Jehovah: A Hoax Name of a Hoax god

“It is not true that the name of God is Jehovah. It cannot be. It is impossible.” This was the answer of Bro. Eli Soriano, dubbed as “The Only Sensible Preacher of Our Time,” to one of the inquirers in his worldwide Bible Exposition held November 6, 2008 in the Philippines. Soriano is Presiding Minister of the Members Church of God, International.

According to scholars, the Bible was written in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The Jewish Bible, or the Old Testament, was written mostly in Hebrew and a few parts in Aramaic. In Hebrew, however, there is no letter J, neither in Aramaic. How can it be that Jehovah is the name of God?

The Hebrew and Aramaic scripts were offshoots of the Phoenician script. According to Wikipedia, Hebrews and Arameans borrowed the Phoenician alphabet during the end of the 2nd millennium BCE (Before the Christian Era); thus, the Hebrew alphabet is almost identical to the Aramaic alphabet in the number and order of letters, names and phonetic values.

During the late second and first millennia BCE, the old Hebrew script was developed. It has since undergone changes, but its major characteristics have been retained to this today. The Hebrew alphabet is composed of 22 letters; five of these letters (kaf, mem, nun, fe and tzadi) have a different form known as the final form (sofit) when they appear as the last letter in a word.

The table below shows the Hebrew alphabet known as the ketav Ashurit or classical Hebrew script with the normal and final forms, the name of each letter and its transliteration for English. Hebrew is read from right to left.

Image courtesy of jewishvirtuallibrary.org

Those are the Hebrew letters. There is no letter J. Hence, it is impossible for the name of God to be Jehovah. The name Jehovah was just invented by translators of the Bible.

From the principal doctrinal handbook of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, “Reasoning From the Scriptures”, published in 1985, on page 192, it says –

Hence some moderns have framed the name of Jehovah, unknown to all the ancients, whether Jews or Christians; for the true pronunciation of the name, which is in Hebrew text, by long disuse is now quite lost.

Only modern biblical translators formed Jehovah, Bro. Eli said. The name Jehovah is unknown to all the ancients, whether Jews or Christians. Not even Moses knew Jehovah; neither Apostle Paul. The word Jehovah only emerged due to the Masoretes.

The Masoretes were groups of scribes and Bible scholars based primarily in Israel. They worked during The Middle Ages, between the 7th and 11th centuries. These scholars attempted to put in order the pronunciation, paragraph, verse divisions and cantillation (ritual chantings) of the Hebrew Bible. They organized a system of pronunciation and grammatical guides in the form of distinguishing marks to identify vowel points of the Old Testament.

A vowel notation system for Hebrew is known as niqqud. All types of niqqud are not indicated in Hebrew writing. The reason for devising these systems is because scholars could not pronounce some of the Hebrew text.

The Hebrew alphabet is an abjad, a type of writing system having letters that represent consonants only; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel. Of the several systems of vowel notation that were developed, the most expansive was that of the Masoretes. The product of their work is known today as the Masoretic Text.

Even the name of God in Hebrew could not be pronounced by scholars, Bro. Eli said. The name of God is represented by four consonants, known as the Tetragrammaton: Yod, He, Vav, He. Due to the commandment of God to Israel that whosoever uses the name of God in vain shall not be held guiltless, the Jews considered the name too sacred to be uttered. It became a tradition wherefore not to pronounce it, until eventually the pronunciation was lost.

Below is the Tetragrammaton shown in three different scripts.

The Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew, Aramaic and modern Hebrew scripts. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

When the Tetragrammaton was translated in English, which is YHWH, the translators altered it because they could not pronounce YHWH. What they did was that they replaced Y with J and W with V; and then they added the vowels E, O, and A. That is how JEHOVAH was formed. Another word that was formed in the 19th century was YAHWEH by the Hebrew scholar Gesenius. It was rejected by major Hebrew scholars.

According to the New World Bible Translation Committee, at the foreword of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society for Jehovah’s Witnesses on February 9, 1950, on page 23, it says –

While inclining to view the pronunciation “Yah-weh” as the more correct way, we have retained the form “Jehovah” because of people’s familiarity with it since the 14th century.

The word Jehovah became known only in the 14th century. By then the Lord Jesus Christ had already gone up to heaven for 14 hundred years. The Apostles have also been dead for 14 hundred years before the word Jehovah emerged. Now, people are being fooled by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bro. Eli said. They are making them believe that the name of God is Jehovah. If you didn’t know where the word came from, you will really be fooled, because that Jehovah replaced the Tetragrammaton in some versions of the Bible.

Ironically, although the Jehovah’s Witnesses were inclined to view that the pronunciation Yah-weh as the more correct way, they settled with Jehovah because of people’s familiarity with it. They preferred familiarity more than accuracy. What makes this Jehovah-hoax worse is that after this “inclining to view” was published in the 1950’s, they made an effort to deny it 35 years later. Here are excerpts of the two editions from the New World Translation, and the alteration that was made, obviously, to mislead people.

According to Bro. Eli, the name of God from the very beginning is written in Isaiah 63:16 (RV), which says –

For thou art our father, though Abraham knoweth us not, and Israel doth not acknowledge us: thou, O LORD, art our father; our redeemer from everlasting is thy name.

The name of God from everlasting is “Father.” Bro. Eli pointed out that prior to creation the Father already had a Son; thus His name Father is from eternity. He cited Proverbs 30:4 –

Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the earth? what is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?

“That is Father and Son,” Bro. Eli emphasized. When God has not yet started His creation, together with Him was His Son. The Son calls Him, Father; and that Son is the Lord Jesus Christ. Proverbs 8:22-30 says –

The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him:

The one speaking in these verses is the Wisdom in verse 12: “I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions.”

The Wisdom said that even before the heavens were created, before the earth was made, before God’s creation began, He was with God; He was brought forth. In another translation, it says “When there were no depths, was I begotten…” (Geneva Bible). This is the same person that was begotten in John 1:18 –

No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

The Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs is the begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Son that was brought forth before the heavens were created. I Corinthians 1:24 says –

But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Christ is the wisdom of God. He was brought forth from the bosom of the Father before the heavens were created. In the past eternity, there was already Someone calling God, Father, Bro. Eli said; and that is the Son of God. That is why the Lord Jesus Christ, when He taught the Apostles how to pray, He said in Matthew 6:9 –

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

“Hallowed be thy name.” What name? Bro. Eli said, it is the name “Father.” That is the name Christ commanded His disciples to worship. When a Christian prays, he will not call God Jehovah or El Shaddai; he shall pray after the manner Christ commanded him to. He shall call on God, “Our Father.”

Now, there is this philosophy of pastors of Jehovah that “Father” is not a proper noun but a common noun, Bro. Eli recalled. During discussions, they would ask Bro. Eli what his father’s name is, and he would answer, Triunfo. The pastors would then infer, “So, he has a name: Triunfo. His name is not father.”

The phenomenal preacher then would answer: “Right, the name of your father is Peter. But if it is the son who is calling him, would he call his father, Peter? If you are a child, of course, you would call your father, father, or papa, or daddy. If you are a respectful son, you will not call your father by his personal name.”

“Look at Christ, whenever He speaks with His Father, He calls Him Father. He never used Jehovah. He always say, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father. He only called God in another name when He was on the cross, assuming the role of a redeemer, a ransom. He called the Father, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ Which means, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ But in any other occasion in His whole life on earth, He called God, Father; because that is His name from everlasting.”