in fact these words go back to different Indo-European roots. The root that gives the Greek word (PIE *dhes) also gives Latin festum (feast). The Latin word for god, deus, the word for the Christian God used by the Roman Catholic Church. The Latin word is also continued in English divine, deity, and the original Germanic word remains visible in Tuesday (originally "Day of Tiwaz").

The English word "deity" is from about 1300, and is from Old French deite, from Late Latin deitatem (nom. deitas) "divine nature," coined by Augustine from Latin deus "god," from PIE deiwos. The Proto-Indo-European word deiwos is from the same root as Dyēus, the reconstructed chief god of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon. Djeus, deiwos (the later formed by e-insertion of zero-grade diw-) means originally shine, usually sky, heaven, hence sky god.

The English word "divine" is from about 1305 and is from Old French devin, from Latin divinus "of a god," from divus "a god," related to deus "god, deity" The Latin words deus and dīvus, are descended from Proto-Indo-European deiwos. The Proto-Indo-European word deiwos is from the same root as Dyēus, the reconstructed chief god of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon. Djeus, deiwos (the later formed by e-insertion of zero-grade diw-) means originally shine, usually sky, heaven, hence sky god.

Dyeus was addressed as Dyeu Phter, literally "Sky Father" or "shining father", as reflected in Latin Jupiter, Greek Zeu pater, Sanskrit Dyau Pita. In his aspect as a Father God, his consort was Pltvi Mhter, "Earth Mother". The sky father is a recurring theme in pagan and neopagan mythology. The Earth Mother is a motif that appears in many mythologies.

As the pantheons of the individual Indo-European mythologies evolved, attributes of Dyeus were sometimes redistributed to other, newer gods. In Greek and Roman mythology, Dyeus remained the chief god, while in Vedic and Germanic mythology, the etymological continuants of Dyeus became pale, rather featureless gods, and his original attributes, and his dominance over other gods, were transferred to gods whose names cannot be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European times, such as Odin, Thor or Indra.

Ancient Hebrew

Is it possible to know the correct pronunciation of God’s name as it was pronounced in ancient Hebrew? The answer is no, based on the current understanding of the Hebrew language. We simply do not know exactly how the Israelites at the time of Moses pronounced the consonants of their language. For instance, Scholars and linguist are not even sure if the Hebrew letter Vav/Waw is pronounced as a “V” or a “W” when used as a consonant. The Anchor Bible Dictionary explains:

“The history and evolution of the biblical text is not all that there is to tell. Hebrew was originally written in an alphabet of twenty-two letters that essentially represented only consonants. The vowels of Hebrew were not systematically represented in writing, since they were only sporadically hinted at by the ambivalent use of the letters cognate to English “w” and “y.” Dialectal differences certainly existed; these are mentioned both in the Bible and in the Talmud. We have no way of knowing what the language sounded like; we are limited to formulating educated guesses as to the phonetic properties of the consonants, the vowels, and the other features (including the prosodies). In the course of time, the language underwent change, as do all languages. Changes in the consonantism and the vowel system continued, even after the language ceased to be the mother tongue of a Jewish community. These occurred in spite of the fact that the public reading of the biblical text was rigorously bound by a strict oral tradition.” (Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary (4:211). New York: Doubleday)

So the problems involved with pronouncing the Tetragrammaton are as follows.

1. We are not exactly sure how the four consonants of YHWH were pronounced.
2. We are not sure which vowels belong to the name.
3. We are not sure about the number of syllables.

The best we can do is make educated guesses. One of the best places to start is with theophoric names. The most common short forms of the divine name attached to other names are Yeho, Yahu, Yehu and Yah. The first three use the first three letters of the divine name YHW. The letter Hey at the end of a word or name is often pronounced as an “A” or “ah”. Based on this evidence alone, we have a pronunciation of Yehoah Yehuah or Yahuah. These pronunciations are remarkably similar, especially the first one, to the English pronunciation Jehovah. It should be noted that the only vowel point is the first “e” or “a” taken from theophoric names.

Y - The consonantal sound of Yod
E – The vowel point from theophoric names
H – The consonantal sound of Hey
O – The consonant Vav pronounced as a vowel
A - The consonant Hey pronounced as a vowel
H – The consonant Hey pronounced as a vowel

Or

Y - The consonantal sound of Yod
E – The vowel point from theophoric names
H – The consonantal sound of Hey
U – The consonant Vav pronounced as a vowel
A - The consonant Hey pronounced as a vowel
H – The consonant Hey pronounced as a vowel

The only difference between this reconstructed pronunciation and Jehovah is that the initial letter is a “J” instead of “Y” and the use of both O and V for the Vav. Now it is true that Hebrew has no sound equal to the modern J sound. However, people like to point this out as a major distinction, but do they ever stop and realize just how close the sounds really are? The “Jeh” in Jehovah is pronounced like “Jah” and is very similar to the Hebrew “Yah”. Pronounce these yourself, is there really that much difference? Especially when we are not sure just how the Hebrew Yod was originally pronounced anyway.

The inclusion of both O and V in Jehovah is probably the result of Latin scholars using “ou” to represent the Vav with an “oo” sound like soup. In Latin v and u had the same sound originally. Only later did they develop distinct sounds and “ou” changed into “ov”.

“During the late Middle Ages, two forms of "v" developed, which were both used for its ancestor u and modern v. The pointed form "v" was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form "u" was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, "have" and "upon" were printed haue and vpon. The first distinction between the letters "u" and "v" is recorded in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where "v" preceded "u". By the mid-16th century, the "v" form was used to represent the consonant and "u" the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter "u". Capital "U" was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.” (Pflughaupt, Laurent (2008). Letter by Letter: An Alphabetical Miscellany. trans. Gregory Bruhn. Princeton Architectural Press. pp. 123–124.)

So the Hebrew form Yehuah was transcribed by Latin Scholars as Iehouah and later, because of pronunciation changes in languages, the form Jehovah came about. Therefore, the misconception that the name Jehovah is based only on the Masoretic vowel points is wrong. It can be derived from theophoric names as well, which gives the vowel points (e-o-a) more credibility if anything. Therefore, criticism of the name Jehovah is completely unwarranted.

The Name Jehovah

The truth is, nobody knows for sure how the name of God was originally pronounced. The language used in writing the OT was Hebrew, and when the Hebrew language was written down, the writers wrote only consonants, not vowels. therefore, when the inspired writers wrote God’s name, they obviously did the same thing and wrote only the consonants. While ancient Hebrew was an everyday spoken language, this presented no problem. The pronunciation of the Name was familiar to the Israelites and when they saw it in writing they supplied the vowels. As time went by, the ancient Hebrew language itself ceased to be spoken in everyday conversation, and in this way the original Hebrew pronunciation of God’s name was eventually forgotten.

In order to make sure that the pronunciation of the Hebrew language would not be completely lost, Jewish scholars of the second half of the first millennium C.E. invented a system of points to represent vowels. These vowel points were placed around the consonants in the Hebrew Bible. Therefore, for the first time, both the vowels and consonants were written down, and the pronunciation as it was at that time was preserved. When it came to God’s name, we really have no way of knowing for sure if they used at least some of the proper vowel points, or if they used the vowel points from a completely different word, such as Adonai. However, the vowel points supply the same form that we get from theophoric names, which are YeHoWaH or Iehouah, and, eventually, Jehovah. Jehovah became the accepted pronunciation of the divine name in English for many years. This form retains the original consonants and the vowel points (right or wrong) of God’s name from the Hebrew manuscripts.

Many people prefer the pronunciation Jehovah because it has a familiarity that other names do not have. But what about all the arguments that have been put forth to abandon the use of Jehovah? Is it reasonable to abandon the use of the name Jehovah because it might not be the true pronunciation? No, it is not reasonable at all. Take for example the name Jesus, do we know how Jesus’ name was pronounced in Hebrew? The truth is, no one knows for certain, it may have been something like Yeshua or Yehoshua. In the Greek language, the inspired writers did not try to preserve that original Hebrew pronunciation. Rather, they rendered the name in Greek, Iesous. Interestingly, even though we have a pretty good idea of how Jesus name was pronounced in both Hebrew and Greek, we do not use either of these original pronunciations.

What makes this comparison even more relevant, is the fact that many Christians believe Jesus is God, equal in every way to YHWH. This would naturally imply that the names YHWH and Jesus are equal as well. If this is so, then all the arguments that have been put forth in opposition to the form Jehovah, must also apply to the name Jesus. For example, there is no “J” in the Hebrew language, Jesus is not the true Hebrew or Greek pronunciation, and finally, it was the same Jews who refused to pronounce God’s name, that rejected Jesus as the promised Messiah. Why do Christians follow these Jews in their opinion concerning God’s name, but do not follow these same Jews in their opinion of Jesus?

Therefore, should we stop using the name Jesus because most of us, do not really know its original pronunciation? Would we be showing respect to Jesus if we removed all mention of his name from the Bible and replaced it with a title like “Lord,” or “Christ”? No, we relate to Jesus when we use his name the way it is pronounced in our own language. Similar observations could be made regarding all the names we read in the Bible. We pronounce them in our own language and do not try to reproduce the original pronunciation. We say Jeremiah, not Yirmeyahu. We say Isaiah, not Yeshayahu. Even biblical scholars who speak Hebrew use these modern pronunciations, not the ancient. And the same is true with the name Jehovah. Even though the modern pronunciation Jehovah might not be exactly the way it was pronounced originally, this in no way detracts from the importance of the name. It identifies the Creator, the living God, the Most High.