Changing YAHWEH to LORD--an unwritten tradition?

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scriabin

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I can’t remember where scripture says to not say the name “Yahweh” and to use “Lord” instead; is this an example of scripture following an unwritten tradition? Also–where does it say for the Jewish High Priest to say “Yahweh” only once a year in the Holy of Holies?–another possible example of the people of God following an unwritten tradition?
 
I can’t speak to the tradition of the once-a-year pronunciation of JHVH in the Holy of Holies; I’m not even sure it’s true. But the substitution of Adonai for the pronunciation of JHVH is a Jewish tradition dating, I believe, from after the Babylonian Exile. When they would read the Hebrew Scriptures, they would look at JHVH, but they would say “Adonai.”

When the Masoretic scribes introduced vowel pointing to the Hebrew text, some years after Christ, they pointed JHVH with the vowels for “Adonai.” This is what you see in today’s Hebrew texts of the Old Testament. It is also what led to the mis-pronunciation “Jehovah.”

DaveBj
 
I can’t remember where scripture says to not say the name “Yahweh” and to use “Lord” instead; is this an example of scripture following an unwritten tradition? Also–where does it say for the Jewish High Priest to say “Yahweh” only once a year in the Holy of Holies?–another possible example of the people of God following an unwritten tradition?
I think from Ex 20:7,
“Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain…”

To some, if you don’t know how to vowel correctly the Hebrew יהוה then you could mispronounce the name (for example, Yahweh Yehovah etc). The (possible) mispronunciation would be taking his name in vain, breaking this commandment, and not to be done.

so, mispronunciation = name in vain

not sure about this
 
Hello,

As was mentioned, pious Jews do not pronounce The Name. Christians traditionally also saw this as irreverent. The Church has affirmed fairly recently that The Name, transliterated, is not to be used in Bibles or public worship; we should substitute it with “the Lord”, generally, as the Greek did. Jews usually say “Adonai” (which means my Lord) or “HaShem” (which means The Name).

This is the document I was referring to: execulink.com/~dtribe/blog/Name%20of%20God.pdf

Pax
 
From an article in the Jewish Encyclopedia 1901-1906:
jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=52&letter=N
The Name.
…The pronunciation of the written Name was used only by the priests in the Temple when blessing the people (Num. vi. 22-27); outside the Temple they used the title “Adonai” (Soṭah vii. 6; p. 38a). The high priest mentioned the Name on Yom Kippur ten times (Tosef., Yoma, ii.; 39b). R. Johanan said the sages delivered to their disciples the key to the Name once in every Sabbatical year. The sages quoted, “This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Ex. iii. 15). …
The restriction upon communicating the Name proper probably originated in Oriental etiquette; in the East even a teacher was not called by name. For naming his master Elisha, Gehazi was punished with leprosy (II Kings viii. 5; Sanh. 100a). After the death of the high priest Simeon the Righteous, forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the priests ceased to pronounce the Name (Yoma39b). From that time the pronunciation of the Name was prohibited. “Whoever pronounces the Name forfeits his portion in the future world” (Sanh. xi. 1). Hananiah ben Ṭeradion was punished for teaching his disciples the pronunciation of the Name ('Ab. Zarah 17b). It appears that a majority of the priests in the last days of the Temple were unworthy to pronounce the Name, and a combination of the letters or of the equivalents of the letters constituting the Name was employed by the priests in the Temple. Thus the Twelve-Lettered Name was substituted, …
 
I think from Ex 20:7,
“Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain…”

To some, if you don’t know how to vowel correctly the Hebrew יהוה then you could mispronounce the name (for example, Yahweh Yehovah etc). The (possible) mispronunciation would be taking his name in vain, breaking this commandment, and not to be done.

so, mispronunciation = name in vain

not sure about this
Actually, taking the Name in vain would be more like using it to swear an oath that so-and-so was true, when in fact it was a lie.

There are several examples in the OT of swearing by the name JHVH. To pick one off the top of my head, when Elijah went to the widow of Zarephath and asked her for a piece of bread, she said, “As [JHVH] your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar…” (I Kings 17:12) In making this statement, she was swearing by the name JHVH that a little flour and oil was all she had. If she had been hoarding a whole barrel-full of meal, then her oath would have been a mis-use of the name, taking it in vain. This kind of perjury was, in fact, prohibited in Lev. 19:12 (God Himself is speaking): “And you shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.” On the other hand, taking true oaths in the name JHVH was commanded: Deut 6:13–“You shall fear the LORD your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name.”

I have no proof for this, but I believe that the total prohibition of pronouncing the name JHVH was a “stretch” on the part of the post-Exilic Jews, taking the commandment against “taking the name of JHVH your God in vain” and stretching it until it became a commandment against using the name at all. It’s not the only time they “stretched” a commandment; the commandment against boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk was stretched to the point where an observant Jew can’t go to McDonalds and have a cheeseburger.

DaveBj
 
One more thing–if mispronouncing = taking in vain, then we English-speakers are all in trouble every time we say the name “Jesus.” If Mel Gibson got it right in The Passion, His name is “YE-shu-a.”

I really don’t think that God falls off his throne when He hears us say “Yahweh” in private worship, even if we’re not sure that’s how the ancient Hebrews said it.

DaveBj
 
I have no proof for this, but I believe that the total prohibition of pronouncing the name JHVH was a “stretch” on the part of the post-Exilic Jews, taking the commandment against “taking the name of JHVH your God in vain” and stretching it until it became a commandment against using the name at all. It’s not the only time they “stretched” a commandment; the commandment against boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk was stretched to the point where an observant Jew can’t go to McDonalds and have a cheeseburger.

DaveBj
Technically it is not a ‘stretching’ of the Law; when the Tanakh was translated in Aramaic, the Hebrew word for ‘blaspheme’ (naqav) in Leviticus 24:16, which says that “Anyone who blasphemes the name of YHWH must be put to death” was interpreted as ‘pronounce’ in Aramaic (since Aramaic was closely related to Hebrew and, while sharing many vocabulary words in common, contained some words that sounded the same or similar but had other meanings, i.e. linguistic false friends).

Thus, this verse began to be (mis)understood to mean, “Anyone who pronounces the name of YHWH must be put to death.
 
Technically it is not a ‘stretching’ of the Law; when the Tanakh was translated in Aramaic, the Hebrew word for ‘blaspheme’ (naqav) in Leviticus 24:16, which says that “Anyone who blasphemes the name of YHWH must be put to death” was interpreted as ‘pronounce’ in Aramaic (since Aramaic was closely related to Hebrew and, while sharing many vocabulary words in common, contained some words that sounded the same or similar but had other meanings, i.e. linguistic false friends).

Thus, this verse began to be (mis)understood to mean, “Anyone who pronounces the name of YHWH must be put to death.”
and 24:16 in the LXX,
**ὀνομάζων **δὲ
And the **one naming **

τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου
the name of the Lord

θανάτῳ θανατούσθω
let him be put to death
 
Technically it is not a ‘stretching’ of the Law; when the Tanakh was translated in Aramaic, the Hebrew word for ‘blaspheme’ (naqav) in Leviticus 24:16, which says that “Anyone who blasphemes the name of YHWH must be put to death” was interpreted as ‘pronounce’ in Aramaic (since Aramaic was closely related to Hebrew and, while sharing many vocabulary words in common, contained some words that sounded the same or similar but had other meanings, i.e. linguistic false friends).

Thus, this verse began to be (mis)understood to mean, “Anyone who pronounces the name of YHWH must be put to death.”
Very interesting–arigatoo gozaimashita.

Goes to show what can happen when you depend on a translation instead of the original language.

DaveBj
 
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