The Watchtower writers like to say the reluctance of Jews to pronounced the name of god was due to SUPERSTITION.
That's a load of crap. ALL RELIGION including the Watchtower's version is, strictly speaking, SUPERSTITION.
The refusal to accept blood transfusions based on something reportedly said in Jerusalem two thousand years ago is nothing less than fanatial SUPERSTITION.
Definition of SUPERSTITION
1 a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God 2 : a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary
By the time of the Talmud, it was customary to substitute Names for God. There were rabbis who asserted that any person who pronounced the Tetragrammaton (instead of substituting) had no place in the World to Come and should be put to death.
The use of Adonai or Ha-Shem was used instead. It is not customary for any Jews to pronounce ANY of God's many Names unless it is in a strict prayer or study context. After the destruction of the Temple in 66 c.e. the prohibition fell into disuse. The correct pronunciation of YHVH was passed down for many generations. But, the reluctance to use it caused it's actual sound to fall into obscurity.
My former wife and my children are Jews. I've spent many hours in conversation with different Rabbis. The more "devout" the Jew the more likely they are to write g*d. Orthodox rabbinical students won't write even that on any medium where you can erase it afterward. Especially a computer screen.
The first three centuries c.e. was an intense time of upheaval in Judaism with internal forces and external forces grinding away with sectarian violence and competing political strategies vs Roman overlords.
The Jesus story was an oral transmission of a sect that went viral and competed with traditional Judaism. Jewish teaching was predominantly oral. Jesus wrote nothing. The record we have today of what was purportedly said is an imaginary reconstruction from oral traditions.
The conflicts Jesus had with his own religious leaders are a part of that story. The Early Church was not as monolithic as present christianity might like to think. For the first three hundred years the most devout christians could not even agree on the Nature of Jesus as man or deity.
Firmly establishing anything from these first three hundred years would have to rest on traditions, later collation of word of mouth reports and such. The Romans destroyed temple records. Christianized pagans had their own, often anti-semitic, versions of who and what Jews were and did.
I challenge anybody to answer this question: Why would a name as important to pronounce as JEHOVAH'S WITNESESS claim YHVH is- become lost in the first place? If god used supernatural means to supposedly preserve the bible (I contend He did NOT) wouldn't that apply to His Name as well?
