The myth, lie that Christendom has hid Gods name, all of these Centuries. (page 2)

Earnest

Regarding the avoidance of God's name within Christendom, it should be mentioned that a letter of June 29, 2008 was sent to Catholic bishops conferences around the world from the Vatican's top liturgical body, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, by an explicit "directive" of Pope Benedict XVI.

In this letter it concluded that the following directives are to be observed :

1) In liturgical celebrations, in songs and prayers the name of God in the form of the tetragrammaton is neither to be used or pronounced.
2) For the translation of the Biblical text in modern languages, destined for the liturgical usage of the Church, what is already prescribed by n. 41 of the Instruction Liturgiam authenticam is to be followed; that is, the divine tetragrammaton is to be rendered by the equivalent of Adonai / Kyrios. "Lord", "Signore", "Seigneur", "Herr", "Senor", etc.
3) In translating, in the liturgical context, texts in which are present, one after the other, either the Hebrew term Adonai or the tetragrammaton YHWH, Adonai is to be translated "Lord" and the form "God" is to be used for the tetragrammaton YHWH, similar to what happens in the Greek translation of the Septuagint and in the Latin translation of the Vulgate.

Note 41 (c) of the Liturgiam authenticam says :

in accordance with immemorial tradition, which indeed is already evident in the above-mentioned "Septuagint" version, the name of almighty God expressed by the Hebrew tetragrammaton (YHWH) and rendered in Latin by the word Dominus [Lord], is to be rendered into any given vernacular by a word equivalent in meaning.

Doug Mason

In the Hebrew concept, a person's "name" was far more than an identifying handle. We might speak of a person's name in terms of their reputation, but it was even more than that for a Hebrew -- it was that person's very being. Hence the need at times to change a person's name (Jacob/Israel; Simon/Peter; Saul/Paul; etc).

As for Rutherford's creation of the term "Jehovah's witnesses", Isaiah 43:10 is in the context of the Babylonian Captivity, and the writers are saying that the people had failed, even though they had witnessed the power of YHWH. The passage concludes by saying that because they had witnessed YHWH yet rejected his ways, they were being sorely punished.

Doug

Simon

The WTS pronunciation was in a Spielberg film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. It may as well have been written in stone.

JeffT

A can't reconcile the Watchtower's claim that we can trust the Bible becauce God saw to that it was translated and preserved for us with complete accuracy; with the Watchtower's claim that some how Satan scrubbed God's own name out of the text with impunity.

It can be one or the other, not both.

blondie

JeffT, when I was still a jw, I brought up that same thought as a question to several jws. How could god protect the bible but not his name.

careful

SBF, your point is a good one. In the 1950s a Baptist missionary who liked the name Jehovah wrote a book that was a review of the RSV (The New Bible: Pro and Con). In that book it states that the name was coopted by JWs whom he calls outrageous or outlandish, or some such adjective. In effect, he felt the name Jehovah had been ruined by JWs taking it up.

Atlantis, loved that 1957 WT material! That must have been when Fred Franz had all that inside info on Adam's grandkids not mentioned in scripture that fills in the blanks so that he could interpret Gen 4:26 that way...

The myth, lie that Christendom has hid Gods name, all of these Centuries.