by dropoffyourkeylee 29 Replies latest watchtower bible
The Minor Prophets Scroll is commonly dated to the first century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Minor_Prophets_Scroll_from_Nahal_Hever
There is a lot of evidence that many Jews pronounced the divine name as Yaho in and around the first century.
http://www.jhsonline.org/reviews/reviews_new/review763.htm
The idea, often asserted, but seldom argued, that the Jews ceased all but occasional pronunciation of the divine name by the first century is not supported by evidence.
I don't believe anyone questions God having a name, the question is .... is the name JEHOVAH?
Ding Actually, this is an argument against the Watchtower position.
On balance I tend to agree. Of course we'll never know for sure, unless we find some first century manuscripts.
Of course if the early Christians believed Jesus was God, that would explain their use of 'The Lord' rather than the tetragramaton. This papyrus certainly proves it was known and used by the Greek speaking scribes.
" Of course if the early Christians believed Jesus was God ". The very early Christians did not believe Jesus was the same person as Jehovah.
The belief that he was Divine was beginning to take hold, and was given impetus by the Gospel of John , but that is a very late work, more than likely early 2nd century. The earliest writings we have are the genuine writings of Paul, remember, a good number of what pretend to be his Letters were not written by him. The genuine ones have no concept of Jesus being Jehovah.
The concept and eventual full Doctrine of the Trinity is very late, but the Divinity of Christ in some way was debated and accepted at least by the late 2nd Century, by which time the Trinity was well on the way in the minds of some perhaps.
But what would be fascinating, if a really early fairly full text of an early Gospel were found, would be to see how far an incipient belief in the what became the Trinity Doctrine was perhaps growing, this would be made clear if the Tetragrammaton or Divine Name were used consistently in such a manuscript. The first Gospel was probably " Mark" , but even that was written at the earliest just before 70 CE, and in fact probably after, so time for Christian thought and belief to evolve.
The most often quoted verse in the New Testament is Psalm 110:1. This is a verse that was used by the first Christians in a way that clearly distinguishes between the messianic “Lord” and the “Lord God”, or YHWH. Whatever the first Christians meant when they called Jesus “Lord”, they did not mean that Jesus was YHWH.
If you would find a WT magazine say 1000 years from now and the organisation did not exist anymore, or you would find their NWT. Would you know that the NWT has many words and verses defined in such a way to support a doctrine? Or would people say, well, it is a 1000 years old, must be somehow true or correct? So, why would we trust an old fragment if we do not know who wrote it, why it was written, was it a copy or an original etc? From an archeological perspective, it might be of interest (to generate funds from donors). But to consider these fragments as "true" and enlightening, I feel that is too much honor. It is still strange to write all names in Greek but you have no idea how to "invent" a Greek name for the tetragrammaton? And this tetragrammaton occurs over 6000 times? And the creator was not able to shed a light on these writers about His name?
Update:
For any who are interested and follow stories like this, The latest BAR (Biblical Archaeology Review) Summer 2021, contains a story and a couple photographs covering this story.
"New Scrolls from the Judean Desert", p17.
The scrolls are the first scrolls discovered in the Judean desert through official excavation in about 60 years, and include parchment fragments of Zechariah and Nahum dating to 2nd Century CE. They are in Greek, with the YHWH tetragrammaton included as four Hebrew characters. The takeaway from the BAR article that I did not pick up on in the first reports was that the Hebrew characters used are 'Old Hebrew' (Paleo-Hebrew), which differs quite a bit in appearance from the Hebrew characters we are used to seeing. The Old Hebrew characters were used in the pre-Exilic period, so for these characters to be used in a 2nd Century CE manuscript is interesting.
The BAR also has a lengthy article (pp 48-55) discussing the Old Hebrew characters, though this article doesn't directly mention the newly discovered scrolls.
Interestingly a few years before the New Testament volume of the NWT was first published, the WT society published the following in a doctrinal book from 1946 (I added boldface for the last two sentences of the quote). [See http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/letgodbetrue/godbetrue2.html ; the quote is from page 23 of the 1946 edition of the Let God Be True book.]
"The Scriptures written before our common era were
written practically all in Hebrew, a portion in Syriac; and in those
Scriptures the alphabetic letters for God's name occur, namely, Jod He
Vau He (
,
or YHWH), from the first book to the last. This name, symbolized by
these four Hebrew consonants, occurs, all together, 6,823 times* in the
Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew Scriptures were first translated into
Greek about 285-247 B.C.; but some time before that the Hebrews began to
leave off pronouncing the name, out of a superstitious fear of taking
it in vain. Hence whenever they read and came to the name, they
pronounced instead the word Adonai (Lord) or Elohim (God). Hence in making that first translation into Greek known as the Septuagint Version (LXX) the translators followed the Hebrew custom and translated the above substitutes for God's name into their Greek version.
4 The writers of the Greek Christian Scriptures used that Septuagint Version and they quoted its Greek text which omitted the literal name of Almighty God; which partly explains why the name does not occur by itself in the Christian Greek Scriptures.
... *Page 39 ¶ 2 of The Biblical Text in the Making, by Robt. Gordis."
On a different topic, for those who believe in Bible's creation account, was Adam a brunette (but without a beard), was Eve a blond, and did the serpent in the garden have legs (before the fall), considering the illustration shown in a WT book called "The Truth Shall Make You Free" (the 1943 edition). See http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/truthfree/truthfree6.html for the illustration; for another illustration see also http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/truthfree/truthfree7.html . Maybe it was that book which started JWs saying that they are "in the truth".
Hence whenever they read and came to the name, they pronounced instead the word Adonai (Lord) or Elohim (God). Hence in making that first translation into Greek known as the Septuagint Version (LXX) the translators followed the Hebrew custom and translated the above substitutes for God's name into their Greek version.
I now see that this statement is pure non-sense. Not pronouncing the name (as assumed it was becoming a practice) has nothing to do with how the Hebrew text (as it was WRITTEN, no how it was PRONOUNCED) into Greek. A translator would read the text and translate. The translator would find a Greek equivalent for the Hebrew words and names. So, as a Greek equivalent was to be found for each name, same would be the case for the tetragrammaton. I am sure they would be able to translate.
Also, the assumption that the name of god was not pronounced, does not mean they did not know how it should be pronounced. I hardly use swear words, but I do know how to pronounce it.
