The last revision was just plain inacurate. "Jehovah" was an incurate tranliteration of YHWH used in the middle-ages. The KJV uses the convention "LORD" in small caps throught. -
Asa
whoops! I wonder why I thought it was so? Dimness strikes.
--MichaelTinkler
It wasn't you, Michael--I copy-pasted ...
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):
Yahweh \Yah"weh\, Yahwe \Yah"we\, n. Also Jahveh \Jah"veh\, Jahve \Jah"ve\, etc.
A modern transliteration of the Hebrew word translated
Jehovah in the Bible; -- used by some critics to
discriminate the tribal god of the ancient Hebrews from the
Christian Jehovah. Yahweh or Yahwe is the spelling now
generally adopted by scholars.
The NIV preface states:
In regard to the divine name YHWH, commonly referred to as the Tetragrammaton, the translators adopted the device used in most English versions of rendering that name as "LORD" in capital letters to distinguish it from Adonai, another Hebrew word rendered "Lord", for which small letters are used.
Yet another Bible Dictionary I have states regarding "Jehovah":
The original pronunciation of this name has possibly been lost, as the Jews, in reading, never mentioned it, but substituted one of the other names of God, usually Adonai. Probably it was pronounced Jahveh, or Yahveh. In the KJV, the Jewish custom has been followed, and the name is generally denoted by LORD or GOD, printed in small capitals.
Any ideas what is most accurate and least misleading?
--Dlugar?
My understanding is that "Yahweh" and "Jehovah" are alternate English transliterations of the Hebrew word written with the so-called tetragrammaton, "YHVH" (actually, its equivalent in the Hebrew alphabet), which was the proper name for God among the ancient Hebrews. The existence of multiple transliterations for a single foreign word is not unusual; consider "Peking", "Peiping", "Beijing", which are alternate transliterations of the Chinese word which names the capital of modern China. The problem in this case is complicated by the fact that the ancient Hebrew alphabet didn't include letters for vowels, and by the time vowel marks were introduced the sacred name was not spoken for religious reasons (the word "Adonai" meaning "Lord" was substituted). Evidently the vowel marks for "Adonai" were used with the tetragrammaton, which led to the transliteration "Jehovah". This obviously was a mistake. The modern transliteration "Yahweh" is generally believed by scholars to reflect the actual pronunciation. - Hank Ramsey
As I understand it, the KJV used just "LORD", never "Jehovah"; the usage "Jehovah" was introduced by the American Standard Version. -- Simon J Kissane
added a "historically speaking" to the last paragraph so that it sounds like less of a theological assertion. -- clasqm
This article is beginning to resemble both The name of God in Judaism and Tetragrammaton very closely, but I'm no biblical expert or even all that interested. Should these three articles be merged into one?
- Yes. The articles on Jehovah, Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton and "The name of God in Judaism" are all precisely the same topic. It makes no sense to have separate entries. All of those other topics need a redirect to one page that we choose as a master page, and they can be discussed there. Without bringing together these virtually identical articles, Wikipedia will continue to become more (unnecessarily) disorganzied. RK
- They are not "precisely the same topic": Jehovah *is* different than Yahweh, and is different than Tetragrammaton, etc. If there had to be one article (I think there should be, to eliminate so much redundancy), there should be subheadings and explanations for each.
- Whoah, you've totally lost me. When did the four-letter name of God in the Bible suddenly begin referring to two totally different gods?!? I am totally confused! Jehovah is how 19th century German scholars translated the tetragrammaton into Roman characters; Yahweh is how modern-day scholars translated it into Roman characters. Are you saying that there exists a Christian sect that believes there are two different gods, one being Jehovah and the other being Yahweh? If not, then they are the same, and this is true by definition. RK
- No, I mean the words Jehovah and Yahweh are different! No sect considers them as two different gods. You just said the difference: different translations. Jehovahs Witnesses believe that the true name of God is Jehovah, not Yahweh.
- Remembering that this is not a dictionary that needs every seperate word or synomym to have its own article, it makes sense to merge these articles into one. The other article names should be redirected to the merged article. It is fine to explain in the merged articles the history beyind Jehovah versus Yahweh, but it just seems to me that it is really just one topic.
- ; Oh, I see what you mean. I totally agree. I was thinking that you were alluding to something else, because gnostics do believe that there are two gods, and this kind of theology is something that pops up time and time again. Frankly, I am disappointed! I kind of wanted someone to say "Well, yes, the Church of So-and-So does believe this..." It would have been interesting to read about. Oh well, back to boring monotheists and trinitarians... ;-) RK
My vote goes for moving everything into the Jehova article, simply because if I wanted to read about that particular god that's the first name that would come to mind for me. Yahweh might be the "modern" translation, but I suspect it isn't as widely known or thought of first.
- Not to everyone - I learned about Yahweh first. - dreamyshade
I vote for merging. Even if more people have heard of Jehovah than Yahweh, that can easily be fixed with redirects. Any article on 'Yahweh' will mention all there is to know about 'Jehovah', and any article on 'Jehovah' will mention all there is to know about 'Yahweh'. Use by Jews of 'Adonai' and 'haShem' can be mentioned, as examples of how holy they consider the Tetragrammaton to be. I suppose we could even mention 'Elohim'.-- SJK
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