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20 Responses to “Hallowed Be Thy Name”

1. on 30 Sep 2008 at 2:53 am1 Christian for Moses

   I do not use the name Y/H/V/H as it seems that Jesus and his disciples themselves did not use it either when speaking, but rather used circumlocutions when referring to the Holy One; Father, Heaven, Place, Power etc.
   Rabbinic literature records that in the days of our Rabbi, Yeshua of Nazareth, the Divine Name was no longer used but once a year on Yom Kippur by the High Priest (Tosef., Yoma, ii.; 39b) See also the Jewish Encyclopedia on this: Jewish Encyclopedia - The Name

   Christianity Today wrote:

   While refusing to write or say Yahweh aloud is a long-standing Jewish tradition, the Bible does not forbid its pronunciation.

   As most of Christianity easily brushes away the Jewish concept of the unity of G’d as a mere tradition but not Biblical, it shouldnt come as a suprise that it can deal with this issue in the same way…

   Blessings,

   Daniel
   christian4moses.wordpress.com

2. on 30 Sep 2008 at 9:43 am2 Joseph

   I like what the Jews have done in the Sidur by using “HaShem” which means “The Name.” I don’t stick to any particular pronunciation, but I suppose that using “abba” (Father) would also be appropriate.

   In my opinion, using Yahweh is just like any of the other pronunciations. Using these different pronunciations as if that were the true pronunciation seems to me like it’s jumping the gun.

3. on 02 Oct 2008 at 9:17 am3 Jaco

   A very good topic indeed.

   The first thing worshipers of the True God should do, is to discern (if unclear) or determine (if explained) what the True God requires. If it were unclear, we would interpret through indirect evidence how He wants His Name sanctified. BUT, by means of his self-revelation (e.g. Exodus) as well as inspired utterances from spokesmen (prophets, angels, judges, priests) we have clear instructions and expressions – in many instances in no uncertain terms – as to how we should treat and honor His Name. As early as 16th century B.C.E at Mt. Sinai did He identify Himself and His Sovereignty, as well as give instructions on treating His sacred Name; in no uncertain terms. In Jewish liturgy, as evidenced by the Wisdom writings, the sacred Name was used. As late as Malachi, the last acknowledged inspired prophet of the Hebrew canon, while confronted with indifference toward God’s Sovereignty on the part of his contemporaries did he write in chapter 1 verse 11 that His Name would be great among the nations. Obviously this prophecy has not found complete fulfillment, and would remain incomplete if the Name would disappear from the minds and lips of His people.

   As regards the New Testament, we only have copies of the autographs; copies which apparently have been tampered with. Thus, we cannot conclusively say from these tampered copies as evidence that the Jews/Christians of the New Testament did not pronounce the name. Extant copies of the LXX of that time contained the name. It noticeably disappeared around the second century. Some have even concluded that it was the Christians, and not the Jews that were responsible for the Name’s excision from the text so as to increase the breach between Christian and Jew on the basis of their confessing the glorious Messiah. His Name was still referred to in doxologies, such as alleluia in Greek and names containing the Divine Name. So, bottom-line, since we can only find hints from indirect evidence where it comes to pronouncing the Divine Name in the NT, the strongest evidence leans toward the non-superstitious expression of His Name as His people used to throughout the ages.

   As regards the exact pronunciation of the name, according to Josephus, the name was made of 4 vowels. In Hebrew certain consonants do serve as vowels in some combinations. YHWH could be transliterated into vowel form as IEOE. Somewhere in-between Yahweh and Yehowah. Some good evidence comes from Firpo Carr’s thesis on the Name wherein he argues for the –ah sound in the last syllable. Gerard Gertroux also has very good evidence for the tri-syllable form of the name (pronounced –oh- sound in the middle) as well as the –eh- instead of an –ah- first syllable. But, once again, whether one’s language has It as Jehofah or Yekoba (as in certain African languages), those names cannot identify anyone else but the one True God of the Bible.

   Not ours, but His glory is what we should seek. Guided by His, not our wisdom or reasonings. Hallowing His Name the way His people always have; the people of Yehowah.

4. on 02 Oct 2008 at 12:27 pm4 JohnO

   Jaco,

   Nice post, for this:

   As regards the exact pronunciation of the name, according to Josephus, the name was made of 4 vowels

   Could you provide a citation? Which is it War? Antiquities? and where?

5. on 02 Oct 2008 at 2:30 pm5 Sean

   Jaco,

   Two more questions.

   (1) Are you suggesting that the NT documents originally contained the name of God transliterated into Greek letters? If so, please provide evidence. To my knowledge there are no manuscripts (out of the 5,000) that contain the name of God. Thus, the Jewish practice of not pronouncing God’s name was already in practice prior to the 1st century.

   (2) Do you know of some manuscripts of the LXX that contain God’s name? If so, please refer me to the manuscript so I can check it out. That would be fascinating to see. Many manuscripts these days are online.

6. on 02 Oct 2008 at 3:53 pm6 JohnO

   Sean,

   To my knowledge there are no manuscripts (out of the 5,000) that contain the name of God. Thus, the Jewish practice of not pronouncing God’s name was already in practice prior to the 1st century.

   I think there is a large jump in those two sentences. An argument from silence doesn’t really prove a social symbolic practice. Rather, a statement, from Josephus/Philo/Paul/another Rabbi/DSS would exist to back up the social practice (or deny it, thereby assuming it exists in some form).

7. on 02 Oct 2008 at 4:03 pm7 Sean

   It’s not so much an argument from silence as it is an argument from circumlocution. The NT documents unanimously substitute kyrios for YHWH. This is not silence. Furthermore, the NT is not one witness. We have to remember we are talking about Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter, etc. Even so, checking Josephus et. al. would be more thorough.

8. on 03 Oct 2008 at 3:00 am8 Jaco

   My reply to JohnO and Sean

   In The Jewish War V:235, he stated: “The high priest had his head dressed with a tiara of fine linen embroidered with a purple border, and surrounded by another crown in gold which had in relief the sacred letters; these ones are four vowels.”

   Fragments of the LXX and related Greek versions dated to the time before or during the first century CE all
   contain some form of the divine name. There are at least four Greek OT fragments that support this conclusion. They are:

   1) P. Fouad 266b (Göttingen 848), which has been dated from the third to the first centuries BCE. This papyrus contains the divine name in an ancient Hebrew/Aramaic script.
   [W.G. Waddell, “The Tetragrammaton in the LXX,” JTS 45 (1944), pages 159-161, dates it from the second or first century BCE. See also Howard, “The Oldest Greek Text of Deuteronomy,” HUCA 42 (1971), pages 125-131. Paul Kahle, “The Greek Bible and the Gospels,” Studia Evangelica (1959), page 614, dates it to about 100 BCE, as does Bruce Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (New York; Oxford:
   Oxford University Press, 1981), pages 33-34. See an image of this text online here: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/lxxjewpap/PFou848.jpg.]

   2) The Scroll of the Minor Prophets (8HevXIIgr [Göttingen 943]), which is dated to between 50 BC and 50 CE contains the divine name written in two ancient (paleo-) Hebrew forms.
   [See Emanuel Tov, The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll From Nahal Hever (8HevXIIgr) (DJD 8; Oxford: Oxford University Press, rep. 1995), pages 22-26, for a discussion of the dating of this scroll. Tov himself tentatively opts for a date in the later first century BCE. See Howard, “The Tetragram and the New Testament,” page 64, for other references on the dating of this scroll. See the image of “hand A” online here:
   http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/lxxjewpap/MPrsA.jpg, and “hand B” here: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/lxxjewpap/MPrsB.jpg.]

   3) As noted in our discussion above concerning the Greek forms of the divine name, there is a fragment of Leviticus from Qumran cave 4 (4QLXXLevb [Göttingen 802]) that is dated to around the first century BCE It contains the form Iaw where the Hebrew text uses the four-letter tetragrammaton.
   [P.W. Skehan, “The Qumran Manuscripts and Textual Criticism,” Volume du Congrès, Strasbourg 1956 (VTSupp 4; Leiden: Brill, 1957), page 157. See the image of this text online here: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/lxxjewpap/4QLevB.jpg.]

   4) The final Greek OT fragment that falls within our timeline and that preserves a divine-name-containing text is P. Oxy 3522, which is dated to the early part of the first century CE. It contains Job 42:11-12 and it
   also uses an archaic Hebrew form of the divine name in the midst of a Greek text.
   [See The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 50 (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1983), pages 1-3. See an image of this text online here: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/lxxjewpap/POxy3522.jpg.]

   From the available evidence, then, the Divine Name did occur in the early copies of the LXX, either in its Hebrew or Greek form. Shaw nicely summarizes the matter:

   In sum then, we may conclude several things: first, many Jews must have ceased using any form of the divine name by the early-to-mid second temple period. … Yet some circles of Jews must have used Iaw somewhat regularly for it to have wound up in 4QLXXLevb and the onomastica, as well as for the pagan testimony to Jewish use to have come about. The name Iaw must have continued in some use at least into the first century BC … and, if the evidence from the pseudepigrapha and the Mishna is counted, likely beyond … to the first or even second century AD … Secondly, it seems that the name began to pick up supernatural connotations in the closing centuries BC and certainly by the early centuries AD … Likely related to this is a third point, [namely], the specific form Iaw starts to appear in mystical contexts: the earliest testimony is to its use among the Gnostics in the second century and beyond … Fourthly, the Jewish God begins to appear nameless to pagans and early Christians. … The passage from Philo’s Legatio ad Gaium [353] is, in a sense, an excellent microcosm of the much larger historical picture. That is, near the middle of the first
   century AD we have the conflicting trends present: the practice of not using the name has become entrenched enough for Philo (and probably his party) to become offended at Gaius’ use of it, while on the other hand, the name was available enough for a Roman far removed from Judaism to learn its pronunciation, seemingly without much effort.
   [Frank Shaw, “The Earliest Non-mystical Jewish Use of Iaw,” (Ph.D. diss., University of
   Cincinnati, 2002)pages 199-201.]

   (if the hyperlinks don’t work, I’ll mail the pictures to you personally)

9. on 03 Oct 2008 at 3:02 am9 Wally

   I believe that the most important thing is that God, the creator of the entire Universe has a name. Whether or not we don’t know the exact pronunciation of his name due to the Jewish people had been prohibited not to say it a loud so that they did not use God’s in vane; it was normal for Jews when reading in Hebrew that they had to add the vowels because Hebrew language only uses consonants. God said to Moses that YHWH was his name for time indefinite. One day, he will reveal his name to everyone. At least, the God of the Bible is real not like how the Greeks in ancient times worship to “an unknown god”. Bible Scholars have come to one conclusion, the possible name of God could either be Jehovah or Jahweh based on studies and research. However, that is the closest they can get.

   Wally,

10. on 03 Oct 2008 at 3:51 am10 Jaco

    Sean, you are correct. The nomina sacra we find in the NT manuscripts as substitutes for the Tetragram are circumlocutions. Before coming to conclusions, though, we need to note:

    1.) Those manuscripts are copies, and not the autographs. The presence of variants and atypical transmission (break in the traditional transfer of the Name from one text to its copy) indicates scribal contamination of the text.
    2.) Whether we call the anektophoneton, or ineffability of the name, and the eventual substitution of it, silence or circumlocution, the motivation for doing so (using substitutes in pronouncing it, and removing it from Sacred Scripture) has no Divine or Scriptural basis. In fact, the theological implications for allowing or approving of it would be devastating to the sovereignty of the Creator.
    3.) What is also peculiar is inconsistencies in circumlocution. Apparently the motivation for doing it in the first place does not apply in theophoric names or doxologies like alleluia where the name is both written and pronounced.
    Since early Christianity suffered badly under Hellenization after the apostles’ demise, the truth-seeker’s quest is to retrieve unspotted truth through the pagan clutter.

11. on 03 Oct 2008 at 4:04 am11 Jaco

    Wally,

    We know God has a Name, yes. We also know that that name is His Memorial Name throughout the ages. It’s a name which reveals the Person of God, namely the Unstoppable Fulfiller of purposes; a name which would eventually be uttered in the tongues of the nations. Since that Name is not a magical formula with mystic powers, the exact articulation of all the sounds is not the purpose of knowing, using, and believing in that name. The purpose of it is to magnify and use it the way He wants us to as a means of vindicating His Sovereignty; regardless of our being imperfect, non-Hebraic, speech-impeded or uninspired.

    But, as you say, one day we’ll know!

12. on 03 Oct 2008 at 7:37 am12 JohnO

    Sean,

    I was just pointing out that your conclusions didn’t follow from that one premise (A -> C), but adding another premise of circumlocution (A + B -> C) you can at least sustain the argument. However, as Jaco pointed out - it can be inconsistent. If we were to assert that *all* uses of Kyrios/Theos were circumlocutions, then there would be no evidence to disprove it (since you just took all that evidence for yourself), a different kind of “defining yourself out of a definition” to use your phrase.

13. on 03 Oct 2008 at 1:03 pm13 Joseph

    Jaco,

    At first your statement seems to support a four vowel theory. However on closer examination it is clear from one argument that this is not what Josephus is saying. Josephus is not supplying information about the pronunciation of the name. In fact, in Antiquities 2:12:4 Josephus states that it would not be lawful for him to do so. Josephus is instead referring to the four letters YHWH which appeared on the High Priest’s headpiece…

    “In which [headpiece] was engraved the sacred name. It consisted of four vowels.”
    (Wars. 5:5:7)

    But why would Josephus term these four consonants as “vowels”? The Hebrew letters YUD, HEY and VAV (which make up YHVH) have no equivalents in Greek. They are generally transliterated in Greek with Greek letters that happen to be vowels. The reason for this is that when the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician/Paleo-Hebrew alphabet they used leftover consonants that did not occur in their language and used them as symbols for vowels. For this reason Josephus writes that the four letters which appeared on the High Priest’s headpiece were four “vowels.” To the Greek speaking audience of the Greek edition of Wars of the Jews, the four letters on the High Priest’s headpiece were in fact four vowels.

    I think it would be great if you could give more information into your examples, because what I got from your statement is that the occurrences of the four letter name in the LXX are variations. This is the same as using Adonai or Kurios, as these are also substitutions or abbreviations to the fully pronounced version of the name. I’m not arguing that it is not possible, just wanted some more explanation than what MSS you posted.

14. on 03 Oct 2008 at 9:48 pm14 Bill

    Thanks to all. I am enjoying the exchanges. I am about a third of the way through Gregg Staffords 1st chapter of his new book due out shortly. And whats the 1st dealing with? Gods name. 132 pages lots of good info. If you want to read it go here and click on 1st chapter.

    http://www.elihubooks.com/content/books_media.php

    Regards Bill

15. on 04 Oct 2008 at 7:38 pm15 Sean

    Jaco,

    1.) Those manuscripts are copies, and not the autographs. The presence of variants and atypical transmission (break in the traditional transfer of the Name from one text to its copy) indicates scribal contamination of the text.

    If you are going to propose a conspiracy theory (all manuscripts were contaminated in dozens of places) then the burden of proof is on you. Please show us manuscripts that have YHWH in it.

16. on 06 Oct 2008 at 4:35 am16 Jaco

    Joseph
    Since we are not living in the time and circumstances during which Josephus and others recorded history, what they accepted as given, we need to discover; as in the case of the Divine Name. I cannot comment on what Josephus meant or intended to say; only on what he did say and what we learn from it.
    Yes, Josephus was not supplying information on the exact pronunciation of the Name since its dispute was not the object of the events he recounted. What he does say, however is relevant and enlightening, and has a bearing on how the Name was viewed and understood to sound like by his listeners, since the tiara was engraved in Hebrew letters. It’s also valid, since it alludes to the matres lectionis system well in use even as early as the second century B.C.E. As Gerard Gertoux noted:
    The writings from Qumrân have shown that before the second century CE even usual words were vocalized owing to these special letters (mothers of reading, that is to say Y for the vowels I and E, W for O and U, and H for an A at the end of words), proving that the “mothers of reading” system was widely used. Judah Halevi wrote in his book The Kuzari (1140), that the letters of the Tetragram are used as vowels for any other words (furthermore Judah Halevi in The Kurazi IV:3 related that Y is used for I, W for O, and H for A).
    The occurrences of the Tetragram in LXX are not variations. They could be viewed as writing the Name in different alphabets, but definitely not as substitutes as in the case of Adonai and Kurios. As no extant LXX manuscript has been found containing these substitutes earlier than the second century C.E., the practice of their substitution, according to the evidence, had to have happened around that time on. The abbreviated QS and KS with a stroke over the words also appeared as substitutes since that time. Exactly the same phenomenon occurs in the mss. of the Christian Scriptures of that time. Since the earlier LXX mss. contained the Divine Name, writers of the Gospels and Christian letters had no valid reason for not writing the Name in the autographs when they quoted from the LXX. It is unlikely that Kyrios was used as a substitute since that practice developed only after the apostles’ demise.

17. on 06 Oct 2008 at 4:37 am17 Jaco

    Sean,

    “Conspiracy theory”? Interesting straw man, indeed. The facts show that the Jews gradually stopped pronouncing the Name “according to its letters” (Sifre Numbers 6:23-27), while still spelling or writing it, as the Talmud itself did it (call it a conspiracy if you want to). The facts show that the LXX older than the second century contained the Name in its ancient form. From that time onward, as in the case of the Christian Scriptures (ms. copies of which date back to the same time) the Name was substituted with Kyrios. Conspiracy? Call it whatever you want to. Do some research and see for yourself how the mss. vary in “dozens of places”. That’s what I did.

18. on 06 Oct 2008 at 9:00 pm18 Sean

    Jaco,

    Correct me if I’m wrong. You propose that the New Testament documents had the tetragrammaton in them prior to corruptions that entered in. These corruptions are so extensive that all 5,000 existing manuscripts fail to containt the tetragrammaton even once. Is this not a conspiracy theory? That does not mean that it is wrong…it just means the burden of proof rests on you to demonstrate by citing a NT manuscript (whether a papyrus or a codex) that contains the name. I’m not in the business of constructing straw men. Truth is my goal, not hype.

19. on 07 Oct 2008 at 6:51 am19 Jaco

    Sean,

    I said in a previous post:

    As regards the New Testament, we only have copies of the autographs; copies which apparently have been tampered with.

    It is an undeniable fact that among the 5 000 mss. of the NT, there are not only variations in different places, but also whole spurious texts. That is the reality; undeniable facts.
    Among those 5 000 mss. we find copies of copies. Manuscript “families” were generated from earlier source texts translated by copyists which were later copied again. Opportunities to import contemporary dogma, later corruption of copies by “correctors”, or mere human errors were not only likely, but have been demonstrated by textual critics. (classical examples of dogmatic importance include the Johannine comma in 1 Jn 5:7, 1 Tm 3:16, Jn 1:18, Ac 20:28, 1 Pe 3:15 to mention a few.) A conspiracy? Heresy? That would be a discussion on its own. In The Text of the New Testament, Metzger includes under intentional alterations changes in the text to emphasize or safeguard important teachings.
    Now, of the 5 000 mss. of the Greek NT, about 80 papyrus mss. date back to the second century, and 260 parchment mss. in uncials date back to the third century. The remaining 4 700 odd manuscripts are cursive mss. from the ninth century, lectionaries, ostraca and amulets. 20 manuscripts date back to before the 4th century. Only 2 of those papyri, found in Egypt, date back to the time 80 to 120 years after the autographs. Variations are observed even among these early 20 mss., let alone the later mss. which contain even more alterations as Church influence increased. These are indisputable facts.

    Colwell says, “The overwhelming majority of variant readings were created before the year 200.”
    Scrivener says, “The worst corruptions to which the NT his ever been subjected, originated within a
    hundred years after it was composed.'’
    Kilpatrick states, “The creation of new variants ceased by 200
    AD because it became impossible to sell them.”
    Zuntz says of P46: ‘The excellent quality of the text represented by our oldest manuscript, P46, stands out again. As so often before, we must here be careful to distinguish between the very poor work of the scribe who penned it and the basic text which he so poorly rendered. P46 abounds with scribal blunders, omissions, and also additions. In some of them the scribe anticipated the errors of later copyists; in some other instances he shares an older error; but the vast
    majority are his own uncontested property. Once they have been discarded, there remains a text of outstanding (though not absolute) purity’ [The Text of the Epistles, pp. 212-13]

    Since we don’t have the autographs, but only the copies [which have been badly tampered with], we need to make use of indirect evidence for answers:
    What was the religious climate around the time after the apostles’ demise? How did ‘Christians’ treat the Divine Name? These Christians had the LXX as the text of the OT, which, from the evidence, contained the Divine Name. Others were Jews who had the Hebrew text, also containing the Name. They were probably aware of the Jews’ superstition as it related to the Name. From the writings of the Church Fathers we clearly see Greek philosophical influence. In quoting from the OT they substituted, not Despotes, which would be the accurate translation of Adonai, if Adonai were indeed what the text contained, but Kyrios. When commenting on the name, from 125 C.E by Aristides to 200 C.E. by Mark Minucius Felix the pagan concept of a nameless God is articulated. Their commenting on Scriptural matters clearly shows a strong trend in Greek philosophical influence. That was the world of their time in which copies and translations of Holy Scripture were made; the world which influenced the very Fathers of the Church, let alone the laity.
    We as Christians confess that the same holy spirit inspired the NT writers as it did the OT writers. The same spirit prevented contamination of Scripture of ancient Judaism in the face of surrounding pagan nations, hence the absence of paganism, mysticism and superstition in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Christian authors were also surrounded by superstition, paganism and mysticism, but according to the claim you propose, did holy spirit yield to those developments and was an inspired text produced that reflected these concepts and differed from, even contradicted, previously inspired texts. Where the sanctification of God’s Sacred Name used to be of prime importance - not only in identifying the True God among a pantheon of pagan deities, but also in proving his rightful ownership of universal Sovereignty – suddenly, at the climax of his self-revelation until that time, He presents himself as nameless; as nothing different from the other pagan deities who received a name, was invoked by that name and then dwindles into namelessness. Conspiracy? Maybe apostasy.

    All we have is indirect evidence. The conclusions we draw from the evidence will have implications. The conclusions I and others came to draw uphold the ‘Hallowing of His Name’, the choosing for Him a ‘people for His Name’ and the ‘calling upon His Name’ for salvation. You and others may differ with us, but you’ll have your own implications to deal with…

20. on 07 Oct 2008 at 8:10 am20 Sean

    I’m well aware of the field of textual criticism and the variations in the mss. But, if I hear you correctly, out of the thousands of variations there is not even one manuscript that contains the divine name? If this is so, then you must concede that your theory (that the autographs contained the divine name) is groundless. Show me the evidence from the NT mss or else what we are engaging in is mere speculation.

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