Saturday, June 6, 2009

Jehovah?

The name Jehovah is said by Jehovah's witnesses to be the real name of God. They say that Jehovah is in the Hebrew texts 6,823 times. If you ask whether the Bible spells out the name Jehovah you will be informed that it is a tetragrammaton. A word that few people know of but even the most average of Jehovah's witnesses know by heart. What is a tetragrammaton you ask? Two words "tetra" "grammaton". In Greek Tetra means "four" and grammaton means "letters". So basically a tetragrammaton is the meaning for "four letters." I thought it amusing that a 14 letter word means "four letters". The four letters that this is referring to are YHWH. This is where a Jehovah's Witness derives the name of Jehovah. I've been learning Hebrew and the letter V is not existant in Classical Hebrew. (Yiddish yes, Hebrew no) The letter that common yiddish uses for the w sound is v. So take YHWH and "yiddishize" it and it becomes YHVH. Also in English we are infamous for obsessing over the letter J. Take the real names of Joshua, Judah, Joseph, Jonah, Jesus. Real names= Yeshua, Yehuda, Yusuf, Yunus, Yesa. (When can language translate a name? Even in English that's a no no. I'm "Ashley" here, I'm "Ashley" there, I'm "Ashley" everywhere) So let's assume that this infatuation with the letter J happened to those four letters making JHVH. So this is my guess as to how YHWH became Jehovah. I think it is also important to explain that in ancient Hebrew they didn't use vowels when writing so YHWH made more sense to them than it does to us because instead of writing the vowels they would just pronounce them while speaking. Now let's look at how the name of God was treated by the Israelites back then. It was regarded as unspeakable by humans, therefore they used words of prestige to describe God. Even to this day, my Jewish friends will not type God, and will instead type G-D out of fear of having to "erase" God. In Ancient Israel it was, in fact, punishable by death to even speak God's name unless you added a respectful term ahead of God's name. So let's look at the examples substituted for God's name. Let's start with Yehuwa (Jehovah or YHWH) Yehuwa when found in the Bible is always followed with the word "Adonai" or "Elohim". So what do these words mean when together? Yehuwa Adonai. This is where my Arabic comes in handy since Hebrew and Arabic are sister languages and I can catch onto words that are similar. The word Yehuwa actually comes from two words. Ye meaning Oh, and Huwa meaning he. So Yehuwa means Oh He. Now what does Adonai mean? Adonai is not and never was considered the straight up name of God. Adonai means Lord. The word Lord is an exclamation when exalting somebody, not only God. So as I said, in the Bible Yehuwa was often followed with the word Adonai meaning "Oh he is lord." Now take a look at the word Elohim. "im" is in Arabic a plural of respect. When you read the Quran and even the Bible translated into English you'll find where it says such things as "we" when referring to a single person because in those languages (Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew) when a person refers to themself it is disrespectful to say "I" and instead they add "im" or "in" to the end of a name to make the meaning "we" or "they". So on the word Elohim, the "im" at the end is a plural of respect. so that leaves us with "Eloh" This was supposed to represent God's name. You must also remember that there were no written vowels in ancient Hebrew so it would have been LHM. Which could easily have been (assuming what the vowels may have been) "Alahim". And if you consider that even today's Jews and Christians in the Holy lands (as well as several other parts of the world) call God "Allah" it would make sense that LHM could easily have been "Alahim". (To somebody like me, this is seen as a miracle because it proves that God's name would never be completely washed out.) So Yehuwa Elohim means "OH He is Eloh". Since you aren't supposed to translate a name in any language, Eloh would not be translated to God since it was used as a name and not an exaltation. So it would mean "Oh he is Eloh."
I also wanted to add the word Alleluiah. (Alleluya). Again Ya means "Oh" and in Hebrew, like Arabic, "ya" is ALWAYS at the beginning of a word. So that would make it YaAllelu. Sometimes you hear "Halleluiah". The H comes from the word, but it's not in front of Alle, it's in front of the u. So instead of YaAllelu the real word in Hebrew is YaAllehu. A person has to understand that the Semetic languages are written from right to left so sometimes when these words are translated into English they end up a little mixed. When you break down the word YaAllehu as we said, "Ya" means "Oh". Allehu means "Alle is". Making "Oh Alle is!" Lastly, when a person writes a word and puts it together like with YaAllehu. If the words were Alleh and Hu, one of the "H's" would be removed when combining the words, Oh Alleh is!

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