HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
July 25, 2006 Since the publication of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611, millions of Christians have believed that the name of God is Jehovah. This erroneous belief spread as the Christianized English conquered exotic countries around the world and took their beloved KJV Bibles with them. But this story starts much earlier than that. The seeds for this accidental mistranslation were planted long before Jesus himself was ever born. Scholars now believe that the books of the Bible we now call the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) were compiled at least 8 or 900 years before Jesus. The actual first manuscripts, of course, do not exist and all we have are copies of copies of copies. However, scholars have noticed that the Hebrew used in these ancient texts is different than the Hebrew used at a later date. It's more primitive in that it contains no vowels. As such, one of the names given for God is a word that can only be rendered in English as YHWH. Since there were no vowels used in ancient Hebrew and it is, for all practical purposes, a dead language, we can only guess at the pronunciation. Most academics pronounce it as "Yahweh." And so it was for hundreds of years. Then the ancient Hebrew fell out of use and the sacred scriptures were translated into Greek. The Greek word for God is "Theos" and the earliest Christians used this word freely since most of them could neither read nor write ancient Hebrew. When the authors of what we now call the New Testament wrote their works, they wrote in Greek since it was the common language of the Roman Empire. 1500 years later the English translators of the Bible simply used the word "God" for Theos and thus it has been ever since. However, translating the "Old Testament" was different. Some people believed that in order to get the true "Word of God" they needed to return to the original language in which it was written: Hebrew. This is where the story gets interesting. Needless to say, not all Jews embraced the new religion of Christianity. If fact, many displayed a stubborn resistance to the heresies of the Jesus movement. They resented the fact that the Christians had hijacked their sacred scriptures and they took steps to preserve it in its original form. One thing the rise of Christianity had done was to inspire Jews to settle on a final canon of "God's Word." This process required them to return to the original Hebrew and closely scrutinize every verse for accuracy. That's when the Masoretes came on the scene. The Masoretes were a sect of scribes whose duty it was to copy the ancient manuscripts so that contemporary Jews could have access to the words of the original texts. Since no one used ancient Hebrew anymore and had long since become comfortable using vowels in their language, the Masoretes took it upon themselves to add "vowel points" to the manuscripts to make them easier to read. However, by the 9th or 10th century CE, Jews had consecrated the name of God to the point that it was forbidden to even speak it out loud. Generally when they encountered the generic word for the deity, the Masoretes used the word Adonai, which means "Lord." But when they got to YHWH they had a dilemma. What if someone accidentally said "the Name" when they were reading the text? That would be blasphemy. So, to guard against this possibility the Masoretes borrowed the vowels from Adonai and slipped them into YHWH. In English this comes out as YAHOWAH. But we can't finish this story without a little help from the Germans. It was actually the Germans who made the first translation of the Bible from Latin, the language of the Church, to the common language of the people. The problem was that German scholars not only used Jerome's Latin Vulgate for their work but also relied on the work of the Masoretes. When these German translators saw YAHOWAH they knew they had a problem because the German language doesn't have "Y" or "W." So, they changed these letters to "J" and "V" respectively and the word became JAHOVAH. Later when the Bible was being rendered into English, the German translations were a valuable resource and saved the English a lot of work. However, they never bothered to check back with the ancient language of Hebrew but took the Germans at their word and left Jahovah intact except for one minor change. Thus, the word Jehovah was born. Because of this simple error, millions of Christians for 300 years believed the name of God really was Jehovah. In the late 19th century a milleniest group that had broken away from the Millerites actually adopted this fictitious name for their own and began calling themselves Jehovah's Witnesses. They even went so far as to re-write the Bible to replace the word "God" with the fictional name of Jehovah. It's called the New World Translation. Hopefully this short historical account will encourage others to be careful when considering points of faith. As I have said before, blind faith is dangerous faith and anyone who willingly suspends their disbelief to accommodate religious doctrine is treading on very thin ice. When there is doubt, asking questions should be the rule of the day since doubt is the first step on the road to scientific inquiry. In other words, don't believe everything you're told just because it happens to come from your pastor. Religious leaders themselves are subject to human error yet they also stand to lose the most if everything they teach is inherently false. Think about that the next time you are in church. ------------ About the author: Keith Cantrell lives in a small town in Oregon where he was a fundamentalist, born-again, evangelical Christian for over 35 years. After many years of questioning and research he has finally become an agnostic. He has written a book entitled "The World's Most Dangerous Book" and it tells the history and origins of the Bible. It's the only book on the market that takes the Bible from cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation and explores who wrote it, where it came from and how it all got put together. It's the 21st century. Isn't it time you knew the truth about the Bible? This book is available at Barnes and Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks and Amazon.com. Read it and tell me what you think! After all, I could be wrong! Email: kwcantrell@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
