Vatican says "Yahweh" not to be pronounced

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A very wise guest priest from an area abbey talked about it in our Sunday Mass. He believes that it was very disrespectful to use that word for God the way many have done. He strongly thinks that this is the right thing for the Church to do. Until recently, I had never really given it much thought, but I trust this priest’s judgement.
 
Among many reasons to not pronounce Yahweh is the following,
rarely reported and possibly the reason that the Jews stopped naming their God.

In 135 AD the emperor Hardian built a new city on the ruins of Jerusalem, called Aelia Capitolium. On the site of the destroyed temple he built a temple to Jove (a name for Jupiter, the father god))

Yahweh is how Jove is pronounced in Latin.

Latin has no “J” so the letter is “i”.
In Roman Latin “V” is pronounced “W”.

So the pronounciation is IOWE, or Yahweh.

One is left to conjecture whether the Hebrews named their God after the Greek father god, or whether the Romans created the cult of Jove (Yahweh) in an attempt to add the Hebrew God to their pantheon.

Whatever the case, naming a god of the Roman pantheon, Jove (Yahweh) in Christian worship seems inappropriate to many.
 
Claude_Kenneson said:
This news from the Vatican has created quite a stir among Jehovah’s Witnesses. See "http://www.zenit.org/article-23414?l=english

What do you think about it?
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This is nothing new. The Church has always had the deepest respect and reverence for the Most Holy Name of God. The Vatican is just reminding the faithful (“reiterating”, as the news article puts it) not to disrespect God’s Name.

Blessed be the Most Holy Name of God! 🙂
 
As for the Jehovah Witnesses, I find it stranage that they’d be alarmed or shocked by this, considering the fact that they believe God’s Name is Jehovah. Maybe they think the Vatican dosen’t know God’s Name? Or maybe they think God’s Name should be allowed to be used during the Liturgy? I don’t know. shrugs
 
churchcamefirst said:
Whatever the Vatican says, I do and they have good reasons for what they do.
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At first I wasn’ able to get

//www.zenit.org/article-23414?l=english

and had some trepitation what this was all about. I was pleasantly surprised/confirmed the reason behind it:

“When in fact, St. Paul, with regard to the crucifixion, writes that 'God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name” (Phil 2:9), he does not mean any other name than ‘Lord,’ for he continues by saying, ‘and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord’ (Phil 2:11; cf. Isaiah 42:8: ‘I am the Lord; that is my name’)," the Vatican note explained.

“The attribution of this title to the risen Christ corresponds exactly to the proclamation of his divinity,” it continued. “The title in fact becomes interchangeable between the God of Israel and the Messiah of the Christian faith, even though it is not in fact one of the titles used for the Messiah of Israel.”

Btw, the JW own produced Bible "re"introduces the name Jehovah into the NT, based on the OT. They are of course inconistent in this, as they translate Phillippians 2:11
and every tongue should openly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father

instead of, according to their own principles on their own translation of Isaiah 45:21 "Make YOUR report and YOUR presentation. Yes, let them consult together in unity. Who has caused this to be heard from a long time ago? [Who] has reported it from that very time? Is it not I, Jehovah, besides whom there is no other God; a righteous God and a Savior, there being none excepting me?

22 “Turn to me and be saved, all YOU [at the] ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no one else. 23 By my own self I have sworn—out of my own mouth in righteousness the word has gone forth, so that it will not return—that to me every knee will bend down, every tongue will swear, 24 saying, ‘Surely in Jehovah there are full righteousness and strength. All those getting heated up against him will come straight to him and be ashamed. 25 In Jehovah all the seed of Israel will prove to be right and will boast about themselves"

they should translate it
9 For this very reason also God exalted him to a superior position and kindly gave him **the name ** that is above every [other] name, 10 so that in the name of Jesus [Hebrew “Jehovah saves”] every knee should bend of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the ground, 11 and every tongue should openly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Jehovah to the glory of God the Father.
 
Chancellor said:
Among many reasons to not pronounce Yahweh is the following,
rarely reported and possibly the reason that the Jews stopped naming their God.

In 135 AD the emperor Hardian built a new city on the ruins of Jerusalem, called Aelia Capitolium. On the site of the destroyed temple he built a temple to Jove (a name for Jupiter, the father god))

Yahweh is how Jove is pronounced in Latin.

Latin has no “J” so the letter is “i”.
In Roman Latin “V” is pronounced “W”.

So the pronounciation is IOWE, or Yahweh.

One is left to conjecture whether the Hebrews named their God after the Greek father god, or whether the Romans created the cult of Jove (Yahweh) in an attempt to add the Hebrew God to their pantheon.

Whatever the case, naming a god of the Roman pantheon, Jove (Yahweh) in Christian worship seems inappropriate to many.
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After 6 years of studying Latin, I must strongly disagree with you. I am not sure where you pulled your information from.
  1. Jupiter is the name of Roman “chief” god. Latin language uses declension (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension)), and “Jupiter” is the nominative form of the god’s name, while “Jove” is dative form of the same name. Or perhaps your source is confusing the ENGLISH form Jove: “Jove is a less common English formation based on Iov-, the stem of oblique cases of the Latin name.” - see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology).
  2. Pronunciation: although today scholars are not certain how the Latin was pronounced, Jove would be pronounced similarly to “Iowe”. But “Jove” is only a dative form, while nominative form (the “main” form) is still “Jupiter”, and thus very distinctive from Yahweh.
  3. You say that “Hebrews named their God after the Greek father god”. Jupiter was ROMAN’s father god, while GREEKs called their father God Zeus. It is irrelevant, but may point ignorance of your source.
  4. The Hebrew name Yahweh is WAY older than the Roman Jupiter. After all, the Rome was founded only 753 BC. And the Hebrew name Yahweh appears in the Bible, first in the book of Exodus, which took place around 1300 BC.
  5. You say that the Hebrews stopped naming their God AFTER Hadrian (you write Hardian, but I guess it is a typo) built a temple in 135 AD (that is 100 years after Christ was resurrected). But it is a well known fact that already during the Jesus Christ’s life (and earlier), the name Yahweh was not pronounced; instead it was replaced by “Adonai” which means “Lord”.
 
Don’t forget that Yahweh is an english approximation of a set of four Hebrew that have no vowels. Not to mention that there is no w sound in Hebrew (per Father Grochel)
 
Claude_Kenneson said:
This news from the Vatican has created quite a stir among Jehovah’s Witnesses. See "http://www.zenit.org/article-23414?l=english

What do you think about it?
Click to expand...
I think it’s sound advice, because:

1: We do not know with certainty how יהוה
was pronounced. The Masoretes (who created the niqqud-system) actually seem to think that the pronounciation is very different, although I do not have an example right now (as my Hebrew textbook is at my working station at the Faculty.

2: That being the case, pronouncing יהוה in any way might be mispronouncing it, and I don’t want to mispronounce God’s name.

3: I, therefore, when asked to read a sentence where יהוה is part, follow Jewish custom and say “adonai”.
 
It is only a custom not to speak or write the name of God. I do not know of any command by God that forbids his name to be spoken.
 
ricko said:
It is only a custom not to speak or write the name of God. I do not know of any command by God that forbids his name to be spoken.
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Personally, I think it was a good way to get some cheesy music out of the CHurch. 😛
 
ricko said:
It is only a custom not to speak or write the name of God. I do not know of any command by God that forbids his name to be spoken.
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Indeed. But what, then, is God’s name? How do you pronounce יהוה, and if you’re not sure about it: Aren’t you risking mispronouncing it?
 
drno said:
After 6 years of studying Latin, I must strongly disagree with you. I am not sure where you pulled your information from.
  1. Jupiter is the name of Roman “chief” god. Latin language uses declension (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension)), and “Jupiter” is the nominative form of the god’s name, while “Jove” is dative form of the same name. Or perhaps your source is confusing the ENGLISH form Jove: “Jove is a less common English formation based on Iov-, the stem of oblique cases of the Latin name.” - see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology).
  2. Pronunciation: although today scholars are not certain how the Latin was pronounced, Jove would be pronounced similarly to “Iowe”. But “Jove” is only a dative form, while nominative form (the “main” form) is still “Jupiter”, and thus very distinctive from Yahweh.
  3. You say that “Hebrews named their God after the Greek father god”. Jupiter was ROMAN’s father god, while GREEKs called their father God Zeus. It is irrelevant, but may point ignorance of your source.
  4. The Hebrew name Yahweh is WAY older than the Roman Jupiter. After all, the Rome was founded only 753 BC. And the Hebrew name Yahweh appears in the Bible, first in the book of Exodus, which took place around 1300 BC.
  5. You say that the Hebrews stopped naming their God AFTER Hadrian (you write Hardian, but I guess it is a typo) built a temple in 135 AD (that is 100 years after Christ was resurrected). But it is a well known fact that already during the Jesus Christ’s life (and earlier), the name Yahweh was not pronounced; instead it was replaced by “Adonai” which means “Lord”.
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Thanks, you make some good points. A couple of my speculations were just reports of how some folks have viewed the main point.

#5 I think you are probably right on this one, Some people would disagree on how much of a “well-known fact” it is but to me the evidence suggests an early date for the substitution of “Adoni”.

#4,#3 In retrospect here is what I should have said: "The Names Zeus, Jove and Yahweh all derive from the same Indo-European root word for God. The “God” word is older that either Zeus or Yahweh and much older than Jove.

#2 The grammer is mostly irrelevant. Hadrian raised a statue to Jove (Io-we) on the temple mount. I don’t know whether he was Latinizing Yahweh or whether he noticed that the dative form of “Jupiter” is pronounced “Yahweh”.

#1. The very close if not equivalent pronounciation of Jove and Yahweh is obvious and historically rooted. It won’t go away and it can’t be made to disappear using modern grammar tricks. Also, my sources do NOT include wikipedia, ever.

Now to the real point of all this. As a Catholic and before that as a protestant seminarian I have always found “Jehovah” and “Yahweh” to be unacceptable if not insulting. Both are derived from attempted reconstructions of the Hebrew tetragrammaton. Both may or may not be pronounced like the original, we don’t know and at this time it looks like we will never know. So I judge the human attempt to create a proper name for God presumptious if not sacreligious.

For me, I think I’ll just stick to saying Our Father and My Lord and My God.

Chancellor
 
Chancellor said:
#1. The very close if not equivalent pronounciation of Jove and Yahweh is obvious and historically rooted. It won’t go away and it can’t be made to disappear using modern grammar tricks. Also, my sources do NOT include wikipedia, ever.

For me, I think I’ll just stick to saying Our Father and My Lord and My God.

Chancellor
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I definitely agree with you when you say that you’ll stick to Our Father and My Lord and My God - I do the same. I only wanted to point out that Hadrian’s temple, in best, only wanted to add the Hebrew God to their pantheon, and not vice versa (and I’m afraid that someone searching for God might read your post and misinterpret it).

As for #1, as I said, I studied Latin for 6 years. And instead of explaining what declension is, I found that Wikipedia article is accurate on this one. And latin declension is not “modern grammar tricks”; during my studies we translated a lot of ancient Latin texts (written by, for example, by Caesar or Cicero) which all use declension.
 
Chancellor said:
For me, I think I’ll just stick to saying Our Father and My Lord and My God.

Chancellor
Click to expand...
I agree. All those people who tell us that Satan is the “father of the lie” and daddy’s and priests are called “father” forget that God is also called Father. So what if it’s a title, when I call Him Father, He knows I’m not talking about Satan or anyone else.

Some object to using the titles “God” and “Lord” because the pagans have “gods” and “lords” and they are not names. As if God doesn’t know who I’m talking about when I say “God” and perhaps He will get confused and think I’m really talking about Jupiter or Zeus, or what have you. How ridiculous!

If a name is so important to God, why would He have allowed the pronunciation to be lost? Now, all we have left is a guess.
 
At least this may end discussions with the Watchtower Society, which I prefer to call them now, about His name. Nothing should be argued with them as it is Holy Scripture, the Holy name of God … and I like to evengelize them by speaking of the miraculous. Although, I wonder if it only inspires derision, or something else.

My sister is a Watchtower member, but, her life means little to them. She is not getting dental care, she lives in a trailer that has been her home for 25 years on a piece of rental property with rusty water. Her husband hates her, and stole $20,000 from her Father, payment perhaps for the years he spent with her. Money that she was made to reject because it was given from her Father for a **Christmas **gift. Her children, who married within the society, live as far as they can from her, and, one doesn’t want her to visit. The local society which she belongs to does nothing for her, and her main friend is the thrice divorced woman who brought her in. When her Father offered to pay for something, she actually gave us a Sunday afternoon … Watchtower member is a brand new car, and some fancy clothes for preaching, and, that is what her husband did with the $20,000 instead of providing a better home.

I’m glad for the shakeup, I think, though it was in a holy and personal hymn … “I know that you are here.” Perhaps the hymn can remain for private use? I hope that the change will serve to have the Watchtower Society think about *their *overuse in everyday conversation of God’s name. His name represents to them their interpretation of Scripture and is thrown out to us often in conversation.
 
It was interesting…at Mass last night during one the the Hymns I noticed the Hymn that immediately preceded it in the book was titled “Yahweh”

I was just thinking…“We won’t be singing that!” LOL
 
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