Adonay, Elohim, Yahweh

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fidei
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
F

Fidei

Guest
is anyone here fluent in biblical language?

What is Adonay and Elohim? are they personal titles or our God Yahweh?

What about the JW’s claim that His divine name appears in scripture 7000 times? How to refute this? Are those four Hebrew characters really translated as YHWH or just some of His titles?
http://moon.ouhsc.edu/jcollins/images/YHWH_card.jpg
 
Is anyone here fluent in biblical language?

What is Adonay and Elohim? are they personal titles of our God Yahweh?

What about the JW’s claim that His divine name appears in scripture 7000 times? How to refute this? Are those four Hebrew characters really translated as YHWH or just some of His titles?

http://moon.ouhsc.edu/jcollins/images/YHWH_card.jpg

BTW, The JW’s believe we should glorify God’s name (and we must!) but it shouldnt involve mentioning His name every once in a while for it would be against the 3rd commandment regarding keeping His name holy. And i also know for a fact that the Hebrews never mentions His name as obsessively as the JW’s do, but we have these four character word that has dumbfounded me. Does the bible really mention His name as much as the JW’s NWT today?
 
You’ve been spending way too much time with the JWs. I think it’s only a matter of time until you convert to be a JW.

I am sure in Phills – of all countries-- that there is a parish education program or RCIA teacher near you who can catechize you properly.
 
You go too fast in concluding my friend. I am merely asking for explanations. BTW i am having weekly bible studies with the witnesses but its not for me, it’s for them. My girlfriend is a witness herself and i am currently in the apologists road to evangelizing her. So any explanation would suffice, not paranoia, as most people here in CAF often greet me when i ask:)
 
Fidei said:
Is anyone here fluent in biblical language?

What is Adonay and Elohim? are they personal titles of our God Yahweh?

What about the JW’s claim that His divine name appears in scripture 7000 times? How to refute this? Are those four Hebrew characters really translated as YHWH or just some of His titles?

http://moon.ouhsc.edu/jcollins/images/YHWH_card.jpg

BTW, The JW’s believe we should glorify God’s name (and we must!) but it shouldnt involve mentioning His name every once in a while for it would be against the 3rd commandment regarding keeping His name holy. And i also know for a fact that the Hebrews never mentions His name as obsessively as the JW’s do, but we have these four character word that has dumbfounded me. Does the bible really mention His name as much as the JW’s NWT today?
Click to expand...
Adonai and Elohim are the Jewish equivalent of God the Father. So YHWH is somewhat similar to the Jewish term for Son of Man. I do believe…I also need to reference some texts upon this subject. And in Catholic teaching if you believe in the Son of Man you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of the ever living God= YHWH. Son of God, Eli, Elohim,Adonai, = God the Father.
I need to look into this while I do you can ask an apologist, but you could also ask Fr. Serpa. He would know a lot on this subject I do believe.
 
here are the results of a quick search on your question
forums.catholic-questions.org/search.php?searchid=6135598
most of those threads discuss the recent ruling by the bishops not to use Yahweh in songs and prayers of the Mass, but even some of these address your concern, the actual meaning of names and titles of the Lord in scripture, and there are a few that answer this question directly

It would also be useful to go back to the homepage and search the library and This rock
 
YHWH, Adonai and Elohim all refer to God as a holy, mighty and all powerful God. These terms are used in the OT, JW,NT, and other books of religion as the Hebrew’s way of keeping God’s name sacred. YHWH is in the Tanakh mentioned several times. In short these are the sacred names given to God to conceal His name and keep it holy. Not that any one of them is better than any other.
YHWH means God, Adonai means God, and Elohim means God in Hebrew texts and sacred scripture.

So I stand corrected. YHWH means God not Son of Man or Jesus. YHWH means God It is a title given to God out of respect. Like ‘‘Mister’’, ‘‘Father’’ ‘‘Dad’’, ‘‘Son’’ ‘‘Boss’’, ‘‘Sir’’,
I hope this was helpful.
God Bless
Mary1173
 
I think a quick check of a dictionary would answer most of these questions.

Yaweh, YHWH, (the tetragrammaton) is the name that God gives to Himself to Moses from the burning bush. It is usually translated as “I am Who am.” It was a name so sacred to the Jews that they would not pronounce it, but in reading it they would substitute another, such as,

Adonai, which means “my Lord.” This is a term of high respect. When the vowels of Adonai are substituted into the consonants of YHWH, we get the name Jehovah.

Elohim, a plural of majesty, is the generic word for God. Dictionary.com gives this brief explanation:
"Elohim (Hebrew: God), the God of Israel in the Old Testament. A plural of majesty, the term Elohim-though sometimes used for other deities, such as the Moabite god Chemosh, the Sidonian goddess Astarte, and also for other majestic beings such as angels, kings, judges (the Old Testament shofetim), and the Messiah-is usually employed in the Old Testament for the one and only God of Israel, whose personal name was revealed to Moses as YHWH, or Yahweh (q.v.). When referring to Yahweh, elohim very often is accompanied by the article ha-, to mean, in combination, "the God," and sometimes with a further identification Elohim hayyim, meaning "the living God."
 
Is_it_okay_to said:
I think a quick check of a dictionary would answer most of these questions.

Yaweh, YHWH, (the tetragrammaton) is the name that God gives to Himself to Moses from the burning bush. It is usually translated as “I am Who am.” It was a name so sacred to the Jews that they would not pronounce it, but in reading it they would substitute another, such as,

Adonai, which means “my Lord.” This is a term of high respect. When the vowels of Adonai are substituted into the consonants of YHWH, we get the name Jehovah.

Elohim, a plural of majesty, is the generic word for God. Dictionary.com gives this brief explanation:
Code: 
 "Elohim (Hebrew: God), the God of Israel in the Old Testament. A plural of majesty, the term Elohim-though sometimes used for other deities, such as the Moabite god Chemosh, the Sidonian goddess Astarte, and also for other majestic beings such as angels, kings, judges (the Old Testament shofetim), and the Messiah-is usually employed in the Old Testament for the one and only God of Israel, whose personal name was revealed to Moses as YHWH, or Yahweh (q.v.). When referring to Yahweh, elohim very often is accompanied by the article ha-, to mean, in combination, "the God," and sometimes with a further identification Elohim hayyim, meaning "the living God."
Click to expand...
I wish you would explain this to COPLAND3, he seems to think that because the Hebrews choose to use the terms Elohim, Adonai,Jehovah, that they somehow do not refer to God as we know Him. Catholics and Christian faiths use Jesus’ name to refer to the Son of the ever living God. And that somehow God will not save people who do not believe in Jesus… Jews believe in God, Muslims believe in God, all major religions believe in God, but some others in these forums do not, or do not WANT to understand this. Not all religions believe in Jesus as the Son of God, but it does not mean that they are not loved by God or chosen by Him to do good for others and will go to Heaven…I’m so exasperated by the narrow and stubborn minds in these posters on these issues.:banghead::rotfl:
 
Thanks for all the replies. very much appreciated.

So if i’ve read correctly, it would mean that the bible NEVER mentions His name? if YHWH is still translated as one of His titles as I AM who AM? interesting :hmmm: (correct me if i’m wrong though)
 
puzzleannie said:
here are the results of a quick search on your question
forums.catholic-questions.org/search.php?searchid=6135598
most of those threads discuss the recent ruling by the bishops not to use Yahweh in songs and prayers of the Mass, but even some of these address your concern, the actual meaning of names and titles of the Lord in scripture, and there are a few that answer this question directly

It would also be useful to go back to the homepage and search the library and This rock
Click to expand...
this link goes nowhere?:confused:
 
Fidei said:
is anyone here fluent in biblical language?

What is Adonay and Elohim? are they personal titles or our God Yahweh?

What about the JW’s claim that His divine name appears in scripture 7000 times? How to refute this? Are those four Hebrew characters really translated as YHWH or just some of His titles?
http://moon.ouhsc.edu/jcollins/images/YHWH_card.jpg
Click to expand...
YHWH is a transliteration of the Tetragrammaton, the Divine name, from the Hebrew alphabet into our modern alphabet. The translation, as opposed to the transliteration, of the Divine name is something like I am who I am, or I am.

The terms Yahweh, or Jehovah which is sometimes used, are also attempts at transliterations. They are not translations. But since we do not know precisely how the Name was pronounced, a precise phonetic transliteration is not possible.

Jehovah’s Witnesses will say that Jehovah is God’s name in English. I say nonsense–because JW’s in their own literature admit that it was developed in the middle ages. So, how can a word made up in the middle ages by a Catholic monk possibly be God’s name! It’s as if you told someone your name, and later they come to you and tell you they have forgotten what it was but they have made up something else and they will call you that!

I view a name as having three aspects to it: its pronunciation, its spelling, and its meaning. We don’t know how to pronounce the Divine Name. We do know how to spell it, in Hebrew! Which doesn’t do us much good today for those of us knowing only a modern language such as English. That leaves only the third aspect, the meaning, which we do know. And that, in my opinion, is the important thing. Knowing the meaning. Not using a made-up, modern word such as Jehovah that no Hebrew would ever recognize.
 
You can say that wherever the name YHWH occurs in scripture God’s name is certainly being used because this is the particular name that God gave of Himself to Moses. Check out Exodus 3:13-15. God sends Moses to Pharaoh. Moses objects. He tells God that the Hebrews will ask him “what is His name?” God says, “tell them that YHWH sent me to you.” Tell them that “I AM” sent me to you. The Jews have always held this to be the special name of God, so sacred, as I mentioned before, that in reading it they would not pronounce it, but would substitute another word for it, such as Adonai, the Lord. When the Pharisees challenged Jesus about his authority, Jesus answered them saying, “before Abraham was, I AM.” The Pharisees knew exactly what Jesus was saying.

It is interesting to note that as the Old Testament was being written, some of the writers would use the word YHWH for God and others would use the more generic word Elohim. This is one of the ways that scholars have distinguished different historical schools of Hebrew contributions to the books of scripture.

So God’s name is certainly used in scripture. The problem for us is that it is a MYSTERIOUS name just as God is mysterious in His very being.
 
P.S.

As for pronouncing this name YHWH and the origin of the word Jehovah, listen to what Mackbrislawn had to say in a previous post.
 
mackbrislawn said:
YHWH is a transliteration of the Tetragrammaton, the Divine name, from the Hebrew alphabet into our modern alphabet. The translation, as opposed to the transliteration, of the Divine name is something like I am who I am, or I am.

The terms Yahweh, or Jehovah which is sometimes used, are also attempts at transliterations. They are not translations. But since we do not know precisely how the Name was pronounced, a precise phonetic transliteration is not possible.

Jehovah’s Witnesses will say that Jehovah is God’s name in English. I say nonsense–because JW’s in their own literature admit that it was developed in the middle ages. So, how can a word made up in the middle ages by a Catholic monk possibly be God’s name! It’s as if you told someone your name, and later they come to you and tell you they have forgotten what it was but they have made up something else and they will call you that!

I view a name as having three aspects to it: its pronunciation, its spelling, and its meaning. We don’t know how to pronounce the Divine Name. We do know how to spell it, in Hebrew! Which doesn’t do us much good today for those of us knowing only a modern language such as English. That leaves only the third aspect, the meaning, which we do know. And that, in my opinion, is the important thing. Knowing the meaning. Not using a made-up, modern word such as Jehovah that no Hebrew would ever recognize.
Click to expand...
The letters of God’s name are from the verb “was”: היה the verb “is”: הווה (present) and the verb “will be”: יהיה - it speaks to the fact that God is eternal - always was - always is and always will be
 
Fidei said:
is anyone here fluent in biblical language?

What is Adonay and Elohim? are they personal titles or our God Yahweh?
Click to expand...
I’ll just be repeating what everyone else has said here.

(1) אֲדֹנָי Adonai is a title, literally meaning “my lords”. Yes, adonai is a plural (adoni is singular), but is usually construed as a respectful, and not a syntactic plural. By itself, adonai is not a unique title for the true God: the Phoenicians also used the title for Tammuz and is the origin of the Greek Adonis. In practice, adonai is reserved for the Divine while the singular adoni is for a distinguished person; in the plural, “rabotai”, literally, “my masters”, is used in both Mishnaic and modern Hebrew.

(2) אלהים Elohim is another common name for God. Despite the -im ending common to many plural nouns in Hebrew, the word elohim when referring to God is grammatically singular, and takes a singular verb. The word is identical to the usual plural of el (the Northwest Semitic word for “deity” or “god”) meaning ‘gods’ or magistrates, and is cognate to the 'lhm found in Ugaritic, where it is used for the pantheon of Canaanite Gods, the children of the supreme father-god usually named as El and conventionally vocalized as elohim although the original Ugaritic vowels are unknown.

(3) YHWH, in appearance, is an archaic third person singular imperfect of the verb “to be”, thus probably meaning, ‘He is’. As we have noted, no one today actually knows the true pronunciation because it was lost with the destruction of Jerusalem.

Which would bring us back to Exodus when Moses asks for His Name, and He replies: אהיה אשר אהיה Ehyeh-asher-ehyeh. Traditionally this phrase is rendered ‘I am that I am’ but since ehyeh is the first-person singular imperfect form of hayah ‘to be’, literally it would be rendered as ‘I-will-be that I-will-be’ since the imperfect tense in Hebrew denotes actions that are not yet completed.

And Moses said to Elohim, “Look, if I come to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘the God of your fathers has sent me to you’, and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what do I say to them?”

And Elohim said to Moses, “EHYEH-ASHER-EHYEH.” And He said, “Thus will you say to the sons of Israel: EHYEH has sent me to you.” And God said again to Moses, “Thus will you say to the sons of Israel, ‘YHWH, God of your fathers: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my Name to the age, and this is my memorial from generation to generation.”
 
So if i understand correctly, Adonay and Elohim are titles of God yet manifesting in plural form as deities, or a plural word of “persons”.

This supports the concept of the trinity, but how could they, if the Jews then did not acknowledge the three “forms” of one God? how did they view their faith calling the singular God in plural form–if the trinity has only been understood with Christ centuries after Moses?

Would this mean that the Jews believe God as a triune god years before Christ?

This might be OP now, but just out of curiosity…🤷
 
Fidei said:
So if i understand correctly, Adonay and Elohim are titles of God yet manifesting in plural form as deities, or a plural word of “persons”.

This supports the concept of the trinity, but how could they, if the Jews then did not acknowledge the three “forms” of one God? how did they view their faith calling the singular God in plural form–if the trinity has only been understood with Christ centuries after Moses?

Would this mean that the Jews believe God as a triune god years before Christ?

This might be OP now, but just out of curiosity…🤷
Click to expand...
Nope! 🙂

Let’s check for a moment. Christian theologians over the years have indeed used these (and Genesis 1:26’s “let us make man in our image, according to our likeness…”) as proof-texts in support of the Trinity. But on the surface, I think that we need not impose a later revelation on a more ancient text.

So what’s up with Genesis 1:26 and 'adonai and 'elohim? One explanation is that these are not syntactic plurals (in context, they do not really mean “gods” or “my lords”), but intensive plural, a plural of majesty or impressiveness. Are you familiar with the royal ‘we’ (where instead of ‘I’, the speaker uses ‘We’ instead)? It is assumed that this is the case here with number 1: although the form is plural the one referred to or who is speaking is singular. The plural of intensity denotes a single object or individual but adds a connotation of greatness to the referent. As I’ve mentioned: both 'adonai and elohim, by the face of it is plural and masculine (the latter for example has the plural ending -im), but the construction is usually singular when referring to the Israelite God, so we have phrases like “'anokhi YHWH 'Eloheyka” ‘I ('anokhi is first person singular), YHWH, am your Elohim’.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top