Difference between revisions of "Yahweh"

Revision as of 13:18, March 29, 2007

Yahweh was originally simply Israel's tribal god. In the Hebrew written language, which used no vowels, his name was written YHWH.

However, because Jews generally were forbidden by the Fifth Commandment to pronounce the sacred name, the vowels of Adonai (literally 'my lords') were normally inserted between its consonants, resulting in the name 'Jehovah'. Reflecting the same taboo, the earlier English translations of the Bible replaced the name with the phrase 'the LORD'. Because Jesus' followers routinely called him adon ('boss', 'lord', which translated into the gospels' Greek as kurios), the two titles became confused in English, to the point where it became unclear whether the phrase 'the LORD' was referring to Jesus or to Yahweh. This helped to reinforce Christians' conviction that Jesus was God - even though, to any faithful Jew such as Jesus was, suggesting that a mere man could be God was the ultimate in blasphemies. As a result, centuries of dispute arose over the question.

Sources

• Armstrong, K., The Battle for God (Harper Perennial, 2000)
• Burrows, M., The Dead Sea Scrolls (Secker & Warburg, 1956)
• Cruden, A., Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testaments (Lutterworth, 1930)
• Cross, C., Who Was Jesus? (Hodder & Stoughton, 1970)
• Finkelstein, I. and Silberman, N. A, The Bible Unearthed (The Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2001)
• The Holy Bible (King James Version)
• James, M. R., The Apocryphal New Testament (Clarendon, Oxford, 1953)
• The New English Bible (Oxford & Cambridge University Presses, 1970)
• The New Jerusalem Bible (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1990)
• Lemesurier, P., The Armageddon Script (Element Books, 1981)
• Peake, A.S., Commentary on the Bible (Nelson, 1962)
• Powell Davies, A., The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Mentor Books, New York, 1956)
• Schonfield, H. J., The Passover Plot (Hutchinson, 1965)
• Schonfield, H. J., The Pentecost Revolution (Macdonald, 1974)
• Schonfield, H.J., Those Incredible Christians (Bernard Geis, New York, 1968)
• Vermes, G., The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin, 1968)
• Vermes, G., The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (Collins, 1977)
• Vermes, G., Jesus the Jew (Collins, 1973)
• Young, R., Analytical Concordance to the Holy Bible (Lutterworth, 1939)