Jehovah

[Lily_Marlene]

When was the name Jehovah first used in a Catholic bible?

When did it ceased to be used?

Some of the Praise and Glory songs sung by Charismatics refer to God as Jehovah. I have seen the Hebrew name Yahweh used in the Old Testament, Catholic edition, but never Jehovah.



Lily Marlene

 

[inthecloud]

The Hebrews used the equivalent of YHWH or IHWH in the Masoretic text. To avoid using the name of the Lord in vain, they usually say Adonai when reading the TANAK aloud.
The Septuagint eventually used Kryrios meanig Lord in Greek, the same thing that Adonai means in Hebrew instead of the Tetragrammation YHWH.
During the middle ages a monk called Raymundus Marini trying to know who you pronounce the YHWH came with Jehovah in 1270. That is the version used in some Catholic Bibles and in most protestant Bibles of the Reformation since the protestant rejected the Septuagint who uses Lord most of the time and went with the Masoretic Text who uses the YHWH most of the time.
So the KJV favored by many evangelicals says Jehovah, so is the Reina Valera favored by Spanish language evangelicals.
I do not know when the Catholic Church when back to Yahwèh. I thing is a XX century thing.

 

[Swamp_Yankee]

I think I read in the catacism that the word Jehovah and YHWH were the same words translated as I AM.

 

[Lily_Marlene]

Thank you for the interesting responses. I am happy to know the name of the fellow who coined the word Jehovah.

I, myself, have remembered that the Hebrew langage in the beginning did not contain any voewls nor a J, Hence, YHWH. A Jewish person I met still insists on saying G_D.

Obviously the vowels were added before the J because Mary called her son Yeshua.

I wonder when the name “Jesus” was first used? Anyone?

Lily Marlene

 

[jcrichton]

When was the name Jehovah first used in a Catholic bible?

When did it ceased to be used?

Some of the Praise and Glory songs sung by Charismatics refer to God as Jehovah. I have seen the Hebrew name Yahweh used in the Old Testament, Catholic edition, but never Jehovah.



Lily Marlene

Hi, Lily Marlene!

…what I trully find interesting is how some Catholic Priests and others use the term Jehovah but I’ve never heard non-Catholics use the term Yahweh, or Yah… one very strong-willed Jehovah Witness argued with me over the origins of these two names for Yahweh God; I tried to explain to him that there’s no “j” in YHWH so it would be quite easy to see how Yahweh originated… I further cited a non-Catholic organization (The American Bible Society) defining the term “Jehovah” on a footnote in their “Good News Bible,” where they state that Jehovah is a derivative of Yahweh… he was incensed and refused to accept this fact.

I know that ecuminism is necessary for Christian unity but I wonder to what extent will the Church go to achieve it.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[inthecloud]

I think Jesus comes from Greek.
Non Catholics using Yahweh.
Well Jews use Yahweh. But to avoid taking the name of God in vain use G-D a lot in English. Spanish speaking Jews have no problem with Dios.
Ethiopian Orthodox use YAH a lot. Ever heard a Bob Marley song?

 

[Manfred]

When was the name Jehovah first used in a Catholic bible?

When did it ceased to be used?

Some of the Praise and Glory songs sung by Charismatics refer to God as Jehovah. I have seen the Hebrew name Yahweh used in the Old Testament, Catholic edition, but never Jehovah.



Lily Marlene

Lily,

This is from the Preface to the Revised Standard Version; it is as good an explanation as I’ve seen anywhere else.

A major departure from the practice of the American Standard Version is the rendering of the Divine Name, the “Tetragrammaton.” The American Standard Version used the term “Jehovah”; the King James Version had employed this in four places, but everywhere else, except in three cases where it was employed as part of a proper name, used the English word Lord (or in certain cases God) printed in capitals. The present revision returns to the procedure of the King James Version, which follows the precedent of the ancient Greek and Latin translators and the long established practice in the reading of the Hebrew scriptures in the synagogue.

While it is almost if not quite certain that the Name was originally pronounced “Yahweh,” this pronunciation was not indicated when the Masoretes added vowel signs to the consonantal Hebrew text. To the four consonants YHWH of the Name, which had come to be regarded as too sacred to be pronounced, they attached vowel signs indicating that in its place should be read the Hebrew word Adonai meaning “Lord” (or Elohim meaning “God”). The ancient Greek translators substituted the work Kyrios (Lord) for the Name. The Vulgate likewise used the Latin word Dominus. The form “Jehovah” is of late medieval origin; it is a combination of the consonants of the Divine Name and the vowels attached to it by the Masoretes but belonging to an entirely different word. The sound of Y is represented by J and the sound of W by V, as in Latin.

For two reasons the Committee has returned to the more familiar usage of the King James Version: (1) the word “Jehovah” does not accurately represent any form of the Name ever used in Hebrew; and (2) the use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom He had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.

 

[patrick457]

Thank you for the interesting responses. I am happy to know the name of the fellow who coined the word Jehovah.

I, myself, have remembered that the Hebrew langage in the beginning did not contain any voewls nor a J, Hence, YHWH. A Jewish person I met still insists on saying G_D.

Obviously the vowels were added before the J because Mary called her son Yeshua.

I wonder when the name “Jesus” was first used? Anyone?

Lily Marlene

‘Jesus’ came from the Latin ‘Iesus’, which in turn was from the Greek ‘Iesous’, a transliteration of the name Hebrew/Aramaic name ‘Y’shua’ (which is also the ancestor of ‘Joshua’).

Joshua son of Nun’s name is the same as Jesus’ (both coming from the name Yehoshua ‘YHWH saves’), thus in some cases Joshua is called ‘Jesus Nave’. Before, during and after Jesus’ time it was quite a common name (along with Miriam=Mary).

Josephus mentions 20 Yeshuas, with 10 of them contemporaneous with Jesus of Nazareth (one out of ten persons known from the Second Temple period was named Yeshua, making it the fifth most common name of the time). All in all, there were 50 Yeshuas living in his time.

Some of the people who were named Yehoshua or Yeshua are:

-Yehoshua ben-Nun (Joshua son of Nun); called ‘Yeshua’ in Nehemiah 8: 27.

-Yeshua (Joshua the High Priest), the first person chosen to be Kohen ha-Gadol (High Priest) during the time of Zerubbabel, after the Jews returned from captivity (Ezra 3:2; Zechariah 6:9-14).

-Yeshua ben Sira (Jesus the son of Sirach)-the author of the book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus).

-Yeshua Natsraya (Yeshua ha-Notsri in Hebrew)-Jesus of Nazareth.

-Yeshua bar-Abbas (Jesus Barabbas)

-Yeshua bar-Hananiyah (Jesus bar-Ananias)-a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the Jewish war against Rome began in 66 AD, went around Jerusalem prophesying the city’s destruction. The Jewish leaders of Jerusalem turned him over to the Romans, who tortured him.

The procurator Albinus took him to be a madman and had him released, while he continued prophesying for more than seven years until he was killed by a stone from a catapult during the Roman siege of Jerusalem during the war.

 

[patrick457]

I think Jesus comes from Greek.
Non Catholics using Yahweh.
Well Jews use Yahweh. But to avoid taking the name of God in vain use G-D a lot in English. Spanish speaking Jews have no problem with Dios.
Ethiopian Orthodox use YAH a lot. Ever heard a Bob Marley song?

Bob Marley is a Rastafarian and a Jamaican, though.

Rastafarianism considers Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia to be God incarnate, whom they call Jah or Jah Rastafari. Ras Tafari (Prince Tafari) was the pre-coronation name of Selassie I.
Jah is referenced in many reggae songs, including many Bob Marley songs, such as “Jah Is Mighty” and “Forever Loving Jah.”

Jews nowadays usually refer to God as ‘Ha-Shem’ (The Name) in common speech and as ‘Adonai’ in worship.

In the liturgy of the Temple the name was pronounced in the priestly benediction (Num. 6: 27) after the regular daily sacrifice (in the synagogues a substitute-probably Adonai-was employed); on the Day of Atonement the High Priest uttered the name ten times in his prayers and benediction. In the last generations before the fall of Jerusalem, however, it was pronounced in a low tone so that the sounds were lost in the chant of the priests.

After the destruction of the Temple (A.D. 70) the liturgical use of the name ceased, but the tradition was perpetuated in the schools of the rabbis. It was certainly known in Babylonia in the latter part of the 4th century, and not improbably much later. Nor was the knowledge confined to these pious circles; the name continued to be employed by healers, exorcists and magicians, and has been preserved in many places in magical papyri.

The vehemence with which the utterance of the name is denounced in the Mishnah (“He who pronounces the Name with its own letters has no part in the world to come!”) suggests that this misuse of the name was not uncommon among Jews.

 

[patrick457]

I think I read in the catacism that the word Jehovah and YHWH were the same words translated as I AM.

They are not exactly the same words, but the words used sound alike that it is almost a pun:

(אהיה אשר אהיה) “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh”=“I Am that I Am”.

Theologians have many different explanations for the meaning behind this phrase. Many theologians explain that “I am that I am” is better translated “I be that I be”.

The ancient Hebrew language does not have a past, present, or future tense. Instead, it has an imperfective aspect and perfective aspect as indicators of time, with no actual determined time. In Hebrew, time elements rather than verb conjugations are used to denote time. Perfective aspect is something that is completed, or will be definitely completed. Imperfective is something that has not been completed, might be completed or might be completed in the future (there is no definite).

“Ehyeh” (translated in other cases as ‘I will be’) is a Qal imperfect, third-person, masculine singular verb, and can be understood as God saying that God is “in the process of being”, a reference that could say, based on theological interpretation, that God exists in all times.

 

[Lily_Marlene]

Merci! I am edified by the number of informative responses. To think that you would take the time to impart your knowledge!

I intend to make use use of all that I have learned.

I have found a home here at Catholic Answers Forums since I often have questions about Sacred Scripture.

I hope to put another one up for (name removed by moderator)ut as soon as I have the time.

Thank you and don’t stop.

LilyM.